The Future of Smart: How Our Education System Needs to Change to Help All Young People Thrive
Original price was: $17.99.$15.89Current price is: $15.89.
Our Education System Is Failing Because It Is Doing Exactly What It Was Designed to Do!
Our best efforts at improving education have failed to improve the lives of children, or change society for the better. This is no accident: the current system ignores our deepest knowledge about how human beings thrive.
Being “smart” today is still about sorting kids based on how well they absorb and retain knowledge. We need education to reflect a different set of values: interdependence, community, diversity, and deep, dynamic learning.
We need it to align with human development, facilitate learning for different kinds of brains, and prepare young people for a changing society and evolving workplace.
Blending history and science with stories from inside, The Future of Smart is a must read for anyone concerned about the future of education.
A passionate advocate for transformation in our education system, Dr. Ulcca Hansen explains the disconnect between what we want for our children, and what education today provides.
Dr. Hansen is Chief Program Officer at Grantmakers for Education and has worked in the education field for two decades. Her personal experiences as an English-language learner and first-generation college student inform her perspective on what it means to provide an “equitable” education for every child and meaningfully engage communities in that effort.
The Future of Smart shows how we can build an education system to nurture the unique, human capabilities of each child, and lay the groundwork for a more equitable, just and humane future.
Best Indie Book Award Winner
Eric Hoffer Book Award Category Finalist
Eric Hoffer Book Award Montaigne Medal Finalist for most thought provoking read
IPPY Gold Medal Winner (Independent Publisher Book Awards)
National Indie Excellence Awards Winner
Publisher : Capucia Publishing
Publication date : September 9, 2021
Language : English
Print length : 312 pages
ISBN-10 : 195492013X
ISBN-13 : 978-1954920132
Item Weight : 1.04 pounds
Dimensions : 6 x 0.78 x 9 inches
Best Sellers Rank: #102,076 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #35 in Education Reform & Policy #95 in Philosophy & Social Aspects of Education #229 in Special Education (Books)
Customer Reviews: 4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 171 ratings var dpAcrHasRegisteredArcLinkClickAction; P.when(‘A’, ‘ready’).execute(function(A) { if (dpAcrHasRegisteredArcLinkClickAction !== true) { dpAcrHasRegisteredArcLinkClickAction = true; A.declarative( ‘acrLink-click-metrics’, ‘click’, { “allowLinkDefault”: true }, function (event) { if (window.ue) { ue.count(“acrLinkClickCount”, (ue.count(“acrLinkClickCount”) || 0) + 1); } } ); } }); P.when(‘A’, ‘cf’).execute(function(A) { A.declarative(‘acrStarsLink-click-metrics’, ‘click’, { “allowLinkDefault” : true }, function(event){ if(window.ue) { ue.count(“acrStarsLinkWithPopoverClickCount”, (ue.count(“acrStarsLinkWithPopoverClickCount”) || 0) + 1); } }); });
4 reviews for The Future of Smart: How Our Education System Needs to Change to Help All Young People Thrive
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Original price was: $17.99.$15.89Current price is: $15.89.
S. Joseph –
A Compelling Vision for Improving Public Education
Dr. Ulcca Joshi Hansen’s “The Future of Smart” is a wonderful book for any reader interested in the history, present challenges and exciting potential of public education. Rooted in excellent research, written in a clear and accessible manner, Dr. Hansen makes a powerful case for transformational change in our public education system to accommodate and support diverse learning styles. One cannot help but think about family members and friends who would have had an entirely different – and better – experience in school if Dr. Hansen’s vision for scaling up more human-centered, “holistic-indigenous models” (HIL) of education had provided them another learning option.Dr. Hansen’s discussion of the history and theory of public education is fascinating enough. But she goes well beyond that with concrete examples of human-centered education and how they will better meet the needs of our 21st century economy. Most importantly, Dr. Hansen demonstrates how a more human-centered approach to education will meet the needs of so many of our young people whose “unique abilities and learning strengths” are being sadly neglected.Dr. Hansen’s well-researched call for action is ripe with urgency: “We continue to pathologize minds that operate differently, more holistically, more intuitively, at the exact moment when the world needs creative problem-solving, the kind that emerges from just such unconventional minds. Beyond failing to prepare young people for the realities of adulthood, the pressures of a stratified, competitive, alienating and highly unequal education system have accelerated an epidemic of young unwellness.” (p.112).But Dr. Hansen also responds to this urgent challenge with a detailed prescription for “transitioning to…a system that promotes and supports what we know about human development and the process of learning and honors diverse ways of knowing, being and contributing to the world.” (p.184). Dr. Hansen’s vision is enriched and informed by many specific examples of more holistic programs in schools throughout the nation and a detailed discussion of how progress and achievement in this transformed system can be measured and assessed.Ultimately, Dr. Hansen accomplishes the difficult task of bringing a vision of transformational change in education to “a convincing case to parents, employers and policymakers that HIL is a viable alternative to conventional schooling.”“The Future of Smart” is a valuable, inspiring and implementation-minded contribution to the critical discussion of public education in the U.S. and expands the horizons of thinking about how education can best serve all of our students. It is a terrific book and one I highly recommend.
