An acquaintance is very excited at coming back from a "learning and the brain" conference last weekend. All weekend long, her facebook feed was crackling with one-liners from pedagogy gurus (people who get paid large sums of money to speak at conferences and overgeneralize about panacea fixes to education).
One idea my friend is very excited about is this: "We need to get away from pretty much any model of teaching we have been doing for the past 100 years."
First off, personally, I don't know anybody who had been teaching for the past 100 years. For my own part, it's not even one tenth that much. There are a few fairly senior teachers at my school, but I don't think any of them has more than 35 years in the system.
Second, what's wrong with the model I used last week? I thought I was having some good interactions using a mix of exploration, technology, guided questioning, and discussion. What am I to replace it with?
The whole thing smacks of snake oil salesmen. My friend says, basically, she spent the weekend listening to lectures from people telling her that listening to lectures doesn't work.
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