Leave it!!!

The ancient Greeks used a phrase, "This one having said, he said," is a literal translation of the Greek words.  In English, of course, such a word-for-word translation would be ludicrous to make.  English speakers don't speak this way.  If someone said something once, then says the same thing again, a translator surely would render the words said again, repeated, or reiterated.  He reiterated would be a sound translation of the Greek phrase because that is something English speakers would actually say or write.

How education is accomplished in this country troubles me a lot.  It seems to me that education of this country's children is a little like translating a Greek phrase word for word instead of trying to render a Greek phrase into a usable equivalent in English.  Yes, education has been around for a really, really long time in the world.  But, Plato and Edward DeVere/Shakespeare received really different types of education.  That's because they were educated about 2000 years apart.  One would hope the two were educated differently since they lived in vastly different time periods.

If I think back to the times of education around 1950-1975, I think of an education without computers, without cell phones, without Skype, without internet in a car that students drove to school.  I think of a time when students were expected to get jobs after school or do homework until supper time or later.  I think of a time when music came from AM radio and juke boxes.  In order to communicate to an outside source from one's own car, a person had to have a CB radio.  That's right.  The world was vastly different.

And yet, the schools today still educate as if they were in the same world.  When was the last time you saw a student using Skype to speak with someone else in another city or country for an assignment - right, you haven't.  When was the last time you saw a student use graphic information when telling a teacher how to solve a math problem - right, you haven't.  When was the last time a student was able to use a 3D printer to copy something for a project to work on - right, you haven't.  When was the last time you saw someone using his or her cell phone to make a YouTube presentation for the homework assigned - right, you haven't.  When was the last time you saw a classroom in which students used software from which to learn or compute from - right, you haven't.  When was the last time you saw video blog responses as a means of learning from others - right you haven't.  And when was the last time you saw someone experimenting with the next form of learning in today's classroom, the holographic platform - right, you haven't.

Plato is dead; DeVere is dead.  They left their marks to be sure, but the world has traveled 500 more times around the sun since DeVere.  And, it has traveled 50 more times around since last century's heydays of education.  Education today should not be just a little different.  It should be a quantum leap different from anything from the last half of the 1900s.  Methods should be a far cry different for sure!  Reporting and measuring those methods should reflect the complete difference from anything the late 1900s used as well.  Anything less than a complete departure from days gone by frauds students and families and keeps them from living a fruitful, qualitative life.

Let's leave the word-for-word translation business of education from the last century.  Let's translate education into the usable world of the present, something a quantum leap different from what has been!!!