Steve Hargadon has spent decades at the intersection of education and technology, founding the Learning Revolution Project, hosting the Future of Education interview series, and building communities that have connected over 150,000 educators worldwide. His education writing challenges conventional assumptions about schooling, explores how technology is transforming learning, and asks fundamental questions about what education should look like in an era of artificial intelligence. This collection represents his complete body of work on education — from practical reform proposals to philosophical examinations of how we learn and why our current systems often fail.
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Levels of Thinking
My dad once said to me, with some sincerity, "You think about thinking. When I was your age, I didn't think about thinking." It was one of those moments: I remember where I was and what we were doing (I was in college and we were on a bridge watching a rowing regatta).
Visit dedicated site →Dear Student: What School Can't Teach You About AI
A note before you begin. This essay is written for students. But if you're an educator or a parent who picked it up first, that's not an accident.
Visit dedicated site →Undervaluing Librarians
I've been thinking about why libraries, and especially school libraries, declined at the exact moment information became the defining challenge of our time. I don't have a tidy answer.
Visit dedicated site →What We Get Wrong About AI and Education
Most of us find ourselves genuinely conflicted about AI in education. AI appears both alarming and exciting in ways that seem difficult to reconcile. If students are using AI to complete assignments, and teachers are using AI to evaluate them, we ask if there is any actual…
Visit dedicated site →The Four-Hour School Day (And Why We'll Never Do It)
Here's a thought experiment. If you could design a school day from scratch, based on everything we know about how humans actually learn, about cognitive science, about motivation, about child development, how long would it be? It almost certainly wouldn't be seven hours.
Visit dedicated site →The Trust Crisis
In the 1980s, Karl Albrecht sounded the alarm about America's failing customer service in his groundbreaking book Trust: The Crisis Defining American Business Today In the 1980s, Carl Albrecht sounded the alarm about America's failing customer service in his groundbreaking…
Visit dedicated site →The Noble Lie
Introduction - The Uncomfortable Truth About School A quiet but persistent question can echo in the back of the minds of those who've attended traditional public schools: Was that really about learning? Over the years, I have spoken with several people in service…
Visit dedicated site →Modern Learning: Re-Discovering the Transformative Promise of Educational Technology [REPORT], October 2017
By Steve Hargadon ( @stevehargadon ) Version 1.2 (Text updated 10/2017, cover added 06/2018) Original PDF here . InternetArchive.org link: https://web.archive.org/web/20190223211047/http://www.modernlearning.com/ Introduction This report was funded by Acer Education and attempts…
Visit dedicated site →Intentional Education with AI: The Amish Test and Generative Teaching
"What kind of person do you want your child to be at age 30?" This question, commonly asked in parenting classes in order to escape the understandable frame of immediate parenting difficulties, also cuts to the heart of education's deeper purpose.
Visit dedicated site →Paradox of Education
THE PARADOX OF EDUCATION Let’s start with what we might call the basic Paradox of Education. One side we can call individual -centered education: the ultimate goal is for the learner to be increasingly in charge of their own learning, with education helping students to develop…
Visit dedicated site →Generative Education
THE PARADOX OF EDUCATION Let’s start with what we might call the basic Paradox of Education. One side we can call individual -centered education: the ultimate goal is for the learner to be increasingly in charge of their own learning, with education helping students to develop…
Visit dedicated site →The Parents' Solution Podcast - How Do We Change Things?
The Parents' Solution Podcast - How Do We Change Things?
Read on blog →Levels of Learning
A few years ago I gave a talk on education at a conference being held at Google's main headquarters. I expressed my concern about the small number of students who when graduating high school saw themselves as "good learners," and about the much larger number of students whose…
Visit dedicated site →The Serious and Historic Importance of Media Literacy
Media Literacy Week is November 5 - 9, spearheaded by the National Association of Media Literacy Education (NAMLE). I want to urge you to join theNAMLE email/membership list(free) to get information and resources around media literacy and Media Literacy Week. At the bottom of...
Read on blog →Every Single Person Has a Story
Amazing quote from Brene Brown'sThe Power of Vulnerabilityrecorded workshop. I'm listening while driving, and find myself sitting in the driveway not wanting to turn this off...
Read on blog →ABC (Australia) Interview on Learning
A thoughtful conversationwithAnnabel Astbury, Head of ABC Digital Education, split into four audio segments:Historical ideas about schoolingThe role of institutions and parents in educationEnhancing learning with technologyConsidering the conditions around good learning9/2018...
