FROM DILIP MUKERJEA

"Genius is in-born, may it never be still-born."

"Oysters, irritated by grains of sand, give birth to pearls. Brains, irritated by curiosity, give birth to ideas."

"Brainpower is the bridge to the future; it is what transports you from wishful thinking to willful doing."

"Unless you keep learning & growing, the status quo has no status."

Saturday, March 3, 2012

Braindancing Bytes: 'NODDING OR NODDING OFF?', by Dilip Mukerjea

“We’re training our people to be the most anxious, stressed-out, sleep-deprived, judged andtested, poorly nourished generation in history.”

~ Merilee Jones, The Dean of Admissions (MIT)

“Today’s students seem like dazed survivors of some bewildering lifelong boot camp; unless things change, we’re going to lose a lot of them. In our pursuit of higher and higher scores, the fabric of family life has just been destroyed.”

~ Harvard 30-year veteran of the Admissions Office

How do we raise smarter students for our increasingly complex work world without turning our schools into “boot camp” and our children into “dazed survivors.”

It should be clear to anyone not in a euphoric delirium that our prevailing learning systems are noT causing students to nod in agreement, but to nod off to sleep.

We need an “ensurance” policy via an educational renaissance that will ensure our children are future-proofed...by being continually future-ready and future-savvy, no matter what life throws at them.

Classroom interactions should adopt the style of what I call “narrative learning” where ‘stories’ can

• enhance attention

• create anticipation

• increase retention

This would provide a set of “hooks” that allow us to dynamically process the information we hang on to them.

Other styles of learning should incorporate strategies of visual intelligence, mnemonic applications, kinaesthetic modeling, metaphors and analogies, and theatrical expression, amongst a range that comes under the aegis of appreciating

• the art of science, and

• the science of art

the essence of an integrated consciousness that inspires the use of blended learning.

Change is inevitable; progress is not. Things that can’t go on forever, don’t go on forever.

To illuminate new possibilities and to outperform the lacklustre status quo, we’re going to have to bring more than basic thinking to the basics; we’re going to have to bring radical thinking to the basics, where disruptive approaches to the present ‘system’ unlock creative spirits for refreshing, winning outcomes.

There’s no point being all vogue on the outside and vague on the inside! We’ve got to move now.

THINK ACT EVALUATE ADAPT LEARN (infinitely).

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