This weekend my 8 year-old son completed a report on "the invention of the light bulb." The purpose of the report was to trace the history of an invention. With some much needed assistance from my wife, he completed the project but I can't help but ask myself, "What did he really learn?"
To better frame the problem, I'd like to highlight just one finding of his report which, pardon the pun, I personally found illuminating: Thomas Edison — a man, ironically, of little formal education himself – filled 3,500 notebooks with ideas over the course of his lifetime. Three thousands five hundred!
And there, in a nugget, lies everything that is wrong with our educational system. Rather than having students fill their notebooks with "facts" about the light bulb and Thomas Edison, we should be providing them with the tools to fill up notebooks with their own ideas!
I fully realize that this is also my responsibility as a parent but it would be nice if our schools were working in cooperation with us in this vitally important endeavor. Instead, I fear our schools are beating the creativity out of our kids.
It is yet another reason why I believe we need to begin teaching the subject of "Unlearning" as early as kindergarten.
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