239: What is the Purpose of School?

Guest — Rhonda Broussard is an author, entrepreneur, and futurist. One Good Question: How Countries Prepare Youth to Lead is her first book. Broussard is an award-winning education entrepreneur and sought-after public speaker. She is the founder and CEO of Beloved Community, a national nonprofit committed to sustainable economic equity in schools, the workforce, and housing. She is a 28-year educator and researcher who founded and led a network of language immersion and international schools in the US. Broussard studied education in Cameroon, Martinique, metropolitan France, Finland, and New Zealand. Her essays have been featured in The Future of University, North American Edition; Building Bridges, One Leader at a Time; This I Believe, Personal Essays by the Women and Men of Eisenhower Fellowships; IB World magazine, and Forbes Magazine.

Summary — In this episode, we touch on various reasons for our K-12 system of schooling. Is it to prepare students for a career, acquire knowledge and skills, or develop creative thinking and problem solver abilities? And what about student agency? How much voice and choice in determining what and how students want to learn should we allow?

Key Discussions

√ How allowing educators more time to wonder will pay dividends in terms of improved instruction.

√ Why there is an inherent tension between giving educators time to wonder and the urgency to reform.

√ What the role of schooling is.

√ How the world of work and the expectations of a career have changed over time.

√ How we can, on the one hand, respect and believe in greater student agency while reducing our tendency to limit it because it means a loss of our traditional authority.

√ How global educators are grappling with the same question and coming up with different answers.

Links / References For more information, visit rhondabroussard.com.

IG: @RhondaBroussard_Author

Twitter: @BroussardRhonda

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