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If Einstein Ran the Schools: Revitalizing U.S. Education
During the last three decades, education reformers have pushed standardized testing and policies like No Child Left Behind and Common Core to improve test scores and proficiency in basic skills. However, during this period that author Thomas Armstrong calls the "miseducation of America," a number of troubling trends have surfaced, including a decrease in creative thinking scores among children in kindergarten through third grade.
Rather than focus on what's wrong with the education system that has produced these outcomes, Armstrong lays out what creative thinkers know about how children should be educated. In an extended thought experiment, he asks what would happen if we turned the reins of educational policy over, not to the politicians and educational bureaucrats, but to eminent thinkers and creators like Albert Einstein, Pablo Picasso, Martin Luther King Jr., Rachel Carson, Doris Lessing, Jane Goodall, and other seminal culture-builders. What might they say about the best way to educate a child? If Einstein Ran the Schools suggests that the answers to this intriguing question should guide future efforts to reform our nation's schools.
Rather than focus on what's wrong with the education system that has produced these outcomes, Armstrong lays out what creative thinkers know about how children should be educated. In an extended thought experiment, he asks what would happen if we turned the reins of educational policy over, not to the politicians and educational bureaucrats, but to eminent thinkers and creators like Albert Einstein, Pablo Picasso, Martin Luther King Jr., Rachel Carson, Doris Lessing, Jane Goodall, and other seminal culture-builders. What might they say about the best way to educate a child? If Einstein Ran the Schools suggests that the answers to this intriguing question should guide future efforts to reform our nation's schools.
- GenresEducation
190 pages, ebook
Published October 11, 2019
18 people want to read
About the author
Thomas Armstrong
99 books105 followersI am the author of 20 books, including my latest The Power of Neurodiversity: Unleashing the Advantages of Your Neurodivergent Brain (Completely Updated and Revised Second Edition), which is a complete rewrite of a book I wrote with a similar title but slightly different subtitle in 2010.
My other books include: The Myth of the ADHD Child, 7 Kinds of Smart, Multiple Intelligences in the Classroom, and The Power of the Adolescent Brain. I've also written for Family Circle, Ladies Home Journal, and the AMA Journal of Ethics.
I see myself as a reader as much as, or even more than, a writer. Some of the books which I've enjoyed recently include Joseph and His Sons by Thomas Mann, The Story of the Stone/Dream of the Red Chamber by Cao Xueqin, the complete Arabian Nights (3 volumes), translated by Malcolm C. Lyons, The Studs Lonigan Trilogy by James T. Farrell, and From Here to Eternity by James Jones.
Beyond literature and writing, my hobbies and pursuits include improvising on the piano, doing mindfulness meditation, watching great movies on The Criterion Channel, doing yoga, and cooking Mediterranean cuisine.
Married for twenty-five years, and now divorced, I live in a cute Victorian style home on a hill in Sonoma County, California with my dog Daisy.
My other books include: The Myth of the ADHD Child, 7 Kinds of Smart, Multiple Intelligences in the Classroom, and The Power of the Adolescent Brain. I've also written for Family Circle, Ladies Home Journal, and the AMA Journal of Ethics.
I see myself as a reader as much as, or even more than, a writer. Some of the books which I've enjoyed recently include Joseph and His Sons by Thomas Mann, The Story of the Stone/Dream of the Red Chamber by Cao Xueqin, the complete Arabian Nights (3 volumes), translated by Malcolm C. Lyons, The Studs Lonigan Trilogy by James T. Farrell, and From Here to Eternity by James Jones.
Beyond literature and writing, my hobbies and pursuits include improvising on the piano, doing mindfulness meditation, watching great movies on The Criterion Channel, doing yoga, and cooking Mediterranean cuisine.
Married for twenty-five years, and now divorced, I live in a cute Victorian style home on a hill in Sonoma County, California with my dog Daisy.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
March 30, 2021
I was surprised there haven't been any ratings or reviews yet, but then I realized that a physical copy was difficult to find in the first place. The book is otherwise mostly available as an e-book, and I don't know if the book is promoted in any way to let readers know about its existence.
