Stimulating thinking about schooling

by Iowa Future

March 20, 2012

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Garr Reynolds, a noted expert on presentations and presentation design, is thinking seriously about education these days. The U.S.-born and educated author and college professor is now living in Japan where he and his wife just welcomed their second child.

“Education obviously is the most powerful thing in the world,” Reynolds says, “And yet the old Mark Twain chestnut—‘I never let school get in the way of my education’—speaks to the core of my own thinking regarding education.”

Admittedly not an education expert, Reynolds, a thoughtful thinker on a variety of topics, says “the best years where I learned the most and was inspired to study and learn on my own were surely the six years of elementary school, and then university and graduate school.”

While listening is important “real learning requires lots and lots of doing, not just listening,” he says. One does not learn to play music—or math or science for that matter—only by listening.

Reynolds admits he doesn’t have answers, but suggests a set of nine videos that have been stimulating his thinking on education, learning and school. Iowa Future previously suggested some of these, some are new. In any case, all further the discussion about schooling.