Thursday, January 3, 2013

JacquesTalk, A New Look on Education

For those know know me, I spend a lot of my time in the office or studio filling my mind with audio and video stimulation like documentaries, bazaar music and informational discussions. Recently, I turned to one of my favorite programs, TedTalks, which are a series of conferences cover a range of topics from learning and teaching to the latest electronic possibilities.

While looking though my favorite TedTalk channels, I came across a stream of videos called "Knowledge is Power", which looked at how the educational system works, doesn't work, and how it can be made better. This one particular video in that stream really drew me in, not just because of the content, but because of the speaker as well.

Fifteen year old Adora Svitak, an American child protege and internationally recognized author, presented her ideas under the discussion title "What Adults can Learn from Kids."



What was really compelling about this was that she posited that while adults have gained experience in a specific field and trust among their peers, a large part of every action decided has been from an adult, with very little youth interaction.

As Adora put it. "learning between grown-ups and kids should be reciprocal." Youth have a lot of creative ideas, with not as many social restrictions that old generations may have learned through their experiences. The goal of educating our youth is not to turn them into carbon copies of ourselves in terms of our thinking and doing capabilities, but to establish opportunities for them to do better than us.

The relation our Chapters have to this concept is that Advisors take an "Unplugged" approach to Chapter term planning. The members control their organization and, as "Dad" Tom Labagh has put it many times before, "the members support what they help create."

If you're looking to learning something new, sit down and speak to a youth and take in their ideas and opinions with an open mind. You'll walk away with a different perspective.

"Dad" Matt Blaisdell

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