I found out about this book because I have my own misgivings about modern education systems (I grew up in the Philippines, but our education is patterned after the assembly line model that American schools also have), and the topic came up on a reddit thread I saw. After the discussion in that thread, I decided to look up critiques on modern education, and I found an article by the book's author that spoke to me. He also plugged in his book at the end, so I thought I'd bite and look for a copy.
I think Thomas Armstrong really hit the nail on the head, and also brought up some other points that I didn't think about, like the lack of tolerance, aesthetic sensibilities, and stewardship for nature among modern students. I do agree that students are often reduced to a number or statistic meant to serve someone else's agenda, rather than a real living person with a potential to unlock. Going by the assembly line analogy I mentioned, it felt like students were treated more like a product to be pumped into the workforce, rather than engaged citizens, or people with their own individual strengths and aspirations.
Growing up, I was one of the "top performing" students, but I did see how the system didn't work for everyone, or most students actually. Later on, I realized that the constant rankings and comparisons weren't healthy for anyone's self-esteem, even if you were on top, because it only encouraged you to compare your worth to someone else. This is still something I struggle with today. Not to mention the other things mentioned in the book that applied to my own experiences. When I thought about it, Thomas Armstrong was right: it's amazing that they could take something innately rewarding such as learning, and make students so averse to it. It all sounds so broken.
I honestly don't know where to start. I understand that the high number of students makes personalized instruction and qualitative assessments very difficult to scale up, and practically speaking, students do need to learn job skills to make a living. I think in a perfect world we would be able to both teach job skills and nurture the students' character and love of learning using a more personalized teaching approach that doesn't rely as much on reducing students to numbers, but in reality we have limited resources. The book mentions some schools that did things their own way, but the current system still dominates most schools, and I feel like a lot of people are resistant to anything that strays far from the status quo. I do hope genuine reform really begins to take hold in the coming years and decades.
I found out about this book because I have my own misgivings about modern education systems (I grew up in the Philippines, but our education is patterned after the assembly line model that American schools also have), and the topic came up on a reddit thread I saw. After the discussion in that thread, I decided to look up critiques on modern education, and I found an article by the book's author that spoke to me. He also plugged in his book at the end, so I thought I'd bite and look for a copy.
I think Thomas Armstrong really hit the nail on the head, and also brought up some other points that I didn't think about, like the lack of tolerance, aesthetic sensibilities, and stewardship for nature among modern students. I do agree that students are often reduced to a number or statistic meant to serve someone else's agenda, rather than a real living person with a potential to unlock. Going by the assembly line analogy I mentioned, it felt like students were treated more like a product to be pumped into the workforce, rather than engaged citizens, or people with their own individual strengths and aspirations.
Growing up, I was one of the "top performing" students, but I did see how the system didn't work for everyone, or most students actually. Later on, I realized that the constant rankings and comparisons weren't healthy for anyone's self-esteem, even if you were on top, because it only encouraged you to compare your worth to someone else. This is still something I struggle with today. Not to mention the other things mentioned in the book that applied to my own experiences. When I thought about it, Thomas Armstrong was right: it's amazing that they could take something innately rewarding such as learning, and make students so averse to it. It all sounds so broken.
I honestly don't know where to start. I understand that the high number of students makes personalized instruction and qualitative assessments very difficult to scale up, and practically speaking, students do need to learn job skills to make a living. I think in a perfect world we would be able to both teach job skills and nurture the students' character and love of learning using a more personalized teaching approach that doesn't rely as much on reducing students to numbers, but in reality we have limited resources. The book mentions some schools that did things their own way, but the current system still dominates most schools, and I feel like a lot of people are resistant to anything that strays far from the status quo. I do hope genuine reform really begins to take hold in the coming years and decades.
Displaying 1 of 1 review