Chapter 2 - Why not the best?

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Why not the best?	109

   As well as specific academic, physical and artistic
      abilities.
  Fortunately, all aspects can be blended to reinforce each other.

11. A threefold purpose for study

   Studying should generally also have a threefold purpose:
  1. To learn skills and knowledge about the specific subjects - and how you can do that faster, better, easier.
  2. To develop general conceptual skills - how you can learn to apply the same or related concepts in other areas.
  3. To develop personal skills and attitudes that can also easily be used in everything you do.

12. Just where should we teach?

   In the history of the world, classroom schooling is very new. And the time has come to ask if it is the best and if it should remain the main learning forum.
  We see schools being changed into community resource centres for lifelong learning - and probably health and parent education centres as well. To use them for under 200 days a year for only a few hours a day is a tremendous waste of valuable assets, and amounts to less than 15 percent of total time. And to use them largely for one-sided lectures is largely to waste even that 15 percent. In later chapters we will explore the likely mix of future "schools". But for now it's vital to restress that most of us learn best by doing and participating through all our senses. It's also amazing what emerges when entire communities rethink their learning needs and start to redesign their schools around those needs.

13. Keep the mind open, the communication clear

   We also make a strong plea to everyone involved in education, learning and schooling: to keep an open mind, and to communicate the results of breakthrough-research factually, honestly and clearly.
  Millions of children's futures have been ruined by widespread educational theories since proven to be wrong.
  Hitler and Mussolini closed down Montessori's brilliant preschools in Germany and Italy. But almost equal harm was done by her academic detractors in America, led by Professor William Kilpatrick who "felt that the teacher should be in total control of the students".14   

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