The Answer to Future Shock

John Davis sent me a link to this fascinating video on the exponential changes happening right now, due to technology. It can leave a person with the feeling: how can I keep up with all this change and information?



As usual, that genius, Maria Montessori, had the answer - decades ago:

"It is not the accumulation of a direct knowledge of things which forms
the man of letters, the scientist, and the connoisseur; it is the
prepared order established in the mind which is to receive such
knowledge. On the other hand, the uncultivated person has only the
direct knowledge of objects; such a person may be a lady who spends a
great part of the night reading books, or a gardener who spends his
life making material distinctions between the plants in his garden.

"The knowledge of such uncultured minds is not only disorderly, but it
is confined to the objects with which it comes into direct contact,
whereas the knowledge of the scientist is infinite, because,
possessing the power of classifying the attributes of things, he can
recognize them all, and determine now the class, now the
relationships, now the origins of each; facts much more profound than
the actual things could of themselves reveal." Maria Montessori, The Advanced Montessori Method, 1917


Hat tip to Rachel Davison for the Montessori quote

Parallels of Fire

"Education is not the filling of a bucket, but the lighting of a fire."

          William Butler Yeats

 “The secret of good teaching is to regard the child's intelligence as a  fertile field in which seeds may be  sown, to grow under the heat of flaming  imagination.  Our aim is not only to  make the child understand, and still  less to force him to memorize, but so  to touch his imagination as to enthuse  him to his innermost core. We do not  want complacent pupils, but eager ones.  We seek to sow life in children, rather than theories, to help them in their intellectual, emotional, and physical growth, and for that we must offer  them grand and lofty ideas to explore.”

             Maria Montessori

An 8th Grade Education in 1895

Emails with a test from 1895 Salina, KS 8th grade have been floating around the Internet for some years, as an example of the decline in education. Here's a bit about these emails, and the US History questions from the Kansas test:

"What it took to get an 8th grade education in 1895...

 "Remember when grandparents and great-grandparents stated that they only had an 8th grade education? Well, check this out. Could any of us have passed the 8th grade in 1895? 

"This is the eighth-grade final exam from 1895 in  Salina ,  Kansas ,  USA . It was taken from the original document on file at the Smokey Valley Genealogical Society and Library in  Salina , and reprinted by the Salina Journal.   

"U.S. History (Time, 45 minutes)
1. Give the epochs into which U.S. History is divided
2. Give an account of the discovery of  America by  Columbus  
3. Relate the causes and results of the Revolutionary War.
4. Show the territorial growth of the  United States  
5. Tell what you can of the history of  Kansas  
6. Describe three of the most prominent battles of the Rebellion. 
7. Who were the following: Morse, Whitney,  Fulton ,  Bell ,  Lincoln , Penn, and Howe?
8. Name events connected with the following dates: 1607, 1620, 1800, 1849, 1865."

The urban legends' site, Snopes.com, comments about it here with more details. Snopes argues that the email poses a misleading question to try to show that education has declined - "could you (the reader) pass this test." Snopes argues instead that those of us long out of school would not remember enough to answer all the test's questions correctly.

What Snopes fails to recognize is the implication that this is the level and type of knowledge which 8th graders were expected to know.  According to the results of a test commissioned recently by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, college seniors at top schools know very little of US history. I highly suspect most current 8th graders are not expected to know most of this information.