Humanizing the Education Machine: How to Create Schools That Turn Disengaged Kids Into Inspired Learners Hardcover - 2016

From the jacket flap

The numbers don't lie. America's education metrics now compare to third-world countries. But the problem is not confined to the United States. Canada, England, Australia, many European countries, and China are caught in the same crisis. The issue is simple--a system designed to meet the challenges of the nineteenth century is no match for twenty-first century realities. This is deadly serious. It threatens the prosperity and security of our nation.

Naturally, education reform has become a major industry, consuming hundreds of billions of dollars over the last 60 years. But despite those billions and the best efforts of so many, every measurement continues to verify a decline of crisis magnitude.

However, Humanizing the Education Machine is not a rant or a funeral dirge. Instead, it reveals the fresh breezes from dynamic and thriving outlier schools all across the country. From those inspiring models, authors Rex Miller, Bill Latham, and Brian Cahill offer a vision and a blueprint for a growing child-led revolution in learning.

Armed with solid research, captivating stories, and a clear road map to the future, they reveal an exciting journey into a whole new pathway--and profoundly human approach--to learning. This book is designed for parents, teachers, students, administrators, and community leaders who want to transform their traditional schools into vibrant and resilient future-ready communities of learning.

The method of research behind Humanizing the Education Machine is unique; more than 60 teachers, community leaders, professionals, and kids engaged in research across the country over two years. This group--the K-12 MindShift--discovered the best practices of student engagement and future-ready learning found throughout America, from at-risk communities to progressive and prosperous communities.

Humanizing the Education Machine tells a great story of what twenty-first century learning looks like and how to bring that dynamic into your school or district. And the authors tell that very human story with passion, humor, and humility. The reader will see how the Gutenberg Revolution, which created a transforming model for learning, is now superseded by an equally transforming Google revolution. This is a manifesto for those ready to take action and a manual for leading your school or district from Gutenberg to Google. The journey will restore what makes learning uniquely human and relevant for an era of unpredictable and cataclysmic change.