Skip to main content

How to Bring Our Schools Out of the 20th Century - TIME

Popularity Report

Total Popularity Score: 0
Loading...
Loading...
Loading...
Loading...
Loading...
Loading...

Rank

Bookmark History

Saved by 84 people (-14 private), first by anonymouse user on 2006-12-24


Public Sticky notes

How to Bring Our Schools Out of the 20th Century

Highlighted by maartencannaerts

How to Bring Our Schools Out of the 20th Century

Highlighted by maartencannaerts

Highlighted by fnm4ever

How to Bring Our Schools Out of the 20th Century

Highlighted by chuckholland

How to Bring Our Schools Out of the 20th Century

By Claudia Wallis Sunday, Dec. 10, 2006
  • Print
  • Reprints

Highlighted by chuckholland

There's a dark little joke exchanged by educators with a dissident streak: Rip Van Winkle awakens in the 21st century after a hundred-year snooze and is, of course, utterly bewildered by what he sees. Men and women dash about, talking to small metal devices pinned to their ears. Young people sit at home on sofas, moving miniature athletes around on electronic screens. Older folk defy death and disability with metronomes in their chests and with hips made of metal and plastic. Airports, hospitals, shopping malls--every place Rip goes just baffles him. But when he finally walks into a schoolroom, the old man knows exactly where he is. "This is a school," he declares. "We used to have these back in 1906. Only now the blackboards are green."

Highlighted by karenwhattam

This is a school," he declares. "We used to have these back in 1906. Only now the blackboards are green."

Highlighted by fnm4ever

Rip Van Winkle awakens in the 21st century after a hundred-year snooze and is, of course, utterly bewildered by what he sees. Men and women dash about, talking to small metal devices pinned to their ears. Young people sit at home on sofas, moving miniature athletes around on electronic screens. Older folk defy death and disability with metronomes in their chests and with hips made of metal and plastic. Airports, hospitals, shopping malls--every place Rip goes just baffles him. But when he finally walks into a schoolroom, the old man knows exactly where he is. "This is a school," he declares. "We used to have these back in 1906. Only now the blackboards are green."

Highlighted by tedingraham

This is a story about the big public conversation the nation is not having about education, the one that will ultimately determine not merely whether some fraction of our children get "left behind" but also whether an entire generation of kids will fail to make the grade in the global economy because they can't think their way through abstract problems, work in teams, distinguish good information from bad or speak a language other than English.

Highlighted by tmchale

Right now we're aiming too low. Competency in reading and math--the focus of so much No Child Left Behind (NCLB) testing--is the meager minimum.

Highlighted by kheerand

Today's economy demands not only a high-level competence in the traditional academic disciplines but also what might be called 21st century skills.

Highlighted by kheerand

Kids are global citizens now, even in small-town America, and they must learn to act that way

Highlighted by kheerand

Knowing more about the world.

Highlighted by ritachuhran