jtotheizzoe: Can These Simple Cartoons Help...

Friday, January 13, 2012

Can These Simple Cartoons Help Redesign Education?

If you’ve ever wondered “What’s Joe’s motivation in life, and this whole Tumblr science blog thing he does?” … this would be a good place to start.

We owe it to ourselves to do more with to unlock the immense potential that currently sits in our classrooms. Adolescence is one of the most creative periods in life, we are hard-wired to test our limits during that time in our lives. So why stifle that in regimented, standardized classroom settings? I’m sure we can do better.

Were you bored in school? Guess what, so was Einstein! Does that make you a genius, too? Not likely, but according to a new project called Born to Learn, it does suggest that our educational practices might need a rethink. The project’s main thrust is a series of short, simple animations aimed at raising awareness about how the minds of young humans are “born to learn”—but not necessarily “be taught.”

“Your brain is the planet’s most powerful learning machine. But our current systems of education aren’t doing enough to unlock our true potential. This is what Born to Learn is all about,” the site proclaims. The short films (there are two so far) “sum up over 20 years of rigorous and complex research” culled from history and evolutionary psychology. The main thrust seems to be that a) contrary to what Fight Club says, you are a beautiful and unique snowflake; and b) everything would be better if we taught kids by doing instead of memorizing, and trained them to see connections and “the big picture” rather than isolated pieces of problems with no clear purpose.

“Adolescence is not a problem, it’s an opportunity.”

(via Co.Design)