In this video, Nicholas Negroponte from MIT shares his thoughts on education today. First, he argues that our attitudes about traditional education need to shift drastically. “Look at education as a problem of learning, where a great deal of learning happens through discovery—not being told,” he urges. It is true that with the plethora of information readily available to students that the simple acquisition of knowledge should no longer be a focus or the goal of education.
He suggests that our model of age segregation is a mistake (separating children into grades by their same ages, and having them progress together at the same pace.) While he does not necessarily call for an immediate overturning of our schools to rectify this, he does cite that children working together in mixed age groups benefit significantly. He cites the Montessori school model and others as evidence. I do agree that children should be allowed to progress through the education at a pace that is natural for them—whether that is more or less accelerated than what we would traditionally characterize as “normal.” At the same time, I can see how mixed age groups could raise concerns about young children being exposed to things (either academic or social) that they would not consider to be age-appropriate. Negroponte believes that teaching programming in school can help children develop not only real-world skills that translate directly to the workforce, but it also aids in their metacognitive development. Writing code, for example, is the closest thing that compares to having children “think about thinking.” And debugging these programs when they don’t work (which they never do the first time) is the closest we can come to having children “learn about learning.” These skills translate indirectly to other areas of academia. For example, kids who know how to code tend to also be better at spelling. The assessment and correction process involved in debugging code is similar to the assessment and correction necessary for kids to learn from their spelling mistakes. Negroponte, Nicholas. [The Brainwaves Video Anthology]. (2015, Apr 4). Nicholas Negroponte – Being Educated. [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fIuZa_-H60&list=PLbRLdW37G3oMquOaC-HeUIt6CWk-FzaGp&index=26
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