Read on blog →Conditions of Learning, 27 August 2015
The "conditions of learning" exercise can be done by any group, large or small, interested in building a framework together and at the local level for teaching and learning.
Visit dedicated site →It Is Not Necessary to Change
Often, when I'm having a conversation about the expanded ways in which the Internet has provided new and exciting options for learning, the person I'm talking to will argue:if schools don't change dramatically, they will be left behind and become irrelevant. The market will...
Read on blog →You Are Not a Failure
One of my favorite ways to catch people's attention is to use the statement, "your child is not defective."You see, parents often get the message that their children have not measured up in both specific and general ways. In an education system driven by standards and data,...
Read on blog →Our Children Need to Be Treated as Human Beings
Systems of mass production can be really good at certain things.If you go into a McDonalds anywhere, especially in the United States, you're pretty-much guaranteed you'll be able to order something from a menu that is pretty-much identical to the menu in every one of their...
Read on blog →If You Are Planning for a Year, Sow Rice
I've been tying to put into words a feeling I've been having lately: that the cognitive dissonances of our current world have created a pervasive lifestyle of surface-level, short-term thinking.Nothing seems to make sense right now. To the thinking individual, the stories we...
Read on blog →Independence of Mind and Freedom of Discussion
What makes this quote so jarring is that it comes from such a famous book -Democracy in America- and that it's the opposite of what we (in the United States) like to think about ourselves.Entertain with me the idea that it might be true.Our national debates aren't thoughtful,...
Read on blog →Nothing You Do for Children Is Ever Wasted
Children watch adults ever so closely. They inherit our view of the world and how life works. They start by seeing everything through the lens of our perception, including and especially how they see themselves. Our kindness and generosity become long-lasting lessons to them....
Read on blog →When You Judge You Project Your Shadows
I've always been intrigued by the degree to which those things which bother me about other people are often the things that I like least in myself.Perhaps it's my own worries and insecurities--the fact that I haven't figured out how to overcome or come to peace with...
Read on blog →There Is No Recipe for Raising Children
I remain intrigued by the idea that to really help students, we need to be helping families.Not trying to transplant things from the family to school, which is a risky proposition, and based on the belief that we can somehow isolate certain factors and replicate them outside...
Read on blog →We Don't Receive Wisdom
There is a difference between wisdom and knowledge.Knowledge can be taught, but wisdom must be obtained by oneself. Wisdom is self-discovered. Galileo said: "You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him to find it within himself."Knowledge is crucial, and can be...
Read on blog →Education Is Simply the Soul of a Society
A little self-reflection is badly needed right now.What do we believe about children, about learning, and about the role of education in a society? And what do these beliefs tell us about the soul of our culture?
Read on blog →The Conflict Between the Powerful and the Powerless
Here is the initial synopsis of Hans Christian Andersen's tale, "The Emperor's New Clothes," fromWikipedia:[It] is a short tale by Hans Christian Andersen about two weavers who promise an Emperor a new suit of clothes that is invisible to those who are unfit for their...
Read on blog →All Children Are Born Geniuses
I've never really liked the use of the wordgeniusin pithy quotes about education. It's always felt to me that claiming every child to be a genius was sort of the height of silliness--an exaggerated, rose-colored, and naive view of what could be a more pragmatic acceptance...
Read on blog →Any Intelligent Fool Can Make Things Bigger
It's really hard to not do anything. To not solve a problem for someone else. To not create a program to fix something.But sometimes, not doing anything is the best thing.For example, when a student needs to go through the discovery process on his or her own. Or when solving...
Read on blog →Speaking the Truth and Being Correct
There is reality, and then there are the stories or narratives that are told.Reality + motive = story.We see things through the lens of our own interests. And if those interests involve profit, power, or control, we can bring a lot of energy to the task of helping other...
Read on blog →Everyone Thinks of Changing the World
“Be the change that you wish to see in the world.” - Mahatma Gandhi."Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing." - Albert Schweitzer.One of my favorite stories to tell is about the instructions given on airplane flights regarding oxygen masks....
Read on blog →Libraries Were Full of Ideas
I worry about libraries. I know, you're thinking:really?There's a movement to take library spaces and turn them into proactive, creation-facilitating, "maker spaces." I like proactivity, I like creation, and I like the maker movement. But I worry about our inability to...
