learners who inherit the future

On October 29th of this year, 120 educators and people with an interest in education from across Canada gathered in Winnipeg for the The Canadian Education Association's Rethinking Adolescence, Rethinking Schools workshop. They have posted audio files of some of the discussions.

Winnipeg Free Press columnist Lindor Reynolds spoke about how the real 'essential' skill is learning to think. She quotes Eric Hoffer from his book Reflections on the Human Condition, "In times of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. Learners find themselves beautifully equipped to live in a world that no longer exists."

She goes on to say, "We do not need malleable young people [or people of any age] who are primed to spit out the one correct answer to every question without being able to connect it to a history, a world, or a meaning."

Listen to more here.

The panel then responds to a question from People for Education Executive Director Annie Kidder about how, in education that develops the thinker, the risk-taker and the agent of change in all of us, do we feed the assessment / accountability beast that inevitably narrows learning to the acquisition of flavour-of-last-month so-called essential skills. She phrased it a little differently of course.

Listen to this discussion here.