Children know more than parents and teachers
I am constantly amazed at the ignorance of parents and teachers about one of the most important developments in recent history.
That is that, for the first time in human history, children know more than their parents about a development central to our lives – the Internet.
It means that parents need to be able to teach their children knowledge that they themselves do not have. Through human existence, parents had more experience and could teach their children from that experience. What has changed is the tempo of change. Technology, and therefore life, changes so fast that knowledge become outdated as fast as it is gained.
What, then, can parents and teachers teach children?
They can teach children to teach themselves.
That is probably the demand of the 21st century, that citizens of the world must be able to teach themselves. All the information is available in an interconnected world – what we need to be able to do is to know how to find it and then to make it into knowledge. That skill can be taught without the teacher having to know the content of what must be learned.
We do not need to provide the content, we need to provide the knowledge of how the content can be accessed and made understandable.
That then is my first post. I would love to have your views on the matter.