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“If we teach today as we taught yesterday, we rob our children of tomorrow”
John Dewey
This post is a reflection of the documentary film Most Likely To Succeed (2015), which follows the students and educators of High Tech High charter school in San Diego, California. The school’s goal is to better prepare student for the workforce by throwing away outdated textbooks and embracing project-based learning, self-directed learning, and group work. The result is a new era of students who, rather than being filled with memorized facts and data (all of which can easily be replaced by computers and machine intelligence), are equiped with distinctive and creative competencies that prepare them adequately for an evolving workplace.
High Tech High serves as an answer to this question: as the modern workplace evolves, shouldn’t our education system evolve with it? The answer may seem simple, but as the film presents interviews with the parents of High Tech High students, it’s clear that they find the concept worrying. They know that choosing an innovative institution like High Tech High for their child is a double-edged sword: although it may prepare their child better for the job market, it might mean that they are not getting the same level of university preparedness as traditional schools. As most universities have not yet changed the application process, full of standardized entry exams, will the students of High Tech High have a fighting chance after they leave the institution?
In my opinion, High Tech High and other charter schools like it are indeed the next evolution in our education system. I believe the school offers several positive innovations to our schools, like cooperation between teachers and students, focus on independant thinking, group work, and creativity. Rather than seperating the subjects, I think students should learn critical thinking and problem soving by means of project-based courses that combine various subject areas. Something that surprised me about the film was that High Tech High claims that their students maintain above-average test scores and that 98% of those who graduate from High Tech High get into university. Finally, I believe that these innovations in pedagogy have the ability to make the world a better place; the next generation of students will need them to face our future planet’s big problems.
Whiteley, Greg (2015): Most Likely to Succeed. Video documentary.
What structures do you think are keeping our education system from embracing project-based learning?