Ackoff Russell L., Greenberg Daniel. Turning Learning Right Side Up: Putting Education Back on Track

Pearson Education, Prentice Hall, 2008 — 213 p. — ISBN 978-0-13-234649-8, 0-13-234649-4In the age of the Internet, we educate people much as we did during the Industrial Revolution. We educate them for a world that no longer exists, instilling values antithetical to those of a free, 21st century democracy. Worst of all, too many schools extinguish the very creativity and joy they ought to nourish.
In Turning Learning Right Side Up, legendary systems scientist Dr. Russell Ackoff and «in-the-trenches» education innovator Daniel Greenberg offer a radically new path forward. In the year’s most provocative conversation, they take on the very deepest questions about education: What should be its true purpose? Do classrooms make sense anymore? What should individuals contribute to their own education? Are yesterday’s distinctions between subjects - and between the arts and sciences - still meaningful? What would the ideal lifelong education look like - at K-12, in universities, in the workplace, and beyond?Ackoff and Greenberg each have experience making radical change work - successfully. Here, they combine deep idealism with a relentless focus on the real world--and arrive at solutions that are profoundly sensible and powerfully compelling.- Why today’s educational system fails - and why superficial reforms won’t help? The questions politicians won’t ask - and the answers they don’t want to hear.
- How do people learn - and why do they choose to learn? Creating schools that reflect what we know about learning.
- In a 21st century democracy, what values must we nurture?..and why aren’t we nurturing them?
- How can tomorrow’s «ideal schools» be operated and funded? A plan that cuts through political gridlock and can actually work.
- Beyond schools: building a society of passionate lifelong learners. Learning from childhood to college to workplace through retirement.Preface: Why, and How, This Book Was Written
Introduction: What Education Is About
Where Today’s Educational System Fails
Learning and Teaching
Confusing Learning with Teaching
Motivating Learning
Computers and Education
What People Learn
The Classroom Environment
Testing
Solving Problems
Ways of Treating Problems
Creativity
Subjects and Disciplines
Compartmentalized Curricula
Science and Humanities
Needs Not Known
The New World
The Old World
The New World
The Thinking Revolution
Antidemocratic Schooling
Factors That Resist Change
Factors That Contribute to Education
The Environment a Developed Society Provides for Individual Realization
The Special Demands the Environment of a Liberal Democracy Places on Individual Realization
What Individuals Contribute to Their Own Education
The Place of the Arts
Envisioning Ideal Lifelong Education
Why, and How, We Should Be Envisioning an Ideal Educational Environment
The Preschool Years
A New Look at Schools K–12
The College and University Experience
Education and the Working Life
Taking “Retire” Out of Retirement
Excursus: Funding Ideal Schools
Sudbury Valley School www.sudval.org
Founding the School
The Way It Is
Working Toward an Ideal
Postscript