A Series of Educational Reality Checks

Today I spent eight hours in a room with educators from VT, NH, and RI and some folks from Measured Progress as we reviewed questions for this coming year's NECAP assessment - VT's state science assessment: fascinating process. It's humbling and infuriating for the same reason. Humbling because there have been a handful of questions that I just simply didn't know, and infuriating because... well, I have, what I consider to be, a functional adult life not knowing these things. Which drives home to me a question I have muttered to myself on and off recently: why do we teach these things? I mean, these specific things? I know, I know. They're supposed to build up to further knowledge - things people will need in college, but I just don't know that I buy that. I'm not sure that's a good enough reason.

Amir Abo-Shaeer made a point at our Knowles Science Teacher's meeting that although every dutiful high school learns about logarithms, they really aren't that useful in the real world. Most people will simply never use them for anything functional. He referenced a TED talk in which Stephen Wolfram made the point that humans are really good at solving complex problems and thinking creatively, but not good at calculating. But calculators are really good at calculating and really bad at thinking creatively and solving complex problems... So... shouldn't we teach that - and let calculators do the rest? I love it. (To be fair, I watched the TED talk, and didn't get that out of it, but I'll leave it to you to hear for yourself):

One of the things I love about Amir's comments is that they're like a series of reality checks. Is this really worth it? (and the answer can be no). Is this the best it can be? How can it be more practical? I think John Dewey (the pragmatist educational philosopher) would approve of such an honest line of questioning.