Well, almost. Not if parents build schools like the above. As Dan Roddy describes what could perhaps be a model school for 21st century learners:
The very fabric of the building itself is part of the children's education: there are no classrooms, only an open plan interior that extends around the playground; the playground spreads onto the roof, with a slide into the yard and rope ladders from the class areas through skylights set into it; a tap in the yard spills water out across the wooden floor so the children can watch and observe how it runs away.
Somehow I get the feeling that the more important lessons to teach are about survival. It's a bit ironic though but those who survive are sometimes good at cheating. Then again, if students learn about compassion, there could be no reason to cheat.
So perhaps Harvard's Tony Wagner was spot on when he identified seven skills students desperately need in the 21st century.
Here they are:
1. Problem-solving and critical thinking; 2. Collaboration across networks and leading by influence; 3. Agility and adaptability; 4. Initiative and entrepreneurship; 5. Effective written and oral communication; 6. Accessing and analyzing information; and 7. Curiosity and imagination.
... well almost. Of course models are limited representations of the real thing, but just to demonstrate the filtering function of kidneys, I just thought the following could be useful.
Out of curiosity, I ran a Google Trends search about "home school". Set it to Philippines in 2008 and guess what I found? Interest peaked in August. I'd like to test a hypothesis but perhaps will have to wait until about August next year.
We don't pretend to have a monopoly of answers to that question. But just to see what's available online, we can imagine someone would probably be searching with the following keywords: school giftedness Philippines
Photo credits: http://www.psfk.com/
