An Open Letter to Educators by Morgan Bayda

Morgan,
Last week I read several of your posts about your Summer in South America. I can tell the experience changed your life and I enjoyed reading your thoughts and reflections. This week Dr. Strange assigned our EDM 310 class to read your "Open-letter..." post and write an essay comparing our experiences and thoughts to yours. My essay can be found on my blog but I want to share one thought with you here. I agree with everything you wrote in response to the Dan Brown video you shared. Our system is ineffective, it needs to be changed, it interferes with true learning...
However, university classes have been taught this way for hundreds of years, and it was NEVER an effective way to learn. Pick any point in the last 150 years and tell me how memorizing history facts was an essential thing on its own. In the past, there was no way to retain those facts without memorizing them, unlike today, but WHO NEEDS FACTS unless you are taught how to analyze that information and synthesize it into new scenarios and apply it to current events. The system never worked and yet it has always been done. Those who can learn despite the system have, and those who cannot have not. I absolutely believe and agree that our present educational environments are ineffective and that they must be changed, however, the piece of paper (degree) still has value and will continue to and Dan Brown may be harming only himself by tossing his books back in the face of "the system". What do you think?


This was the comment I left for Morgan Bayda. I have been removed from the world of education for the last few years, and EDM 310 has been my reintroduction to what is happening in the world. I love new ideas and have absorbed a great deal. In the first few weeks of class I felt myself becoming passionate and almost panicky about the need for change in the way we are teaching. The feeling of responsibility has been enormous when I hear powerful statements such as “We are currently preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist…using technologies that haven’t been invented…in order to solve problems we don’t even know are problems yet.” By Karl Fisch in the Did you know video. But then I was somewhat grounded recently when sharing this quote with a family member who responded “Right, but it has always been that way!” And she is right. Educators have always been preparing students for future jobs with new technologies solving entirely new problems and developing new creations. We wouldn’t have any of the technology we have, if we hadn’t been finding ways to circumvent “the system” and create thinkers and students who can adapt and find new ways. The problem seems more in your face now, but it is the same problem that education has always faced. How do we make thinkers and learners, not just fact spewers?