My thoughts?

It was a decent video mostly, with numerous trenchant points made by an engaging speaker.

But while this horse has admirably gotten himself up to the water – and he’s clearly thirsty….he just can’t get himself to drink.

His diagnosis is spot on, but his remedy – if he even really offered one – was a toothless, feeble joke.

I mean anyone can get up today and bash “standardized testing” and declare that we need, “…to get businesspeople out of education.”

Those are popular bogeymen to invoke. And of course he’s going to defend teachers given that he’s a former teacher and that now his livelihood is running a “teaching” consultancy.

But standardized tests are hardly THE problem. Objective measures of knowledge and skill are a part of life and their diagnostic power AIDS good teaching/learning.

Nor are financial interests (outside of teachers’ pensions!) a serious culprit.

It more like what he built up in the beginning – that society, family life, and technology have changed so much that the entire concept of an age-graded, institutional school has become vastly outdated.

Just the other day I had a parent tell me how talented and precocious their son was. I suggested that she homeschool him to which she responded, “…I want him out of the house….I really want him to have the experience of friends and school.”

So I quickly and tactfully debunked her misunderstandings (not staying home at all, plenty of friends both schooled and homeschooled, etc.).

But not ten minutes later she went into a screed of how much her son complains about being “so (effing) bored at school” and how the teachers complain about her son….and that what they say to her about her son is so hurtful that she wants to “punch them in the face.”

I guess that’s the wonderful “experience” she really wants for her child!

The number of thirsty horses at the water who won’t drink…is probably a 7-digit number nowadays.