Three Foundations of Our Education

Fernando Flores, Non-Linear Education, and Gaming Technology!

Dr. Fernando Flores

Computers and Cognition, Building Trust, Disclosing New Worlds

Senator Flores distinguished between inequality and poverty: Poverty decreases with economic growth while income inequality does not. Furthermore, inequality is inevitable in a capitalist system. The question is how to address this issue and avoid social injustice. The senator considered that the answer lies in effective welfare economics and in giving people from low-income groups access to high quality education.

Non-Linear Education

Non-linear learning is a very natural process which all human beings go through. Learning to walk, learning to talk, learning to swim, learning to ride a bike...these are examples of times in life when you learned something and you could not explain how you learned it. You try it, you fail, you try again, you fail again, you try again... at some point, a moment really, you move from being someone who cannot swim, or cannot ride a bike, to someone who can. This is non-linear learning.

There are three extremely important things to note about this kind of learning.

Our curriculums are designed from the distinctions of non-linear

Democracy and Education

One of the most comprehensive books on education written in 1916
www.wilderdom.com

John Dewey (1859-1952) believed that learning was active and schooling unnecessarily long and restrictive. His idea was that children came to school to do things and live in a community which gave them real, guided experiences which fostered their capacity to contribute to society.

For example, Dewey believed that students should be involved in real-life tasks and challenges: maths could be learnt via learning proportions in cooking or figuring out how long it would take to get from one place to another by mule history could be learnt by experiencing how people lived, geography, what the climate was like, and how plants and animals grew, were important subjects Dewey had a gift for suggesting activities that captured the center of what his classes were studying. Dewey's education philosophy helped forward the "progressive education" movement, and spawned the development of "experiential education" programs and experiments. Dewey's philosophy still lies very much at the heart of many bold educational experiments, such as Outward Bound. Read more about John Dewey, father of the experiential education movement.

Education is the single most powerful leverage we have to address the needs of our future.

In one sense, we are designing the future through education. Teaching diplomacy, tolerance, listening, patience, and acceptance along with math and reading creates a tipping point for world change. The world is counting on our learning how to get along, how to nurture each other and thrive in an ever expanding global landscape. More than ever, it has become clear that we are all inter-connected and inter-dependent. Changes in climate in one country are affecting commerce in others. Food supplies, fuel supplies, and natural disasters put exceedingly more pressure on our systems than they were designed to withstand.

In times of change, learners inherit the Earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.  Eric Hoffer

At the same time, the scope of an education in the 21st century has become so vast it can already overwhelm and the pace is only accelerating. Our students today have more facts and serious issues to deal with than we did and the generation after will have even more. Keeping up with global change and truly being educated is a full time job and each year there are higher expectations put on our students, including the very young.

While our current teaching systems are attempting to incorporate the ever expanding quantity of knowledge, teachers and resources are too sorely stretched and exhausted to address the kind of transformation needed. With the velocity of today's world, what we are teaching our children today will be outdated before they graduate. That is not the systems fault, or the students, or the worlds. It is simply what is happening.

John Dewey said that a true education teaches people to learn. Once someone knows they can learn, they can accomplish anything they put their minds, hearts, and hands to.

System change takes contextual change and that starts with a declaration. Our educational systems are in a metamorphosis. To prepare children to be effective in the unknown future, we must teach them to think and adapt to constant change. We must teach them to be effective with challenges and give them confidence in their own abilities. We have been teaching students to desire and prepare for stability and constancy, but that is not the world we live in. Not even families are stable at this point in history, and the pace of change is speeding up. Teaching children to deal with, have confidence with, and real power in the face of change will empower them to be effective leaders and contributing citizens.

It is not the pieces of the system that are not working. For the most part, the teachers in our classrooms are dedicated, compassionate, enthusiastic, and hardworking people truly wanting to deliver wonderful education to their students. The parents are equally dedicated, passionate, and hard-working. The students are working hard. Certainly there are issues to be dealt with, but dealing with those issues alone will not necessarily alter the nature of educational systems. What we need is a shift in focus for what an education is.

Over the past decade there have been unbelievable breakthroughs in thinking about how people learn and what a human being is capable of. For example, there is science that proves our genes are affected by our environment, how people think of us, and language.

The Transformation of Education Foundation has been founded to bring together a cohesive platform for these brilliant thinkers and offer innovative ideas, creative curriculums, and community to all those who want it.

Again, welcome to a new world of education.