Luba Vangelova


To Advance Education, We Must First Reimagine Society

Why haven't education reform efforts amounted to much? Because they start with the wrong problem, says John Abbott, director of the 21st Century Learning Initiative. Overhauling the educational paradigm means replacing the metaphor — the concept of the world and its inhabitants as machine-like entities — that has shaped the education system, as well as many other aspects of our culture.

Are We Taking Our Students’ Work Seriously Enough?

In the course of studying different aspects of children’s environments, Dr. Roger Hart noticed that “a lot of supposedly participatory projects had a distinct air of tokenism. Children were being put on display, so to speak, as though they were actively participating, but they were not taken seriously.” He created Hart's Ladder to help measure the authenticity of the work educators ask students to do.

Steve Hargadon: Escaping the Education Matrix

“People are almost in this Matrix-like existence,” says education thought-leader Steve Hargadon. “They don’t question schooling. How do you tell a story that opens the door to rethinking what people have believed for decades? So much in their lives depends on that story being what they think it is. How do you tell a new story that involves people reclaiming their destinies, children not being defective, and learning not being owned by one organization?”