Full Description
Many world-class thinkers and creators have been concerned about the state of education in the United States. Discover their thoughts on how children really learn and what teachers must do to optimally tap children's latent abilities.
During the last three decades, education reformers have pushed standardized testing and policies like No Child Left Behind and Common Core to improve test scores and proficiency in basic skills. However, during this period that author Thomas Armstrong calls the "miseducation of America," a number of troubling trends have surfaced, including a decrease in creative thinking scores among children in kindergarten through third grade.
Rather than focus on what's wrong with the education system that has produced these outcomes, Armstrong lays out what creative thinkers know about how children should be educated. In an extended thought experiment, he asks what would happen if we turned the reins of educational policy over, not to the politicians and educational bureaucrats, but to eminent thinkers and creators like Albert Einstein, Pablo Picasso, Martin Luther King Jr., Rachel Carson, Doris Lessing, Jane Goodall, and other seminal culture-builders. What might they say about the best way to educate a child? If Einstein Ran the Schools suggests that the answers to this intriguing question should guide future efforts to reform our nation's schools.
Contents
Chapter One The Purpose of Education: Introducing Incredible Kids to an Amazing World
Chapter Two Imagination: Unleashing Our Children's Ability to Mentally Soar
Chapter Three Love of Learning: Affirming the Most Important Goal of Education
Chapter Four Creativity: Teaching outside the Box
Chapter Five Playfulness: Restoring Childhood to Preschool and Kindergarten
Chapter Six Curiosity: Feeding Our Children's Hunger for Knowledge
Chapter Seven Wonder: Reawakening Our Children's Sense of Awe for the Mystery of Life
Chapter Eight Individuality: Resisting Standardization, Datafication, and Depersonalization in Education
Chapter Nine Neurodiversity: Emphasizing the Strengths of Kids with Special Needs
Chapter Ten Compassion: Educating the Heart in the "Selfie" Generation
Chapter Eleven Care for Nature: Cultivating a Reverence for All Living Things
Chapter Twelve Tolerance: Nurturing a Deep Respect for Human Differences
Chapter Thirteen Beauty: Sensitizing Kids to an Aesthetic Appreciation of the World
Chapter Fourteen The Einstein Classroom: Education for Our Children's Future
Appendix A Weapons of Mass Instruction: Fifteen Reasons Standardized Tests Are Worthless
Appendix B Leonardo da Vinci's IEP Meeting: The Problem with Special Education
Appendix C A Resource Guide for Revitalizing U.S. Education
Notes
Index
