Schools don't need to build metalshops and have children go through rote construction of standard pieces. That's the exact same thing as standardized testing, we just like it more because we're hackers.
What we really need is for my city to give a $1 Million endowment to my local hackerspace so that we can properly redo our electrical infrastructure, buy more tools, and run more classes.
And then we need every other city in the country to find similar programs, and nurture them in the same way.
Every single time a kid walks past our lab and starts oogling our display windows, somebody comes out front and gets them inside for a tour.
If it's me touring, and their parents allow it, every single one of them gets to press the go buttons on our HUGE laser cutter, and gets to take home an example of a time that they built something in a hackerspace using a big scary industrial tool: they make a stencil of their name.
That's HUGE.
AND IT WORKS. Remember that kid that was on the front page of a bunch of things shooting marshmallows with the president? He hangs out in our lab. Another of the kids at our lab gave a talk at Ignite Phoenix (which is just like TEDx) about 3d printers (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyZxzkd-Jsk).
These kids are freaking awesome! I wish there were 10 of our labs in Phoenix.
I'm sorry, but the school system is broken. There are a few teachers doing beautiful things, but they're few and far between. In my 12 years in the system, I met one of them.
How many high schools would let me stick around in the shop until 4:00am building? None? How many would give a 12 year old kids' dad a keycard that gets him in 24/7 to use industrial machines, DSOs, SCARY POWER SUPPLIES etc.
Would my high school teacher have been fired if people knew she let me and my friends stay in the computer lab fucking with linux until all hours?
Probably.
Except that fuckery, the thing my teacher probably could have been fired for, was one of the most important experiences of my high school education.
That's...bad.
We don't need to fix the school system. We need a new system entirely.
Where is your front located that you have so many kids walking by? My hackerspace is located in the back of a high-end furniture store so we don't get that many kids that walk by unfortunately.
Schools don't need to build metalshops and have children go through rote construction of standard pieces. That's the exact same thing as standardized testing, we just like it more because we're hackers.
What we need are more fab labs: http://fab.cba.mit.edu/about/faq/
and hackerspaces.
What we really need is for my city to give a $1 Million endowment to my local hackerspace so that we can properly redo our electrical infrastructure, buy more tools, and run more classes.
And then we need every other city in the country to find similar programs, and nurture them in the same way.
Every single time a kid walks past our lab and starts oogling our display windows, somebody comes out front and gets them inside for a tour.
If it's me touring, and their parents allow it, every single one of them gets to press the go buttons on our HUGE laser cutter, and gets to take home an example of a time that they built something in a hackerspace using a big scary industrial tool: they make a stencil of their name.
That's HUGE.
AND IT WORKS. Remember that kid that was on the front page of a bunch of things shooting marshmallows with the president? He hangs out in our lab. Another of the kids at our lab gave a talk at Ignite Phoenix (which is just like TEDx) about 3d printers (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyZxzkd-Jsk).
These kids are freaking awesome! I wish there were 10 of our labs in Phoenix.
I'm sorry, but the school system is broken. There are a few teachers doing beautiful things, but they're few and far between. In my 12 years in the system, I met one of them.
How many high schools would let me stick around in the shop until 4:00am building? None? How many would give a 12 year old kids' dad a keycard that gets him in 24/7 to use industrial machines, DSOs, SCARY POWER SUPPLIES etc.
Would my high school teacher have been fired if people knew she let me and my friends stay in the computer lab fucking with linux until all hours?
Probably.
Except that fuckery, the thing my teacher probably could have been fired for, was one of the most important experiences of my high school education.
That's...bad.
We don't need to fix the school system. We need a new system entirely.
OH! I wrote an article about exactly this a couple of years ago: http://newslily.com/blogs/104