95%

Perhaps some crazy numbers can awaken/ease/poke/jar enough of us from our obsession with, and assumptions about, structure/standards. [top faq]

Carol Black spoke at ISEC’s Economics of Happiness conference in Berkeley, March 2012. Her talk is powerful:

Reclaiming Our Children, Reclaiming Our World.

Take a listen to a 40 second clip of it. [Find the entire talk here.]

Before we have compulsory public ed – 95% -ish literate

After we have compulsory ed – 95% -ish acknowledge cheating [via Denise Pope’s research at Stanford]

[long pause for pondering]

Interesting, no? How exactly is this obsession/occupation/compulsion working for us?

Perhaps compulsion isn’t our best bet after all. Perhaps it’s leaving the majority behind.

Another 95% – via Chris Mercagliano‘s In Defense of Childhood –

95% of all learning occurs spontaneously, through play, fantasy, and experimentation, what I (Chris) – call wild learning. Only 5% of our knowledge – in our lifetime – is acquired through formal instruction, and of that 5%, we remember only 3-5% for any significant length of time. There is a model imperative – wild learning needs to be modeled by others – but it can be anywhere, by anyone, at anytime. p. 32

Perhaps trusting the learning, trusting the learner, will reconnect us with our humanity.