Friday+Night+Panel+-+What+is+the+Purpose+of+School?

Friday Night Franklin Institute Panel: What is the purpose of school? **Joel Arquillo**s - Executive Director 826LA, a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting students ages 6 to 18 with their creative and expository writing skills, and to helping teachers inspire their students to write build community respect differences classroom as a microcosm of world that he would like to see provide opportunities for kids to building connections among each other and with teachers bring in community members **Dr. Molefi Asante** - Professor, African American Studies, Temple University - established the first Doctoral program in African American Studies in the United States and is the preeminent scholar for Afrocentric historical and philosophical thought Complex question - purposes have changed over time, Purpose of school is **inquiry - openness** there are multicultural approaches to knowledge - monocultural system - needs to be revisited (Greeks - on down) - very Eurocentric approach Openness to questions **Kendall Crolius** - Founding Partner, The Sulevia Group - and VP General Manager of the Forbes Conference Group. The group was created in 1995 and has established itself as a premier producer of peer-driven forums for senior executives not to turn out a finished product prepare young people for a life of learning 3 areas: **creativity** (biggest challenge is innovation - creative problem solving absolutely critical) **collaboratio**n (critical! - appreciation for cultural diversity, in a global economy, and cross disciplines), **courage** (confidence, essential, courage to not just accept change, but to embrace it - to challenge the status quo - think out of the box **Jeff Han** - Founder, Perceptive Pixel and creator or a simple, multi-touch multi-user screen interface that just might herald the end of the point and click era  Communication - learn how social, and convey concepts  Collaboration - about the communications, mutual respect for other disciplines  Didactic - good at explaining a concept to peers (communicate didactically)  Calibration - what knowledge, problems are easy to solve, what is easy  not just providing basic skills  Is this something that is novel?  **Prakash Nair** - Co-Founder Fielding Nair International - Architects and Change Agents for Education, he is a futurist, a visionary planner, architect and one of the world's leading change agents in school design there is no purpose, to the 99% of the schools we have - being in a box for 5 hrs a day 6 ideas of what schools can be social anchor - meeting place, hub, open to community THE place to be - all the “cool toys” - high end computing opportunities, better tech than anywhere else place to generate ideas, not regurgitate them - place to try and test ideas - harvest them, not just a place to generate them, make them real key player of community economy - connection to real world, bring ideas to market Community builds the school and the school builds the community.

**Dr. Stephen Squyres** - Principal Investigator, Mars Explorer Rover Mission and is Goldwin Smith Professor of Astronomy at Cornell University 1 - open students eyes to what is possible (Have to reach kids in middle and high school!) 2 - Allow people to understand how things really work Make kids realize at a young age that it is real people that do the work, no super heros. Science is a process of uncovering new knowledge, it is not static! DISCOVERY!!! Understanding what you don’t know is as important as what you know. KH Question response: What made you successful? School? one special teacher schools can not do everything teachers - ignite passion teacher - helps inspire confidence, speaks to you at your level Teacher hasn’t taught until the students has learned. Peers How do you create innovative teams (collaborations) within the bureaucracy? common groups united with common interests/passions Tipping point to make all of this happen? academy model? COLLABORATION at all levels How does the system teach students - that they aren’t going to achieve? talent = passion + hard work courage to challenge the status quo Moderated by Frederic Bertley