What is school for? Book reflection: Section 25-35

What is School For? By Seth Godin Sections 25-35

I am continuing to read Stop Stealing Dreams: What is School For? For my Learning and Technology class.  I am still enjoying this reading.  Godin makes powerful arguments and has really made me think.

In section 29 The other side of fear is passion really resonated with me.  Godin talks about how there is only two tools for an educator.  The easy one is fear and the other is passion.  “Passion can overcome fear – the fear of losing, of failing, of being ridiculed”.  As Godin explains that individual passion is hard to fit into the industrial model, like school.  Passion fuels dreams and creates change, but we are not creating  passion in schools right now and by default not fueling a change.         

In section 31 Godin says “Our new civic and scientific and professional life, though, is all about doubt. About questioning the status quo, questioning marketing or political claims, and most of all, questioning what’s next”.  If we want our students to question then our schooling model needs to resemble and foster this ability. 

I was reminded of my trip to Tokyo of the last summer by the quote in section 34.  “If a school is seen as a place for encouragement and truth-telling, a place where students go to find their passion and then achieve their goals, it is not a school we would generally recognize, because our schools do none of this”.  Japan’s public schools have taken how society functions and mirrored school and school mirrors society.  There seems to be a definite overlap, that what they are teaching in school is relevant to the real world.  Students take responsibility for cleaning the schools, they don’t have any custodial staff, which you not see in the U.S. public schools.  Omoi is a term that is learned early on in the Japanese culture.  It has to do with your passion and your drive.  If you were to ask anyone what their omoi is for their job they would tell you why they chose that job based on their passion.  When asked why do you go to school many people not just educators would answer that it is for the purpose for completion of a human being. This idea of completing a human being, is not the idea that we would often hear in the U.S.  Often I hear people say we go to school to get a good job.  This is what adults think, and this is what our children think.  They don’t go to school for the love of learning they do it to train for a job.  How in the world can we change this thought and change our schools? I often grapple with this very thought.  How can I make a change, especially when I am just one person.