christensenacademy/syndidact

Together we learn.

#syndidact

Syndidact

Noun

1. A learning community without much of the structure of schools.
2. A place of learning for autodidacts
3. Schools offer programs that yield degrees at graduation ceremonies involving funny hats. Learners in syndidacts get their funny hats early on, a mark of acceptance into the community, not of graduation from it. As time progresses, learners

##Questioning Assumptions and Taking New Perspectives

The current system of education and the underlying model it's built on are so ingrained in our thinking about education that it can be very different to envision anything new. Education is the bedrock of our society. It's very presence pervades our lives. Imagining it working a different way is not easy, yet that's exactly what I'm asking you to do. I don't claim to have answers or solutions to the problems, but I do claim to have some fresh perspectives and new ideas I'd like to share. Ultimately, I hope to get you thinking about education in a new way that calls into question many of our age-old assumptions about the way education should work.

Because I want to help you engage with the same ideas I've been grappling with over the past 18 months, and because I have little interest in trying to tell people what to think, I'll be presenting ideas around genuine questions. I've tried hard to make each question authentic in that I'm not prescribing a correct answer. I hope the tone of the book is one of humility and joy. I've had a really fun time tackling these questions on my own, and I hope you will feel similarly.

###What is Education? ###Why do we (humanity) need education? ###What need of society should a system of education fulfill? ###Are schools the best places for people to learn? ###Do we need compulsory education? ###What amount of education should be compulsory? ###To what extent should individuals be able to choose what they learn? ###Is choice a right earned only by adults? ###If you didn't have to worry about getting credit for your learning, what would be your preferred mode of learning? ###How does the current system of education mesh with what we know about general principles of human motivation? ###How important is is for learning to be tied to credentialing? ###When employers look at a transcript, what sorts of things do they infer from it? ###What sorts of information related to education do we need to be able to communicate in a reliable way throughout society? ###From an economic perspective, what use is education? What purposes does education serve? ###From an egalitarian perspective, what do we need out of a system of education? ###From a democractic perspective, what do we need out of a system of education? ###To what extent should a system of education cater to the best and brightest, those who appear to have the potential to expand the growing sphere of human knowledge and understanding of the universe? ###To what extent should the focus of education be empowering individuals