Turning Learning Right Side Up: Putting Education Back on Track

Over the past 150 years, virtually everything has changed... except education. In the age of the Internet, we educate people much as we did during the industrial revolution. We educate them for a world that no longer exists, instilling values that are antithetical to those of a free, 21st century democracy. Perhaps worst of all, too many schools extinguish the human creativity and joy they ought to nourish. In this book, legendary systems scientist Dr. Russell Ackoff and "in-the-trenches" education innovator Daniel Greenberg offer a radically new path forward. In the year's most provocative conversation, they take on the very deepest questions about education: What should be its true purpose? Must schools be the way they are? Do classrooms make sense anymore? What should we teach? What should individuals contribute to their own education? What if students did the teaching and teachers did the learning? Is it possible to eliminate old-fashioned distinctions between subjects and between the arts and sciences? What would the ideal lifelong education look like: at the K-12 level, at universities and colleges, in the workplace, and beyond? How do you educate for a world that doesn't yet exist? And how do you pay for tomorrow's "ideal schools"? Ackoff and Greenberg each bring a lifetime of success making radical change. Here, they combine deep idealism with a relentless focus on the real world and arrive at solutions that make far more sense than anything we're doing now.

Table of Contents:
About the Authors ix Preface: Why, and How, This Book Was Written xii Introduction: What Education Is About xiii   Part 1: Where Today’s Educational System Fails 1 Chapter 1: Learning and Teaching 3 Chapter 2: The Classroom Environment 23 Chapter 3: Subjects and Disciplines 39 Chapter 4: The New World 49 Chapter 5: Antidemocratic Schooling 65 Chapter 6: Factors That Resist Change 71   Part 2: Factors That Contribute to Education 77 Chapter 7: The Environment a Developed Society Provides for Individual Realization 79 Chapter 8: The Special Demands the Environment of a Liberal Democracy Places on Individual Realization 91 Chapter 9: What Individuals Contribute to Their Own Education 99 Chapter 10: The Place of Arts 107   Part 3: Envisioning Ideal Lifelong Education 119 Chapter 11: Why, and How, We Should Be Envisioning an Ideal Educational Environment 121 Chapter 12: The Preschool Years 125 Chapter 13: A New Look at Schools K-12 135 Chapter 14: The College and University Experience 139 Chapter 15: Education and the Working Life 147 Chapter 16: Taking "Retire" Out of Retirement 151   Part 4: Excursus: Funding Ideal Schools 153 Appendix: Sudbury Valley School 159 Postscript 173 Endnotes 175 Index 187

About the Author :
Russell L. Ackoff is Anheuser Busch Professor Emeritus of management science at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He has authored over 20 books and 250 articles, and has conducted research for more than 300 corporations and government agencies. His most recent books include Idealized Design: Creating an Organization’s Future (Wharton School Publishing).   Daniel Greenberg is a founding member of the Sudbury Valley School in Framingham, Massachusetts. His books include Free at Last, Kingdom of Childhood, A Clearer View, The Pursuit of Happiness, Legacy of Trust, Words in Creation, A New Look at Schools, and Education in America.