One of the main reasons for this massive waste of talent is the very process that is meant to develop it: education.
– Ken Robinson, Out of Our Minds: Learning To Be Creative
thoughts
Changing Education Paradigms – RSA
Watch this talk by Sir Ken Robinson, world-renowned education and creativity expert and recipient of the RSA’s Benjamin Franklin award, about changing education paradigms. He raises a lot of insightful points regarding the apparent and non-apparent outcomes of the enlightenment educational paradigm that has dominated our learning landscape.
He argues that “great learning happens in groups” and that “collaboration is the stuff of growth.” He also brings forward the argument that the habits of our institutions need to be altered, if significant change in education and, in turn, our society is to happen.
What would it look like if we thought differently about human capacity?
Watch this short film to learn and be amazed.
Book Review: Leadership Can Be Taught – Parks
Sharon Daloz Parks’ Leadership Can Be Taught is an examination and illumination of Ronald Heifetz’s teaching method at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
She not only gives the reader an in depth experience of being in Heifetz’s classroom, but she also translates his methodology into transferrable principles for leadership and teaching. She does this by dissecting the case-in-point approach that Heifetz uses. She also dismantles the notion that an individual is born a leader, and plots a way to develop presence – “the ability to intervene, to hold steady, inspire a group, and work in both verbal and nonverbal realms” (13).
In the second half of the book, Parks addresses the transferability of this approach to a variety of different situations, such as the workplace or different classroom settings. She then places herself in the shoes of a teacher, and examines the principles that teachers need to learn in order to teach with this methodology. The book closes with a critique on our culture’s myth of leadership and an evaluation of this method’s strengths and limits.
In a sense, Leadership Can Be Taught is a hybrid-workbook or pathway to help leaders, teachers, and organizations rethink leadership, teaching, and how to learn. [Read more…] about Book Review: Leadership Can Be Taught – Parks
A Look into the Future of Education Technology?
While I don’t fully agree with the long term educational technology trends that TFE Research and Michell Zappa envision here, they did do a fantastic job presenting the landscape of educational technology for now and in the immediate future.
This is a burgeoning field and my hope is to see the church innovate and set the pace for education technology, rather than lag 5-10 years behind. Hopefully, I can be a part of that.
Jesus, Confucius, and Buddha
Here is the difference between Jesus, Confucius, and Buddha according to a Chinese individual that A.B. Simpson knew of (from A.B. Simpson’s The Fourfold Gospel).
“I was down in a deep pit, half sunk in the mire and was crying for some one to help me out. As I looked up I saw a venerable, grey-haired man looking down at me. His countenance bore the marks of his pure and holy spirit. ‘My son,’ he said, ‘this is a dreadful place.’ ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I fell into it. Can’t you help me out?’ ‘My son,’ he said, ‘I am Confucius. If you had read my books and followed what they taught, you never would have been here.’ ‘Yes, father,’ I said, ‘but can’t you help me out?’ As I looked up he was gone.
Soon I saw another form approaching, and another man bent over me, this time with closed eyes and folded arms. He seemed to be looking into some far-off, distant place. ‘My son,’ he said, ‘just close your eyes and fold your arms and forget all about yourself. Get into a state of perfect rest. Don’t think about anything that could disturb. Get so still that nothing can move you. Then, my child, you will be in such delicious rest as I am. ‘Yes, father,’ I answered, ‘I’ll do that when I am above ground. Can’t you help me out?’ But Buddha, too, was gone.
I was just beginning to sink into despair when I saw another figure above me, different from the others. He was very simple, and looked just like the rest of us, but there were the marks of suffering in His face. I cried out to Him: ‘Oh, Father, can you help me?’ ‘My child,’ He said, ‘what is the matter?’ Before I could answer Him, He was down in the mire by my side; He folded His arms about me and lifted me up, and then He fed and rested me. When I was well, He did not say, ‘Now, don’t do that again,’ but He said, ‘We will walk on together now;’ and we have been walking together until this day.”