Nettie Legters –
If you care about putting education and society on a healing path, read this book!
The Future of Smart by Ulcca Joshi Hansen (September 2021, Capucia Publishing) makes a compelling case for transforming public education in ways that will grow healthier, happier children and create a more just, sustainable world. Drawing on her lived experience as a parent, educator, and a “third culture kid” (born in Tanzania to ethnically east Indian parents and raised in New Jersey), Hansen implores us to uproot education systems that privilege left-brained rationality and competitive achievement culture over more compassionate, integrated, holistic ways of knowing and being. “We need to refocus our energy on cultivating the unique abilities of each young person rather than continue to reinforce largely arbitrary and outdated hierarchies of merit” she argues. This resonates powerfully with anyone who has worked with or parented children through devastating downward spirals of self-esteem and mental health sparked by experiences in school of failing to measure up to narrow standards of “smart” (or “beautiful” or “normal” etc.). On a societal level, Hansen’s thesis underscores how those “hierarchies of merit” are the reproductive engine of uncaring and unjust social, political, economic, cultural systems accelerating our species’ collective demise.Hansen is among a recent spate of authors calling on us to replace harmful school structures and practices with education approaches that center equity, diversity, justice, and care for community, nature, and sustainable living (e.g. Santiago Rincon-Gallardo, 2019; Nadira Jack, 2020; John P. Hopkins, 2020; Bettina Love, 2019; Gholdy Muhammad, 2020; Dena Simmons, 2021). With frameworks, tools, and current examples of innovative schools Hansen offers vital vision and grounded guidance in this engaging, accessible book. If you care about putting education and society on a healing path, read this book, share it, and use it as a call and guide to action!
Amazon Customer –
Compelling read on re-imagining our education system – with actionable ideas!
Dr. Hansen offers a meticulously researched and compellingly written book explaining how and why the American approach to education has produced a system that “prioritizes individualism, competition and rigged versions of meritocracy.”She gives us concrete examples of what a different approach looks like, an approach based on a set of values emphasizing community, connectedness, empathy, compassion and nurturing each student to envision who they can be in the world. We are not starting from scratch, she reminds us – examples are happening across the U.S., now. How do we get from small pockets – maybe 5-8%, to a national transformation?Dr. Hansen takes that on as well, with ideas on advancing the difficult work of changing accountability, assessment, and higher education selection systems that stand in the way of such a change. We may have thought all of this was impossible – but the policy changes forced by the upheaval of the pandemic have shown that it is not.I especially like the helpful suggestions included at each chapter’s end of how to apply these ideas in big and small ways now. We have a long way to go, but thanks to Dr. Hansen for shining a light on how we may get to a place where our children go to schools that value “the complexity and richness of our humanity and the many different ways in which people engage with and contribute to the world.”
Center for Montessori Education|NY –
Hansen’s book is a must read
For anyone involved in education or public policy, and for anyone who has children or grandchildren, this book is a must read. The Future of Smart offers a template for how to shift education in the United States to offer a a new path toward meeting the potential of every child by using trusted, proven methods such as the Montessori method. Dr. Hansen’s writing is accessible and smart. I am deeply grateful to her for this contribution to the conversation, and for providing all of us who care deeply about children and the future of education with such inspiration.