Better prepare with less content?

I think education has often been described as preparing kids for life (whether or not that is successfully accomplished). I have also seen and heard lots of dissatisfaction with how schools attempt to do that — they teach something academic that is very obscure, but don’t teach practical things about finance or home life. I think education has the possibility of including more practical things and potentially even optionalizing some of the now-required content.

As Jeff was urging during our class, skills are the important thing to learn (to access knowledge rather than knowing it all). There are two trends that I have noticed. Alternative forms of schools have become more common, which, to my understanding, are often project-based rather than content based. This might leave some of the content unlearned, yet the students are still meeting standard and learning (arguably to a deeper or more practical degree also). Thus, not all of the academic content may be necessary to cover.

The other trend is well known — technology is infiltrating our lives more and more. Thus, fluency in technology is an important skill for almost everything. The many ways we accessed classroom interactions or assignments, both in similar ways or new ways through computers, demonstrates the prevalence of them. It also demonstrates how the classroom is the perfect place to integrate their use in a way that can streamline some processes and also teach the skills associated with using technology. Therefore, using technology in our classrooms will practically prepare students for modern life and set them on track for what new developments there could be in the future (the “true” purpose of education).