Shane Hedges On The Importance Of Experiential Education In Children

Experimental education, as the name suggests, is an education philosophy describing

the process that takes place between the teacher and his student that combines direct experience with the content and the learning environment. According to the Association for Experiential Education, this is a philosophy and a methodology whereby the educator purposefully engages with the learner in focused reflection and direct experience with the aim of increasing knowledge, developing skills and clarifying values.

The popularity of experimental education can be attributed to John Dewey. He wrote Experience and Education in 1938 where he expressed his ideas about curriculum theory and asserted that experimental education should be central in education systems. In the book, Dewey pointed out that public education was defective in that it was strict and authoritarian and the pre-ordained knowledge approach was too concerned with knowledge delivery and not concerned with understanding the experiences of the students.

Dewey's work influenced advocates and experiential models, including Foxfire, service learning, Kurt Hahn, Outward Bound, Paulo Freire and more recently Shane Hedges. Shane Hedges is a proponent of experimental education in children. He asserts that it is only through experimental education that children will get the skills necessary to succeed in today’s world of technological change and rapid globalization.

Shane Hedges does not propose the abolishment of traditional brick & mortar schools. He maintains that they should continue to be the primary leaning environment, but he is of the view that these schools alone can no longer offer what it takes for children to be competitive in today’s world.

Shane Hedges accurately points out that almost half of all Silicon Valley start-ups in the past decade were by immigrants. He bases this assertion on research by Duke University’s researcher Vivek Wadhwa. According to the research, one in every 2 engineers in Silicon Valley are foreign-born, up from 10% in 1970. He also points out that about 40% of all U.S. patents are by immigrants.

According to Shane Hedges, children should be provided with supplemental experiences and they should be exposed to the ‘real’ world from an early age. He notes that, for success in leadership, children need more than book smarts. They need well-developed cognitive intelligence and social/emotional intelligence.

Several practices can be used to achieve experimental education, both in formal and informal education. The different practices are outdoor education where the learning tool is environmental experiences, service learning which combines stated learning goals with community service and cooperative learning which facilitate learning in heterogeneously-altered groupings. Others are active learning where learners are encouraged to take responsibility for their learning and environmental education where educators teach learners about relationships in the natural environment and the interdependence of these relationships. Shane Hedges advocates these practices and he is a proponent for such proven programs as The Nicodemus Wilderness Project and Project OASES (Occupational and Academic Skills for the Employment of Students).

Shane Hedges is the managing director (formally the president) of Millennium, LLC, a leading national education company. He began his career while still a student at American University in Washington D.C. Shane Hedges formed the company after internship with the National Youth Leadership Forum. He has an MBA from the University of Maryland.

by: Shane M.

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