Opinion: Schools should teach the way children learn
By Peter Halacsy
If you don’t mind a new San Franciscan’s point of view, what I see behind the faltering outcomes of American education is a failure to communicate.
American schools are using two-dimensional communication in a 3-D world. All one needs to do is view the YouTube video of a toddler quickly mastering an iPad to understand the problem, and the solution.
American education is linear, but the rest of a student’s world isn’t. Watch young people hunting knowledge at a computer, and you won’t see them moving along a straight line (as textbooks or slide presentations do). You’ll see them zooming in and out, leaping from hyperlink to hyperlink, remixing knowledge on the fly. This type of learning is brain candy to young people, and they don’t get enough in school. As one T-shirt recently seen in a New York City school says, “It’s Not ADD – I’m Just Not Listening.”
I learned the limits of linear education as a child growing up in Hungary as the Cold War waned. I came to America expecting to find a very different approach to education. Sadly, I did not.
Peter Halacsy, the former lead developer at Hungary’s largest Internet company and a co-founder of Kitchen Budapest, was an assistant professor of new media at Budapest University of Technology before co-founding Prezi Inc. in 2009 and moving to San Francisco.
Mr. Halacsy is exactly right. Video games are brain candy. And like candy, they should be consumed in moderation.
It is the real world that is 3-D, not the flat 2-D of computer and movie screens (the book is almost always better than the movie, anyway). You want 3-D? Try going down stairs, driving a car, constructing a house, designing a dress on a mannequin or chopping vegetables so you don’t cut your finger (for a Hungarian recipe that you must convert from the metric system to our English system of measurement, engaging your math skills).
Instead of encouraging zoning out in front of a screen (and ending up feeling like a used cigarette butt, to quote Jane Smiley from her novel, Moo, — which, by the way, I read one page after the other in linear fashion) try more field trips where students see how a topic translates from the classroom to the real world. Or more hands-on learning rather than a keypad and some video controls. In the sixth grade, my teachers brought in a life size human dummy containing all the internal organs, major arteries, etc. We could take it apart and put it back together, learning all about how the the different parts fit and interact and their size and shape. (This is why med. students train on cadavars and observe actual human patients instead of a working on a computer). It was an anatomy lesson providing more understanding and knowledge than some 2-D recreation on a screen. The author mentions history. How about lessons where the students have to create and play act events and happenings from ancient Rome, applying historically accurate laws, customs and circumstances to understand how this civilization operated?
While other countries may have higher test scores, do they have superior functioning?
So, while I, too, believe American schools are failing, I believe the answer lies not in more electronics cluttering the brains of our young people, but in providing lessons where they can apply classroom knowledge to life.
(Can you forward this comment to the author of the piece as well as posting it on laketahoenews.net?)
electronic books out sold paper backs…
I also disagree with Mr.Halacsy. The students have abundant exposure to the common use of technology, however many cannot create a Power Point presentation (as in a business or educational presentation at a job)or write a comprehensive essay.
Take a look at the average student high school essay and it reads like text messaging. That is not how the real world communicates. We need MORE oral speaking and critical thinking practice, not less.Technology should be an enhancement to the education, not a detriment.
I think we have to incorporate every resource we have available, and expanding technology is just one more arrow in the quiver of tools we have to do that job. Education should be well rounded not only in the subject matter, but also in how subject matter is presented. You get more flies with honey, and when it comes to kids (or really any age human) you get more retention of knowledge when it creates more interest in the learner.
And there is a positive flip side to the multitasking/texting generation, and that is they are communicating in ways that get there EXACT point across with minimum output. Or as in many industries what would be considered “Efficiency”.
I’m sure many would find arguments to my observations, but at the least take it as food for thought.
No amount money ,teachers,brand new campus, have ANYTHING to do with a student that wants Success.
It’s only between the ears of a person who wants a better life,security,job they love, to pursue these excuses of bad learning.
Learning is A DRUG….AND THERE’S NOT ENOUGH YOUNG PEOPLE HOOKED ON IT!
I agree with the article — 1 of my 4 children learns differently than others. He is 16 and I have been saying since he was in Kindergarten that we need a school that teaches according to the way he learns. His different way of thinking should be nurtured and he should not be expected to conform to the system.