"Very few go to college to gain academic knowledge. If the whole purpose of education is to prepare for college, and the university is also stupid, what's the difference? Not only are colleges ruined, so are universities and graduate schools: we have MBA in the theories, instead of teaching people to do business. Why not teach kids to be prepared for life?"

Read the full article on El Mundo

"They want to be famous researchers, not teachers.

In the most prestigious universities in the United States, professors have three hours of class per week. This means that the best teachers teach very littt... Because teaching is not important. At Harvard, if someone tells you that you're a good teacher they're saying you're a bad researcher."

Read the full article on El Debate

"Polemicist and politically incorrect, [Roger Schank] is an artificial intelligence guru and has taught at leading universities in the world. He is critical of teachers and leaders, does not believe in Bologna, nor Obama, nor in the MBA.

Along with La Salle Business Engineering School, [Roger Schank] has developed a master's program for an MBA in eBusiness that is inexpensive, can be completed at a distance, and is based on a learn-by-doing approach."

Read the full article on El Mundo

Exploring the Issues Behind Computer-Based Learning. In this lesson, students learn how computer technology is used to create lessons that, some hope, will replace live teachers. Students also learn about the objections many have to computer education.

By Rachel McClain, The New York Times Learning Network

The article quoted former Assistant Secretary of Education, Susan Neuman, who, referring to creative and experimental teaching, commented that the No Child Left Behind Act, “will stifle, and hopefully it will kill (them)…" Under the guise of “scientifically proven” educational practices, the Bush Administration and those of us willing to comply with their directives, are placing our children’s future at risk.

Excerpt from “Progressive Perspectives: The John Dewey Project on Progressive Education” at the College of Education and Social Services, University of Vermont.

Download episode transcripts of CNBC’s The Business of Innovation, which Roger co-hosted in 2007.

"In today’s challenging economic environment, it may be tempting to scale back but it is actually more important than ever to innovate."

Full transcripts from:
Episode 1: "Innovators & Iconoclasts"
Episode 2: "Revolution & Evolution"
Episode 3: "New Tricks & Old Dogs"
Episode 4: "People & Technology"
Episode 5: "Loners & Teammates"

"Dr. Schank's programs combine the look of high-tech video games with a Mission Impossible-style narrative. A course in biology, for instance, might challenge students to stop a worldwide virus outbreak; an economics course might have them play the role of adviser to the chairman of the Federal Reserve; a physics course might entail building a rocket and landing it on the moon. In essence, each software course is like an elaborate choose-your-own-ending novel.
The aim is to get students to delve into a course's volumes of academic information, including hours of videotape of experts in a field related to the program.”

By Joshua Green for The New York Times.
Read the full article here.

"If I were in charge of training pilots, I would make sure to fashion a scenario in which trainees had to navigate through severe lightning with one engine out and the others sputtering, the cabin filling with smoke, and the plane being tossed about. Better to have pilots experience this as a simulation than as they fly a real plane."

From a selection of quotes posted here.

"At school level, concepts and facts (and sometimes entire subjects) are taught seemingly for their own sake. Crucially, the division of content into discrete subjects leads to knowledge that needs to be acquired to achieve a specific goal being separated from that goal's frame of reference. For instance mathematics taught early on in school is not presented in the context of helping the student understand biology or chemistry, subjects which are introduced at a later stage.

Full article by fondue at
Everything2: A collection of user-submitted writings

"Meaningful stories (scripts) lie at the heart of [Schank’s] instructional method. These contextualise learning and link to previous schema. A fierce critic of lectures and classroom education and training, he has developed simulation methods for exposing learners to script building environments, where they can learn by repeated exposure to failure and ultimately success. Expectation failure is when things turn out to be different from what you expected. This is when you learn. Breaking with traditional linguists and theorists of learning, he sees the learning as a difficult and messy process."

Full article at Epic: Partners in Learning