Are any of your programming projects group based? A couple of my friends have ended up doing programming for their jobs after they finished their graduate degrees (one at Facebook and the other at Tilt). Both have mentioned that all their projects are team based, but much of their educational experiences were individual programming assignments. Just a thought about how to bring some of the real world into the classroom.

The idea of this class is really interesting to me. Being able to help students find their way in their journey to understand their own learning styles should definitely be something we encourage at the undergraduate level. Even being exposed to this type of course early on in their academic career could help them as they progress through their undergraduate degree.

The future learning piece is so important. Finding ways to spark a students interest so they go out and do follow up learning on their own is really one way to have a large impact on a student. In addition to the points you bring up about future learning, I would say making the material fun, especially at the middle school level will really have an impact on encouraging future learning.

This is a wonderful post. Honestly, thank you for sharing this. Teachers are people who do dumb things, but we really ought to own up to our mistakes, which is an ethical discipline that our education often seeks to avoid. I feel terrible for that little girl who put the right answer. School administrators should have seen this — especially when she never covered exponents! I guess there are limits to “dumb”, because that was REALLY DUMB on their part.

I actually taught this article when I was teaching English abroad in the Middle East. My students were older and really appreciated how their generation lacked degrees and universities, yet they were much more capable than the younger generation who have fancy degrees, but lack capability. It is a great article that makes us reflect on the loss of deep meaning and how this makes us superficial people. Thanks for bringing this up. It certainly rings well with Freire; I wonder how Freire would approach technology in the classroom?

This is really cool how you bring in Pink Floyd to comment on our educational practices alongside Freire. No doubt with every education there is indoctrination. And if it is not our education, then it is other institutions. Our cultures indoctrinate, and so do our languages (as Freire mentions about ideology and power in language). Thus, it doesn’t seem possible to avoid indoctrination, but rather, shift it to something positive. There is something negative about “thinking” and “learning” in that it necessarily compartmentalizes knowledge so we can eat and chew on it. But just as being informed about events, say through global news outlets, our binaries and stereotypes reciprocally increase, and this is problematic. So while your criticism of school is important, I doubt if not having school is any better. Plus, there are plenty of folks who don’t go to school and remain illiterate throughout their lives and still manage to make a living and make sense of the world. No?

I think things become the most meaningful when we have a personalized experience of the topic or the learning potential. Thanks for the stories.

There is a spectrum for everything. Thankfully, you have encountered many teachers who try their hardest to “bend” the rules of the system and not everyone has this opportunity. Depending this lack of enthusiasm from teachers might be from not knowing there is another option, simply keeping their heads down and having a job, or being burnt by the system. I personally do not have numbers of figures to support various claims and I suspect education has improved a least a little bit since Freire’s initial concerns. We can however use this as a reminder of what to avoid, even if we do not see it happening, and to remind others of the reasons for doing so.

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You have a great point! I’ve had the privilege of staying in touch with a few of my educators that rose to be mentors over the years both from India and US, and it has been a great experience to just have the opportunity to discuss with them what I am doing in my academic life currently…to be able to share how much their interest in my education has helped me in my journey.

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Did not expect this one to go down the path of understanding truth. If you all are interested in this sort of thing, read the philosophy of science a very short introduction by Okasha. This will introduce among many others Kant and his system of truth. A good example of history and different viewpoints is Newton and Goethe in regards to light, optics and color. Newton was scientific and Goethe was experiential. We really only study one in high school.