Elon Musk talks about a new type of school he created for his kids (2015)
26:00 "It's important to teach to the problem not to the tools. A traditional approach to teaching about engines is here's a course on screwdrivers and a course on another tool. A much better approach is to start with here's an engine. Not let's take it apart and see how it works. A screwdriver is a tool for that. Start with the problem not the tools. The relevance of the tools is in how they solve the problem."
This is the clearest explanation of problem solving based teaching I have hear. What if we started math with the real life problems where you will USE the formulas they are teaching. This would eliminate the question "When am I ever going to use this?" by giving it the relevance up front. The older the student the more the important it is to connect the why to the learning. This is true for adults even more so.Our students will face problems we cannot image in their careers. Teaching the tools is like teaching them the only way to write a paper is to use a typewriter. That tools, once a critical staple of education and professional life, is extinct. WPM or word per minute for you youngsters is a dead skill. However we are still writing. And WPM has evolved into keyboarding which is still a skill we need.
Teach the student to think. To solve. Foster that growth mindset.
Other important side notes
learning from mistakes 20:00
"There's going to be mistakes and it's important to recognize those mistakes acknowledge them and take corrective actions. A success company is very much more about how quick are you to fix the mistakes. You will make mistakes. All startup make mistakes successful ones fixes them quickly"
About the school he started. 25:00. There's aren't any grades. Students do not move through grades like a factory line.
