These programs place sole emphasis on facts to be memorized, and nothing on how to teach them in an engaging way. In reducing learning to memorization, such education fails to promote the ability to think analytically, to understand, to apply one's knowledge to the world, to seek knowledge throughout life. In order to engage students in learning, the teachers themselves must be engaged in learning. In short, these attempts to improve education fall short because they fail to see teachers as individuals, fail to provide experiences that make teachers eager consumers of culture, and thus cultural emissaries to their students. That Work Enter the social entrepreneur.
Social entrepreneurs distinguish themselves by lending a different perspective to chronic problems.
This issue of the Changemakers.net journal examines three programs that create new paradigms in teacher training. They have realized that the role of being a teacher involves much more than imparting facts. Successful teachers do more than teach their students how to read, to solve math problems, to memorize historical facts. Rather, they instill a life-long love of learning and an irrevocable quest for knowledge. Just as good teaching is a rather elusive principle, so is teacher training.