With less than a month in teacher’s college, what’s clear is that there are many ways to approach education and the educational landscape is rapidly changing.

My technology class (EDC 336) recently watched a film titled “Most Likely to Succeed.” The film profiles a public charter school in California known as High Tech High.

The school embraces an inquiry based learning model, and encourages students to take on challenging projects and learn from their mistakes and triumphs.

The dominant message of the movie is that educators need to move away from the old paradigm of high school – with standardized testing and teachers leading the learning – and embrace a new model in which the focus is on building skills, such as working in teams or programming.

The movie is very compelling, showing students highly engaged by the various projects they take on, whether that be a play or visual representation of a historical event/phenomenon.

I liked the movie and was impressed by the passion of everyone. But I was concerned about the devaluation of knowledge and book learning that was apparent in the film.

At one point, one of the featured experts said there is little need to recall certain events as if a student ever wants to know about them they can simply look them up on their phone.

Maybe so. But I can’t help but wonder if they would be less likely to do so in the event that they never learned about the event in the first place.

What I’m trying to say is that students don’t recall everything they learn and that’s perfectly fine. What’s important is that they are exposed to these events and phenomenons and can therefore have an understanding of how we got where we are.

I also felt that much of the handwringing about the rapidly changing nature of work was overdone. Things are certainly changing, and there is a need for coders and people with strong facility with computers.

But we will see need regular, everyday jobs for the foreseeable future. Garbagemen, police, nurses and teachers, to cite but a few examples, will continue to play important roles in our society.

Overall, I’d give this movie a B-.