The perspective that we bring to bear on the issue is shaped by the emerging brain research and by what is happening to society as it moves into the era where working with communication, rather than working in factories, will be the future for most of the students we teach. And the real truth is that at this moment very few people know what schooling should look like in the communications era. In addition, the process of moving from one model of schooling to another that is as yet unknown is causing both chaos and confusion as well as immense opportunity and new possibilities. In Education on the Edge of Possibility we argued that we need to understand the underlying process by means of which new systems and ways of doing things emerge. More specifically, we suggest that a set of very basic beliefs actually gave rise to the current system of education.
Teachers deliver knowledge in the form of information.
Children are graded on how much of the information they have stored. If teachers and educators can take the time to reflect on their own assumptions and beliefs, they will find that at the heart of almost everything that is now taken for granted about education is a belief in the three statements above. One implication, for instance, is that teachers, administrators and some others are in charge of knowledge and how it reaches students. All this is done in fairy sterile buildings and rooms that house large numbers of students, and the entire enterprise is monitored and motivated by testing and grades. Now the brain research doesn't say that this approach is necessarily wrong.