I attended Deliberating the Learning Objectives of the Modern Classroom on Sunday, March 1. Given my strong interest in education, I was very excited to attend this deliberation. Before I went, I thought of the possible topics that could be brought up at this deliberation. I thought immediately of standardized testing and the various methods that can be used to teach in a classroom. These two topics were both touched on, but the overall goal of the deliberation focused more on the “pillars” of education. These pillars were Knowledge, Independent Thought, and Social and Civil Development.

In the first pillar, Knowledge, the main method of education matched the model that so many students are used to: Students are given the tools they need to learn the material, the teacher lectures, and the students are evaluated. In this category, standardized testing was brought up a lot, and many of the problems of this approach were brought up. One such problem highlighted the problem of trying to generalize evaluation systems when students all have very unique interests and skills.

In the second pillar, Independent Thought, the idea of critical thinking was brought up a lot. The main question brought up was, “What is critical thinking?” As a group, we seemed to land on the idea that critical thinking was the ability to take the knowledge gained in the classroom and creatively apply it to the world. This approach highly valued the individual’s interests, but proved difficult to fairly evaluate all students.

In the third and final pillar, Social and Civil Development, the main topic of discussion was group work. An intriguing thing happened during this approach. The facilitators asked how many of the participants would rather do a group project than an individual assignment, and one person of all of the twenty or so participants raised their hand. This is a very startling and worrying result. In the “real world” we are all going to have to interact and work with a lot of people to try and solve complex problems. This approach was the only one that seemed to be left without much resolution, and the overarching question we were left with was, “How do we improve group work to prepare people for the ‘real world’?”

Overall, this deliberation worked really well. There were a lot of people in attendance, so there were a lot of different opinions being shared. This kept conversation interesting, and none of it seemed forced. The facilitators created an environment conducive to discussion, and allowed each person to freely share their mind. We were all sitting in a big circle, and the room felt connected. The three approaches, while seemingly simple, were three very separate methods that I had not fully thought of before. They led very nicely into one another, and each approach on its own created a lot of valuable conversation. I had an amazing time at this deliberation, and came out with a much deeper level of thought in terms of education. As a future educator, these topics are all things I am going to have to take into consideration for my own classroom. This deliberation was exceptional, and I hope more like this take place in the future.