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“Highly Educated Useless People”

This is a quote from Ted McCain's Teaching for Tomorrow. It is a powerful term. For me, it means questioning what I teach to ensure that everything I teach is preparing my students for life. Further, it means prioritizing what I teach to place a greater value on teaching the MOST important skills for success in the future. As I think about what students have learned from me, I have to be honest. At least some of what they learned was how to take a test, how to remember trivial information that could be found almost instantly, and other relatively meaningless skills. The most powerful learning that took place in my classroom involved students creating, thinking, problem solving, collaborating, and sharing their learning in effective ways.

As teachers, we need to ask the question, "What is the purpose of this?", often. But furthermore, we need to ask, "Is there a MORE valuable lesson here?" What have you done recently to change from preparing highly educated useless people to preparing highly educated useful people?

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