Learning Isn't For Nine Months; It's Forever

Jay Mathews of The Washington Post writes "he liked showing up the first day of school with a fresh binder and newly sharpened pencils." as much as today's kids love it, but Mathews also raise concerns: "How would school have turned out for me if I had been able to ignore what grade I was in and skip ahead to the pleasures of J.D. Salinger, or stay out on the ball field for a week until I finally learned how to catch a fly ball?"

And he goes on models and the experiential education proclaimed by John Dewey. However, this is the part that really makes us think about our practice:

...We should keep in mind how artificial that learning environment is compared with what students will find as adults. At The Post, for instance, I have had to learn to blog. For a while, I pretended that I did not have to do this. When I finally, grudgingly, started writing blog posts, I acted as if they were just short stories for the paper. I sent them to my editor and asked him to put them on my blog. I put off learning to do it myself. I used vacation, bad weather or sniffles to excuse myself from training. But I wasn't in school anymore. The Post wasn't going to give me a report card with a C-minus in blogging and ask me to do better next year.