You have a viewpoint that is shaped by a very niche experience. Your experience was with students that happened into an interest that was itself a project that can drive learning in a handful of subjects. This kind of approach doesn't work so well when the subjects that need to be learned don't lend themselves so well to exciting projects or even when the students don't get to self-select based on their interests.
fiziks_hckr|3 years ago
Awesome, as this is really one the core things the original post wanted us to discuss:
_Should we_ require students to study so many things that they don't find interesting?
Some of the original post's thoughts:
> It is absurd and anti-life to be part of a system that compels you to listen to a stranger reading poetry when you want to learn to construct buildings, or to sit with a stranger discussing the construction of buildings when you want to read poetry.
And:
> “How will they learn to read?” you say, and my answer is: “Remember the lessons of Massachusetts.” When children are given whole lives instead of age-graded ones in cellblocks, they learn to read, write, and do arithmetic with ease, if those things make sense in the life that unfolds around them.
My take is unoriginal, even summarized by someone else's quote: “Study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in.” -- Leonardo da Vinci
And if really can be attributed to da vinci, then one can say same core energy really existed in minds over half a millenia ago.
So I assert that while that this experience granted was indeed an awesome experience, there's a large swath of folks pushing for this "project-based" learning, and more self-driven learning paths.
https://www.pblworks.org/what-is-pbl
What's the harm in allowing students to connect the dots on their own?