We are in Oregon and in the middle of the first road trip of the summer. The long hours in the car have given me an opportunity to start on my summer reading list. The reading list consists of the pile of books I have purchased, but have yet to open. Like so many good intentions, it is a lot easier to feel virtuous by adding something to the pile than it is to actually accomplish something by making the commitment to read what I have accumulated.
I seem to be in a phase in which I am forcing myself to consider some positions that I find intriguing but more extreme than I would prefer. The present example is Roger Schank’s ???Making minds less well educated than our own.??? This book addresses the core question ???What does it mean to be well educated???? As you might guess from the title, Schank feels there are nearly fatal flaws in the education system as we know it.
Schank challenges the reader with the same question many of us who teach have fielded from students – why do we have to know this stuff? He takes the position that the values and motives that drive the curriculum are flawed and perhaps muddled. When do any of us actually use the liberal arts, mathematics, etc. knowledge that we acquired? In fact, how much of the knowledge we acquired could even be dredged from the recesses of our memories if needed.
This is not a data or research-oriented book. There are no references to research studies. Schank goes so far as to suggest that the ???M??? word (measurement) is at fault for limiting useful educational reform. I suppose it would be difficult to offer a research justification for your position once you have argued that measurement causes us to think about the wrong things. The approach in arguing against present educational methods is logical and what might be done to replace present educational experiences is described by example. As an example of logical style, Schank argues against a liberal arts training by demonstrating that the authors of the ???Great Books??? would not support promoting required reading of the Great Books as a way to become educated. He also seems to claim those (individuals and institutions) who have been in the position to shape the curriculum have done so in their own best interest rather than with a careful eye to developing life skills. University faculty members feel that the disciplines they represent are important for students to know and end up pushing goals that assume preparation means preparing students to do what they do. K-12 educators seem focused on getting students into college. The end result is that the student experience ends up focused on what others feel is important to know rather than on the development of skills students can use.
Schank does something I do admire. He moves beyond complaining and offers a detailed alternative. This does happen to be a pet peeve of mine. I can wade through a lot of complaining, but I expect the expert to come with something at the conclusion of a book that I can consider as an alternative. Problem solvers are much higher on my list than critics and skeptics. What Schank outlines in some detail are authentic, cooperative learning projects in which students struggle with complex problems and attempt to generate and perhaps implement solutions. We would clearly agree with his goal of providing students such experiences. However, Schank takes this position much further than we would. I suppose the difference is that we write for a much different audience. We write for specific courses embedded within teacher preparation programs. Schank wants to change education as we know it. He is not necessarily in favor of ???courses???, but proposes broad (or multiple, self-selected, specific) learning experiences that might represent the curriculum for a year. We encourage educators to consider the mix of learning tasks students experience and suggest that ???some??? authentic tasks replace ???some??? knowledge acquisition requirements. Schank challenges educators at all levels to argue the relevance of their academic disciplines. We suggest that a core problem is that students are expected to learn about the disciplines, but seldom have the opportunity to function as practitioners of the various disciplines they study. We are not against mathematics or history courses, but want students to solve real problems using mathematics or have the opportunity to interpret historical events and write historical accounts. The prototypes Schank and colleagues have had the opportunity to design and implement are great. We all need the opportunity to consider alternatives and such consideration is not practical when the alternatives exist only at the hypothetical level.
This is not intended as a book report. I do not want to place myself in the position of explaining what I may not understand. Rather, I feel I have reached the limit of what I can usefully contribute by identifying some of the key ideas in someone’s thinking. If you find the ideas interesting, I assume you will build your own understanding by reading and thinking through the ideas yourself.
Schank, R. C. (2004). Making minds less well educated than our own. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
