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World Class Learners: Educating Creative and Entrepreneurial Students

Introduction: To Create is Human
1. The Wrong Bet: Why Common Curriculum and Standards Won’t Help
2. The Changed World: The Need for Entrepreneurs
3. What Makes an Entrepreneur: The Entrepreneurial Spirit
4. Achievement Gap vs. Entrepreneurship Gap: The Myth of Education Giants
5. China vs. the U.S.: How the Best Education Stifles the Entrepreneurial Spirit
6. From Accident to Design: A Paradigm Shift
7. Freedom to Learn: Student Autonomy and Leadership
8. Product-Oriented Learning: Works That Matter
9. The Globe is Our Campus: Global Entrepreneurs and Enterprises
10. Create a World-Class Education: Principles and Indicator

3 Comments »

  • Charlotte Beecher said:

    I could not agree more strongly! The “cookie cutter” may have changed shapes, but to force ever more children through it is a mistake. American public education has failed to spark the inquizative imagination of our children… partly because of PC sociatal issues (including a prevasive entitlement mentality) and partly because of litigation fears. Those failings won’t be corrected by the common core standards.

    Obviously, our students must be better educated. We can’t be graduating students who can barely read. But beyond that… we need to acknowledge the whole child… and inspire them to reach for the stars.

  • Jane Murphy said:

    Well said, Charlotte

  • lorin pritikin said:

    I agree with the many deficits in education in America–particularly with regard to tapping into the imagination and passion of children. However, I am troubled by the pervasive use of technology, particularly as it pertains to teaching literacy and second language. In his book The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brain (2010), Nicholas Carr examined our relationship to technology. He had written a provocative Atlantic Monthly article “Is Google Making us Stupid?”(2008). He does extoll the virtues of the advances that Internet and Google have afforded us but his article and book offer a cautionary tone to overindulgence and over exposure to technology at the serious costs to our powers of concentration and overall literacy. While there have been critics, to be sure, charging hyperbole and reminding Carr fans that every generation has cautioned agains the costs of progress, as a teacher of literacy and second language, I have found Carr’s arguments to be “spot on.” I have been teaching 27 years and I have noticed a serious decline in intellectual pursuit and intellectual attention span–where listening to a teacher or fellow classmates–pure auditory processing–is concerned–without a “sound and light show” of Power Point. This has extended to reading sophisticated texts in a first or second language. There has been a definite shift–certainly attitudinal–and possibly cognitive–in my high school students’ ability to process written text or spoken language without more exciting “entertainment.” This concerns me…

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