Of the four core academic subjects, science education suffers most from a lack of ambition about its own relevance. We explore how science education could become more relevant—and why it matters for all of us.
In education, critical thinking is a popular idea but an elusive reality. We discuss the steps we take to achieve critical thinking in our classrooms, including selecting powerful concepts and sources, making connections between the classroom and the world, using discussion to deepen thinking, and finally, moving from isolated concepts to the bigger picture.
Why are we learning this? It’s the most commonly asked question in classrooms.
When asked, teachers generally reach for an instrumental answer. There isn’t always one in easy grasp, but it’s the reflex.
Today we consider a different, deeper ‘why’ thanks to help from Margaret Atwood. In the 2004 Kesterton Lecture at the Carleton School of Journalism, Atwood does what great writers do best: reveals a deep truth that both makes me feel something and makes me want to be a better person.
Skills like storytelling may feel magical once you’ve mastered them, but the path to mastery is anything but magical: students build skills through structured practice. At Kaleidoscope, our approach–selecting powerful ideas and skills, then teaching them in a way that students can translate into useful knowledge and action—is intended to cultivate what we call structured agency.
Of the four core subjects, high school math has the highest ambitions—but also the most misplaced. The result of our default sequence is that students graduate high school unable to apply math to help them make better decisions across a range of contexts, both personal and professional. In this piece we contemplate what math could be—and why it matters for us all.
