Why wait?
It's probably the best question I've seen someone ask in weeks, and it will be my little energizer for the months ahead.
Why wait?
Bill Ferriter may not realize it, but he pointed me at this post by Chase Mielke and this sentence within it:
If an end goal of education is to create skilled, altruistic citizens, why wait until after a student's post-secondary training?
Mielke blogs at Affective Living; he's developed a pretty strong brand for himself, and he is a master of the kind of relentless positivity that would make him an easy target for mockery if it were not coupled with plenty of in-the-classroom practicality. And while his writing sometimes turns up in some places that I'm inclined not to read, he can turn a phrase, and I always respect a well-turned phrase.
This particular piece was dealing with real-world projects for groups of students, but you can see that this question has application far beyond that.
All too often we fall into the habit of thinking that we are preparing students for the future. "I touch the future," and so on. We get to thinking that we are loading up the students brains like little backpacks that they will eventually take on a big journey-- but for right now, they're sitting here in our classroom, their journey not yet begun.
One of my pet peeves is people who "only" student activities. "Don't worry about it," they'll say. "They're only kids. It's only a student production. It's only a high school concert." Why "only"? This is so often used as an excuse not to try, not to really back the students up, not to give them the kind of support we'd give a "real" project.
If we want them to become Life Long Learners, should we not now be teaching them to learn the CURMUDGUCATION: Why wait?: