But today is different, and in his book “Why School?” Will Richardson explains how, and what it has done to education. He writes, “Thanks to the Internet and the technologies we use to access it, we’ve moved from a world where all of these [information, knowledge, teachers, learning, and getting an education] were relatively scarce to one where they’re absolutely abundant.”
In the book, Richardson makes his case that we have to adapt our educational system from one that was about delivering a set curriculum through traditional means, to one where students are free and encouraged to pursue knowledge.
What we really need is to teach our kids, instead, how to learn, how to analyze information, and how to think critically about the world around them. He says we need to shift our focus from one that focuses on mastering content, to one that focuses on mastering learning.
What do you think? How do our schools need to change to prepare our kids for an information-rich future?