Time for a teaching tuneup
Not only are the subjects we teach overdue for review, but how we teach is as well. Is memorization best in an information age in which people increasingly have to assess new factual knowledge proliferating on the Web, some of it misleading or false? Henry Adams was prophetic when he said, "Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of inert facts."
One indication of how adults respond to increasing opportunities for continued education is the explosion of distance learning on the Internet. It has become a focus for working adults who understand that they must be involved with lifetime learning and with the constant updating of their skills. They all understand that education does not stop at the school door, and that there is a need for newer and fresher skills in an era in which any young person entering the workforce has a possible work life of 50-plus years and virtually no chance to work for the same company, even for a decade. "Commencement," as one graduation speaker put it, "is just the beginning."
This is a challenge, once again, to the leading educators of America. Led perhaps again by the foremost university presidents, and joined by public school officials, they should convene to review what to teach and how to teach our next generation of students, who will shape our ever more perplexing world.
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