I speak all around the world on a regular basis. I speak on education, corporate training, innovation, the human learning and memory system, what is wrong with universities, corporate memory, artificial intelligence and sometimes, shipping and intelligent enterprise software in shipping.
[Schank] argues that the current education system is based on what he calls the evaluation question: 'What should students know?'Inevitably, Schank says, this leads to the development of a canonical curriculum based on memorization. Success is then determined by how much of the material memorized can be reproduced by the student in a test.
But the test, he says, gives a false account of what the student has learned. Schank asked the audience how many people could pass a high school biology test that evening. Predictably, few people raised a hand. Schank added, "The Department of Motor Vehicles has two tests: 'Can you drive the car?' and 'Can you answer the multiple choice test?' The school system has eliminated one of the tests."
Roger Schank began by saying that school is profoundly broken and then he told us why. He blamed it on the “6 P’s:
Parents (who think school should be the same as what they experienced).
Press (who wants to report on students’ falling test scores).
Publishers (who want to make money on textbooks).
Princeton (the academic institution).
Princeton (the test maker).
Politicians (who mandate that children learn things that they can’t remember themselves).
After introducing the problem, Schank began to talk about solutions. He showed us a video clip of his 7 month old grandson learning to crawl. He said that it encapsulated everything we needed to know about learning. In the video, young Max was placed on a carpet (the traction on the carpet created an environment where crawling was possible) and a small toy frog was squeaked and then placed in front of him. After looking first for help and getting none, Max was clumsily moving towards the target. Eventually, he succeeded. According to Roger Schank, learning starts with a goal, with wanting something. The role of the teacher is to set up the conditions for achieving the goal. In other words, to put the frog in the right place.
The event “e-Learning: Re-Thinking Education”, which took place at the World Bank headquarters in Washington D.C. on November 8th featured Robert Schank, Founder of the Institute of e-Learning and Professor at Northwestern University. Harry Patrinos, Lead Education Economist at the World Bank introduced the speaker and chaired the event.
Schank then explained the role e-Learning can potentially play in changing education as we know it today. Current e-Learning he says, aims to copy schools by a more efficient delivery our current conception of education. However, Information Technology, Schank said, allows us to create a new model of education that resembles the ancient model. In this model teachers can teach as needed, students pursue goals they want to pursue, learning is just in time, practice is key, students learn by doing, and they are tested by performance and not competence. The computer changes the nature of where we can find the expertise, since learning can be mediated my mentors that are anywhere in the world. It is not impossible to imagine, Schank stated, a multitude of mentors spread around the world who could teach a multitude of different subjects—something that is not possible in schools.
