the framework
CONTEXT IS KEY
“The brain learns when it is exposed to stimuli that transform it.”
— Mariano Sigman
Where can we find this “transformative stimuli”? Does it only exist in the woods where predators lurk? In video games which simulate danger? In the workforce where a boss can threaten to fire us?
The answer is simple. Transformative stimuli exist in the worlds that we move through every day.
Humans learned to survive in the savanna environment and the Cognitive Revolution sprung from the necessities of this wilderness.
But humans have since built a new wilderness.
Everyday, we move through three main contexts—the natural, digital, and institutional wilds. Each has its own resources and threats, and our task as educators should be to teach our kids to survive and thrive in this modern wild.
The Digital Wild
The Digital Wilderness that humans have built is filled with resources as well as threats. Kids are exposed to the stimuli of this world constantly—social media designed to inform as well as manipulate, video games designed to build skills as well foster addiction—and their brains are primed to learn how to navigate it.
Let’s teach kids how to use the Internet without letting it use them.
the natural wild
For years, learning to navigate the Natural Wilderness has been reserved for the Scouts. Why shouldn’t we teach all kids what to do if they’re caught unawares in the elements?
According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, the number of children dying from weather-related causes has increased over the last twenty years. Whether this is due to kids having fewer skills or to an increase in natural disasters, now more than ever our kids need to know how to survive the natural wilderness.
Let’s teach our kids to survive and thrive in the natural world.
the Institutional Wild
The Institutional Wilderness is our greatest feat and our greatest weakness. Our schools, businesses, governments, and churches provide so much in the way of food, shelter, and protection, but they are also riddled with contradictions and inequities.
It is not enough to teach kids to be good citizens of their local, national, and global societies because many of the institutions that make up these societies are deeply flawed.
Let’s teach our kids to not only navigate the bureaucracies we’ve created, but to transform them.
THE CHARACTERISTICS THAT MAKE US HUMAN
“Consciousness is not the result of computation. You have to have a body and the physiology of the body and its input to create a mind that thinks and has the intelligence of a human mind.”
— John Searle
In a world where computers outperform humans in many ways, it is essential that we reimagine what our kids need to learn to survive and thrive in the modern wild.
Most schools are still plugging away at the futile task of teaching students to do what we built computers to do for them. Their human brains lack the stimulus to learn these skills because they are no longer necessary to survive.
The skills they do need, however, are woefully underrepresented in our state standards and curriculum. They skills that computers and even Artificial Intelligence are unlikely to ever master are the ones that we should be spending our instructional time teaching.
We are social, moral, emotional, and intellectual beings, so we must develop these characteristics in order to grow our humanity.
AS humans, we are
SOCIAL, so we must…
connect
communicate
collaborate
contribute
moral, so we must…
intuit
discern
evaluate
choose
emotional, so we must…
feel
reflect
create
express
INTELLECTUAL, so we must…
sense
question
reason
imagine
Don’t worry—It is possible to allow students to grow socially, morally, emotionally, and intellectually while also teaching your content standards.
