The New Pedagogy for Education

Researchers boggle over the question
How might teachers create the best lesson?
Behavioralists say trial and error
While others say why should we care?

Take cats for example
Trying to escape out of their cage
Failure after failure will surely show them the way

Others say why waste time
Direct the cats to experts so they don’t waste one of their nine

Those cats are our students
Wishing to construct knowledge for themselves
Rather than from some book perched atop a dusty shelf

These felines walked in smart
Why let them exit dumb?
Trapped, caged in, wishing they could run.

Students take in the new and mesh it with the old
What comes out the other end is something NO future would withhold

Who wants a future withholding you and me?
One resembling that of a theocracy

Passive citizens simply waiting in line
Waiting to be filled by knowledge greater than yours or mine

Changing the way we learn entails changing the way we think
Disseminating knowledge both a mile wide AND a mile thick

A culture of inquiry
Moving beyond simplistic right and wrong
Allowing everyone to take part
Creating both lyrics and song

Our schools should reflect the community outside its walls
You can’t teach a baby to walk before it learns to crawl

So I say if students spend over 86% of their time
Embedded in the families and communities of which they reside
Why can’t schools match that demographic?
Or at least meet in the middle
Rather than remain stagnant, with an air that belittles



THEN the curriculum will become relevant
Drawing on STUDENTS’ expertise
Both chess MASTER and NOVICE learning together in perfect harmony

For aren’t we ALL pupils?
Is there not knowledge we ALL lack?

Admission. There’s a perfect word.
Adaptation and fluency, once polar opposites
That when mixed together sounded absurd.

But fluency draws on experience. And experience demands adaptation.

In turn, new learning and experience is acquired. The novice becoming expert, moving that much higher.