Over the past 150 years, virtually everything has changed... except education. In the age of the Internet, we educate people much as we did during the industrial revolution. We educate them for a world that no longer exists, instilling values that are antithetical to those of a free, 21st century democracy. Perhaps worst of all, too many schools extinguish the human creativity and joy they ought to nourish. In this book, legendary systems scientist Dr. Russell Ackoff and "in-the-trenches" education innovator Daniel Greenberg offer a radically new path forward. In the year's most provocative conversation, they take on the very deepest questions about education: What should be its true purpose? Must schools be the way they are? Do classrooms make sense anymore? What should we teach? What should individuals contribute to their own education? What if students did the teaching and teachers did the learning? Is it possible to eliminate old-fashioned distinctions between subjects and between the arts and sciences? What would the ideal lifelong education look like: at the K-12 level, at universities and colleges, in the workplace, and beyond? How do you educate for a world that doesn't yet exist? And how do you pay for tomorrow's "ideal schools"? Ackoff and Greenberg each bring a lifetime of success making radical change. Here, they combine deep idealism with a relentless focus on the real world and arrive at solutions that make far more sense than anything we're doing now.
Table of Contents:
About the Authors ix
Preface: Why, and How, This Book Was Written xii
Introduction: What Education Is About xiii
Part 1: Where Today’s Educational System Fails 1
Chapter 1: Learning and Teaching 3
Chapter 2: The Classroom Environment 23
Chapter 3: Subjects and Disciplines 39
Chapter 4: The New World 49
Chapter 5: Antidemocratic Schooling 65
Chapter 6: Factors That Resist Change 71
Part 2: Factors That Contribute to Education 77
Chapter 7: The Environment a Developed Society Provides for Individual Realization 79
Chapter 8: The Special Demands the Environment of a Liberal Democracy Places on Individual Realization 91
Chapter 9: What Individuals Contribute to Their Own Education 99
Chapter 10: The Place of Arts 107
Part 3: Envisioning Ideal Lifelong Education 119
Chapter 11: Why, and How, We Should Be Envisioning an Ideal Educational Environment 121
Chapter 12: The Preschool Years 125
Chapter 13: A New Look at Schools K-12 135
Chapter 14: The College and University Experience 139
Chapter 15: Education and the Working Life 147
Chapter 16: Taking "Retire" Out of Retirement 151
Part 4: Excursus: Funding Ideal Schools 153
Appendix: Sudbury Valley School 159
Postscript 173
Endnotes 175
Index 187
