What I Should Teach In School
I'm in my fourth year of homeschooling and I still feel like I'm flying by the seat of my pants. Granted, those pants have gotten bigger over the past few years, but still. Flying.
I started homeschooling assuming it was impossible to screw up grade school. Grade school! What a cinch!
But eventually the hyperactive teacher side of me stuck her head in the door and started asking questions. Big-picture kinds of questions. Nib-nosy kinds of questions.
"What are you trying to teach those kids, anyway?"
"What kind of people do you want those kids to become?"
"Why must you wear those enormous sissified mom pants?"
You know something? That girl's a real pain in the neck!
I don't do well with big-picture kinds of questions. Fortunately, Seth Godin does, and his book Linchpin has a nice little segment on what they should teach in school.
Two things:
- How to solve interesting problems.
- How to lead.
Most facts can be found on Google in less than 1.2 seconds. But what the internet can't do is tell you what to do next.
Wow.
"What to do next."
The movers and the shakers of this world are the ones who can do just that--look at a problem and figure out what to do next. Relationally, morally, systematically.
For me, that means asking my second grader to not just tell me the color of Robin Hood's tights, but to talk through the whys and the whens and the rightness (or wrongness) of Robin Hood's rebellion. And then to take that one step further and discuss scenarios where rebellion might be the right thing for an eight-year-old boy to do.
I don't have it all figured out. That's just one application from my itty-bitty world. How would the "two things they should teach in school" apply to you?
Full disclosure: No one asked me to promote Seth Godin's book. But like his other works, it's a great read. And because I'm an affiliate, if you click the link to Amazon and make any purchase, I receive a minuscule percentage off the order. And that's a true story.
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