Packaging

This past weekend my family and I took a trip down to Pella . We had a wonderful time...seeing friends, driving our kids past the houses they were born into (not literally of course), drinking coffee and soaking in the Pella high life. We also visited the new building that now houses Pella Christian High School. Wow...as buildings go...very nice - and that's an understatement. Everything was done well and thoughtfully...classrooms, library, chapel...I'm sure it will be a wonderful educational environment - and a much needed improvement over a building land locked and slowly falling apart.

The experience got me thinking about the nature and purpose of education in our North American culture. We are obsessed with cosmetics...how things appear. We are slaves to technique. If education isn't what we think it should be...we throw some money or computers at it. We try gimmicks...as long as it looks like something is happening we're ok with it. A prime example of this, one used more frequently by teachers at every level, is PowerPoint. As one critic of PowerPoint put it...making boring and meaningless information dance doesn't make it any less boring or meaningless.

A few years back I was at my parents house overdosing on cable television when I came across a speech on C-Span. An old guy (at least 80) talking about education. His speech was slow, a little shaky, and by modern standards, very boring. But I found it fascinating...especially his thoughts on what was necessary for real education to happen: a teacher with a blackboard and a piece of chalk, and a student willing to learn. Now I'm not a stickler on the chalkboard...whiteboards are all the rage...but I appreciated the simplicity. No matter how you dress it up, true education occurs when ideas are exchanged, and minds rub up against each other...the rest is just window dressing. So how do we get back to this? Good question...