Following the screening, a panel discussion including the Mass Secretary of Education will take place. Tony Wagner, author, educator, and researcher of education, will also be on the panel. Wagner is the Innovation Education Fellow at Harvard's Technology and Entrepreneurship Center. Wagner wrote The Global Achievement Gap.
The Wagner book isn't great.... (based in a quick skim).
ReplyDeleteI've got the Wagner book and am trying to force my way through it in advance of the movie premiere. Funny story on that. I was given a copy by the superintendent of schools here in town. We swapped books awhile back. I gave him Daniel Willingham's book, Why don't Student's Like School?
ReplyDeleteI believe my local school system is being reformed based largely upon the principles of the Wagner book. Our new mission statement could have been written by Tony himself: "All students become powerful thinkers, effective collaborators, and compassionate contributors in preparation for success in a dynamic, interdependent world."
ReplyDeleteI really detest question-begging mission statements. Do we really want a bunch of powerful thinkers and effective collaborators who don't know how to think? Power does not imply the ability to reason and people can unwittingly collaborate on evil or stupid projects and goals. Most of today's most "powerful thinkers" are polemicists, ideologues or optimistic (or pessimistic) sophists. We need more of that like we need another go-around with whole-language. Compassionate contributors? What does that mean, exactly? Oy.
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