SLA

Several years ago I saw a list with this title in the Whole Earth Review. I lost that article but decided to make up my own. (This was created in a morphine haze after my emergency appendectomy this weekend.)

1. Most high school students want to do work that is authentic and real.
2. Standardized testing bares little relationship to anything students will have to do in their lives after they leave school.
3. Everyone, but especially teenagers, want to extract meaning out of their life experience- but traditional schooling does not afford them many opportunities to do so.
4. Learning is an essential part of being human and teenagers do it all the time- even if what they take away was not the lesson intended.
5. Traditional schooling simply doesn’t work for most people in that it does not engender a sense of wonder, or for that matter even curiosity, about the world.
6. Most adults might regret opportunities missed in their own education, but few would want to repeat their overall experience in high school classrooms.
7. Most of the activity that goes on in high school classrooms does not provoke thought- indeed, thought is penalized.
8. Just as the victors in wars get to write and define history, most schooling is framed by teachers who, in some way or another, prospered there in comparison to the majority of the students they teach
9. Most teenagers want to be popular among their peers, but crave being accepted and understood by adults.
10. Much of the knowledge that adults retain and use on a daily basis was acquired outside of the classroom.