Making Schools Less Boring

In this Dennis Littky keynote the co-founder and co-director of Big Picture Learning discusses the problems of generalized learning in today's school systems.

Littky begins his speech with an interesting experiment, after asking the crowd "what is the first thing you think about when you hear the word school?" Almost everyone in the audience responded with "boring." Today's schools are seeing an incredible rise in drop-out rates precisely because children are no longer feeling engaged and no longer feel as if the education being given applies to them.

Rather than trying to improve upon the existing structure, Littky argues that the current approach of regimented learning is not working. Children need to be engaged on a personal basis, their interests and passions need to be incorporated into a learning environment so that the education they receive is applicable to their own unique personalities.