School has always been a place that prepares children for the world, for their world, which they will inherit and co-create. Will Richardson, in “Why School?”, illuminates the drastic disconnect  which exists between our current education system and our present and future world. Our outdated visions of learning, or misguided educational reforms, are resting on a faulty foundation of values and practices that serve only to increase the disconnect between our students’ education and what literacies, what competencies they need to navigate our world and their futures.

In his book Richardson acknowledges numerous faulty functioning of the connected self within the education system:

• the cultural dimension of the connected self, the collaboration and exchanges, may occur within individual classes, between individual educators, yet there is a critical lack of transparency.
• the technological dimension of the connected self is transforming at an exponential rate, as is our cognitive values and practices. However, what is deeply flawed is the disconnect between these changes occurring in the techno-saturated world at large, yet the education system and our learning schema and practices remain largely stagnant.

Through Richardson’s work it is abundantly clear that we need to repair the disconnect between our “real world” connected self and the self we are creating through our current education system. Richardson calls for a re-envisioning of education and learning, and as I understand it, he is championing a re-envisioned connected self within education. This starts from the core, from the cognitive beliefs and practices, but continually through our cultural and technological dimensions. A mere reform, as is underway in the United States and “No Child Left Behind” is not the solution, no where near it.

As our world changes rapidly, and education systems and practices lag, the question “why school?” is still essential. For when students can find their answers through youtube tutorials and many more tech tools at their disposal, what makes school relevant? I believe part of the answer lies in this video: The New Media Literacies

Dr. David Warner in Educating in the Knowledge Era articulates numerous “21st Century Literacies” also championed by Richardson. These include empowering learners to be purposeful agents of change. Without facilitating these new literacies, new competencies, we are simply “successfully teaching” individuals to be illiterate, passive citizens of the world. For example, our students are drowning in“infobesity”: the cognitive and physical impact of an over-abundance of information. Nonetheless, together, educators, students and “strangers,” as Richardson says, can connect and learn how to learn, learn how to manage the sheer magnitude of information and to critically think, to create, analyze, synthesize and more. I believe this is part of the answer to “why school?” and this is the area I hope to endeavor within LLED 447 (and beyond): how to manage the “infobesity” and develop systems of purposeful connectivity and discovery in education, so the question “why school?” is a positively rhetorical one.