What is the goal of school?

Here's a great and thought-provoking post from Roger Schank about the purpose the schools. I tend to agree with Roger; the most valuable skill you can develop at school is the ability to think well.

This doesn't just mean solving problems. It means:

• looking for opportunities to improve the world, both big and small
• knowing how to break big problems down into small chunks which can be solved more easily
• the ability to think independently and draw your own conclusions
• being self-aware enough to not let your emotions cloud your judgement
• being able to skillfully debate an issue

There are most things I could add to this list, but hopefully this conveys the basic idea. One of the reasons I founded edu 2.0 was to build a system that could help students to consciously and systematically develop these kinds of skills.

Comments

[Christopher St. John]

Schank rocks. Back in the 70's and 80's he was involved with AI research. I think he had already moved to human learning by the time I discovered "Inside Computer Understanding: Five Programs Plus Miniatures." I ended up buying my own copy because they wouldn't let me check it out of the University library anymore (some prof reserved it), and that was back before Amazon made hunting down obscure out-of-print books easy. It had code!