Rewiring Education Quotes

“We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or of science. We are not to raise up from among them authors, orators, poets, or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians . . . nor lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we have ample supply . . . The task that we set before ourselves is very simple as well as very beautiful . . . we will organize our children into a little community and teach them to do in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way.”
― John D. Couch, Rewiring Education: How Technology Can Unlock Every Student's Potential

“Rewiring education ultimately means changing the way we teach the things we want today's students to learn. It should no longer be about distributing content and memorizing meaningless facts, but about teaching kids to combine new understandings of these facts with critical and creative thinking skills that ultimately lead them to discover, understand, and create new things.”
― John D. Couch, Rewiring Education: How Technology Can Unlock Every Student's Potential

“These changes have been offered in two broad ways: repairing parts of the system and replacing the entire system. Unfortunately, neither is likely to bring forth the type of change that’s needed.”
― John D. Couch, Rewiring Education: How Technology Can Unlock Every Student's Potential

“One of the biggest problems facing education,” says Prensky, “is that teachers are speaking an outdated, pre-digital language and are struggling to teach a population that speaks almost entirely digital.” The current educational system was designed to teach a very different set of children, in a very different world, with very different needs.”
― John D. Couch, Rewiring Education: How Technology Can Unlock Every Student's Potential

“He shared a research study profiled in the magazine Scientific American that had explored which animal uses the least amount of energy to move over a given distance.1 “The condor won,” Steve said. “Humans didn’t do as well. We’re about a third of the way down the list!” Then the twist: The test was run again, but this time the human was placed on a bicycle. How efficient would a human be if they covered that same distance riding a bicycle? Steve grew excited telling me about it. “The man on the bicycle blew the condor away!” he said. “That’s what the personal computer can be—a mental bicycle. It’s the most remarkable tool in all of history.”
― John D. Couch, Rewiring Education: How Technology Can Unlock Every Student's Potential