Disrupting Class

The first thing that I connected with from the Disrupting class article was the manifold reasons why people believe our schools are not making the grade. There are so many different opinions, and they are all possible reasons why we're flunking as a system. However, we can't be that bad. Some students are learning. Are they learning in spite of us? What I think we really gain from all of these perspectives is that there are a lot of areas where we could improve and the road to improvement won't have a single starting point. We need to keep our eyes and minds open to the many issues we must address and change.
Secondly I was fascinated by their approach. Rather then examining schools from the inside, which can be a conundrum of similar ideas vying for the other to cease to exist, they are looking at schools from the outside. I think that if true reform is to happen it most likely won't come from inside but rather from the outside. It's sort of like solving a maze. If you get too close you can't see what will come next. However if you're too far the maze becomes a solitary object. On the other hand if the maze is examined from the right distance then it becomes easier to predict snags and choose the best route for success.
Next I was moved by the example of Henry Ford's auto plant and how the explanation made a perfect argument for interdisciplinary teaching. We must be in close commune with each other to effective create. If one aspect of a creation doesn't work with another the utility is lost. Take for example a student who is writing a paper on physics. Well this student just happens to be an excellent physicist. It's her passion. She eats, sleeps, and dreams physics. She has a tattoo of Newton on her forearm so she never forgets who the father of her religion is. Okay, but she got an F on her paper. What happened? Well she didn't know how to write. Her sentences were filled with syntactic flaws, her spelling was atrocious, and the entire first page was one sentence. We need each discipline to work together to create a viable product. We can't remain islands, or we will perish.
Finally I really feel strongly about the correlation between intelligences and intrinsic motivations. I feel that we all naturally enjoy success more than failure. We've all been told that you must fail in order to succeed, but failure is never the fun part. The fun part is when it clicks, when you get it. So it only makes sense that if multiple intelligences are engaged during the learning process that more students will succeed. Following this result should come a deeper intrinsic happiness grounded purely in the students successful completion of a project or simple the acquisition of some knowledge. Learning is only fun when you're learning.
My first question is does the author believe that each person has one specific type of intelligence that they gravitate toward? Or maybe I should ask, do I believe that students don't have a strong suit? I think that people are all very different. Some might have a strong suit. Some might not. And some might have many. I think the important thing here is that we teach to many rather than a couple. I think that everyone should be literate. However that doesn't mean that students shouldn't be good at listening and speaking. To me teaching to multiple intelligences means helping students improve in each one.
My second question is how do we restructure education to be more like a computer. I think that open source is how our schools should function. We should compile curriculum, not throw it out and buy new stuff. We should be able to evolve our thinking without the school districts approval. One major problem that stands out to me about public education is that the bureaucracy is stifling, moreover it's suffocating.
How can we get their hands off of our materials and out of our pockets? Why do we need so many curriculum directors when so many teachers are creating curriculum on their own? Is there a super curriculum? I believe the answer is yes. It is one that can change seamlessly, without the signatures of multiple people. One that can evolve through the efforts and ambition of the entire community, not just a school board.