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Building Multidisciplinary Ecosystem for 21st Century Education
Children struggle in schools… because the way they are being taught is incompatible with the way they learn
We often forget people are primarily designed for action, not for listening to lectures, not for manipulating symbols, and not for memorizing facts. Perhaps that’s the reason we still continue to deploy these three methods while imparting most of our primary and higher education. In fact, educators have known this at least since the philosopher of education John Dewey advised in 1938: “There should be brief intervals of time for quiet reflection provided for even the young. But they are periods of genuine reflection only when they follow after times of more overt action and are used to organize what has been gained in periods of activity in which the hands and other parts of the body besides the brain are used.”
Community of Knowledge
The history of liberal education has so far made us believe that the purpose of education should be to give people the knowledge and skills to be independent thinkers. However, the idea that education should increase intellectual independence is a very narrow view of learning. It ignores the fact that knowledge depends a lot on others as well.
