Rethinking Education- Chapter 10

This final chapter did a good summary of everything that was discussed in the book.  The chapter really made me think about what I need to do as a teacher to keep kids in school and interested in learning.  There are so  many different ways for individuals to get the information that they do in school, if schools do not keep kids motivated and provide them with the learning they are looking for, they will turn to other places to learn what they want.  The learning that is taking place in schools needs to relate to what children will need to know as they become working citizens.  The learning needs to be meaningful and help our students succeed.  The book makes a good point on page 135 that "people need to develop new learning skills rather than acquiring more information."  I think this is very true.  It is not as important anymore to memorize facts and information because it is so easy to look these things up on the internet.  Today it is more important for our students to learn skills that will help them find the information.  Students need to learn where to look for information and how to evaluate its reliability. 

The book makes another good point that technology needs to be used in education to help those who are having trouble with the material.  There are not enough teachers per child or hours in the day to give every student the help they may need.  I have seen this, especially in math, that students struggle and don’t receive any help.  There are so many online math games that teachers could show their students and have students use during their study halls or at home to help them with their math or other areas that they may need help in.  Technology needs to be used to its fullest capabilities.  Instead of having students struggle and never receive the help they need, why not use what technology has to offer us.  We already know that students are using technology and seem to prefer technology learning over the traditional classroom learning, so why not incorporate that into and use it to help where teachers may not have time to help. 

As a future educator, this chapter really made me realize what I need to do as a teacher to make sure my students are interested in what they are learning and motivated to learn.  I think it’s going to be important to incorporate technology into my classroom to keep my students interested and motivate them with new ways of learning.  I also need to help my students learn what they are interested in while sticking to the curriculum.