Week #5- Book

As I finished reading Creating Innovators by Tony Wagner, I came away with a few opinions from what Wagner was arguing.  First of all, I respect that he wants to change the way Americans are educated and I believe their truly is an inefficient program in place to teach students from kindergarten to PhDs.  I also believe that a lot of his examples were very well described and I enjoyed learning about a bunch of new, innovative programs in America.  I do think, however, that the ideas and methods that he is arguing would not work on the full-scale.  He wants every public school in America to let students teach themselves and have more hands-on, collaborative thinking. While this might work in some class rooms, their are too many educators and students that just do not teach and learn this way.  I think it says something that places like Harvard and Stanford do not respect this type of learning.

A lot of the ideas Wagner also talks about has nothing to do with teaching and the school systems.  A lot of the book is addressed to parents- something most people would not really think has much to do with innovative leaning.  The idea that passion, play, and purpose is what drives children to be innovators has to do with the way they are brought up.  There is no way that parents will just begin to 'parent' differently.  I think parents will 'parent' like how their parents brought them up.  The idea that letting your child just run free and make his own choices seems really crazy.  Also, in a time where the college process is extremely competitive, not signing your child up for activities is not exactly a key for success.  So unless parents want their child to be a thinker and a dreamer, and I feel like that is the minority of parents, then Wagner's theory will always stay as just a theory and no more than that.