‘Stop Stealing Dreams’ Asks A Great Question
Seth Godin is an author with a ranging topic landscape.
Known more for his ideas on business and marketing than teaching and learning, in 2012 Godin nonetheless released a summary of his ideas on ed reform in a short eBook called “Stop Stealing Dreams.”
You can guess the tone from the title. It’s kind of a Ken Robinson style take on how education can change, but it’s especially useful for its primal thinking. It starts helpfully with the question, “What is school for?” This kind of macro thinking is painfully missing in discussions on education. Without clarifying where we claim we’re going and what we claim we’re doing, it’s hard to check ourselves for progress, yes?
Educators–especially practicing teachers and administrators–tend to look so long at content standards that it’s easy to miss what the standards themselves are supposed to be “doing.” (In fact, it almost seems as if teachers are trained not to ask these kinds of questions. Their training tells them to shut up and teach. In becoming standards-driven, it is easy to become education blind.
This book helps preparing students for good work and is useful in correcting that imbalance.
‘Stop Stealing Dreams’ Asks A Great Question