What if we could create a world in which the educational system matched what we know about how children learn? What if school actually offered programs that matched the demands of the future world that our children will inhabit” (pg 3).
“What would you count as success for your child? And second, how should we prepare children to meet those goals in ways that are sensitive to your culture and your life?” (pg. 13).
“Content has to be expansive and to include truth, beauty, and goodness” (pg. 17).
“It is estimated that graduates today will hold 10 jobs in their lifetime and that eight of those jobs have not yet been invented” (pg 18).
“With content as king, there is room for little else, especially when high-stakes evaluations loom. Somewhere along the line, we forgot that being happy and social and a good person are also key ingredients to our children’s future” (pg 23).
“What counts as success in school or in life? And did the tests that were available measure those skills?” (pg. 26).
“The benchmarks became the outcomes and the test makers and curriculum developers are seeking ways to scrip learning toward these outcomes and test directly for them” (pg. 27).
Referring to teach-to-the-test practices, “That kind of education will fail to produce people who can discover and innovate, and will merely produce people who are likely to be passive consumers of information., followers rather than inventors.” (pg. 27).
“If testing focused on narrowly defined outcomes was to be the measure of success, then children who memorized the material to be learned or tested were by definition successful” (pg. 29).
“From a U.S. perspective, it’s hard to believe that for Finnish 7-and 8-year-olds, the road to success is packaged in a 4-hour school day with no homework and no tests!” that “teachers are paid and respected as top professionals, that they collectively design the curricula without resorting to ready-made scripted lessons, and that as a consequence, they feel completely responsible for the success or failure of the children in their charge” (pg. 37).
“Soft Skills are centrally important for human capital development and workforce success. A growing evidence base shows that these skills rival academic or technical skills in their ability to predict employment and earnings, among other outcomes . . . ‘soft skills’ include collaboration, the ability to regulate your emotions, and executive function - a fancy term for being flexible in your thinking or finding another way to solve a pesky problem without perseverating” (pg. 43).
Other “Soft skills” include
adaptability
autonomy
communication skills
integrity
planfulness
positive attitude
professionalism
resilience
self-control
self-motivation
social skills
teamwork skills
responsibility
leadership
learning to learn skills
persuasiveness
organization
initiative
character
goal orientation
“Despite the fact that these are seen as key factor for success in the workplace, in school, and beyond, we are still fixated on the hard skills” (pg 44).
”If we truly embrace the broader definition of success we have offered, then whether our children become good people and people who are good to others is also part of the equation” (pg 46).
“Business leaders, as well as leaders in many industries, are looking for thinkers and problem solvers, not fact grinders” (pg 46).
”At the end of the day, these kids might be really smart, learning the techniques they need to play on the pro tennis circuit and signing up to help those disadvantaged children in a far away land. But these kids are also stressed out” (pg 53).
”Social skills matter, and they matter a lot - even when you are in kindergarten. Social skills predict children’s successful lives and careers in adulthood” (pg 55).
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has” - Margaret Mead (pg. 57).
“We are people who need people” (pg 59).
”Silo Syndrome: when units within a corporation have difficulty talking to each other, they are much less likely to innovate because no one is thinking big picture. These cultures breed insular thinking, redundancy, and suboptimal decision-making (pg. 65).
”Collaboration thrives on differences in opinion, not similarities” (pg 74).
“It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change” (pg. 122).
“Drawing and painting, dance, music, and drama enhance children’s capacities for learning information deeply. Creating a drawing of a scene from a story and explaining it to your teacher is a powerful way to increase your comprehension . . . The active mastery of content means doing something with the material” (pg 142).
”Although content should not be king, it is definitely important for children to learn content. But it is also important for them to learn how to learn and how to be life-long learners (pg. 155).
Grade: B+
A lot of really great stuff in the beginning, but then it seemed to drag on.
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