Read on blog →We Cannot Hold a Torch to Light Another's Path
There are other well-known quotes which equate knowledge with light."He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.” - Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Issac...
Read on blog →Treat People as If They Were What They Ought to Be
Stephen Jay Gould, in 1981, wrote a book entitled,The Mismeasure of Man.From Wikipedia:The book is both a history and critique of the statistical methods and cultural motivations underlying biological determinism, the belief that "the social and economic differences between...
Read on blog →Children Need Love
This is hard. And it's not just true with children.Years ago I reada great article about the prison warden Dennis Luther, who's philosophy of running a prison came down to "an unconditional respect for the inmates as people." He said: "If you want people to behave...
Read on blog →For the Love of Money Is the Root of All Evil
I read something yesterday that stopped me in my tracks. From an essay entitled "The Treason of Intellectuals" byChris Hedges(bold emphasis mine):Julien Benda argued in his 1927 book “The Treason of Intellectuals”—“La Trahison des Clercs”—thatit is only when we are not in...
Read on blog →Be Yourself - Everyone Else Is Already Taken
Every year or so our family spends an evening doing a personality test. We've done versions of theColor Code,Strengths Finders,Meyers-Briggs,Enneagram, and others.We have four children. They are now getting older, and the sibling tension that used to seem like a daily affair...
Read on blog →Ideas Spread Because They Are Good at Spreading
Ideas, or "memes," spread because they are good at spreading. That is, there's something about them that makes it easy for them to get passed around.Think of a virus. The characteristic most important to a virus spreading is that it spreads quickly. Does it ultimately maim or...
Read on blog →School Is the Advertising Agency
Warning, deep thinking ahead...This quote profoundly expresses the way in which institutionalized forces, by having vested interests in things staying the same, don't really want for schooling to create independent thinking in students.There are all kinds of ways that...
Read on blog →Alice and the Cheshire Cat on Direction
Saturday, in our annual"Hack Education" unconference at ISTE, I proposed and held a session on "Tech-Ped": technology adoption driven by pedagogy. In other words, how can the education world become more like the Amish--deciding what our core values are, and then making...
Read on blog →Never Let a Problem Become More Important Than a Person
Never Let a Problem Become More Important Than a Person
Read on blog →Getting Things Done Is Not Always What Is Most Important
I wish I could find the original of this story about the rancher and his young son. I remember it something like this:A rancher takes his young son out to extend a fence on their property. He talks the boy through the work to be done, shows him the materials and the tools,...
Read on blog →The Kids in Our Classroom Are Infinitely More Significant
One of the most insidious results of mass-education is pervasiveself loathing.Ask students who didn't do well in school, and they will largely tell you that it was their own fault."I wasn't one of the smart ones." Or: "When I applied myself, I did well. But mostly I didn't."...
Read on blog →We Have Met the Enemy and He Is Us
When my grandfather was in the last stages of his life, suffering from dementia and unable to care for himself, he developed pneumonia. I took him to the hospital, where by mistake they administered a sulfa-based antibiotic.His medical history and information clearly...
Read on blog →My Child Is Not Defective
Years ago we had a child struggling in school. Really struggling. I went to watch this child in class, probably in the third grade, and I vividly remember how painful it was to see our child completely faking it--not really understanding much of anything that was going on,...
Read on blog →You Cannot Build Character by Taking Away Initiative
I have a good friend who told me that she no longer posts what she really believes on social media sites. She's afraid, I think, that it could hurt her career.So, I understand why, after the phone tapping of the Associated Press offices, some reporters indicated that they...
Read on blog →Life Is a Succession of Lessons
Inherent in Emerson's quote is a sense of time. Life takes time. Lessons are livedover timeand our understandings evolvewith time, measured sometimes in years or even in decades.Immediacy is the enemy of time. Not just the desire for instant gratification, but the temptation...
Read on blog →The Ultimate Goal of the Educational System
As you might easily guess, I appreciate the sentiment of the first half of this quote, and the idea that all education should ultimately be self-education.As to the second half: many of us have felt that the inevitable result of the growth of the Internet would be a...
Read on blog →The Trouble with the Rat Race
I'm pretty sure this very funny Lily Tomlin quote was referring to the "rat race" of the work world, where "still [being] a rat" meant being a bad person (or a gross animal). But for a minute, let's shift to thinking about education.If we re-frame this quote for education,...
Read on blog →The Best Way to Have a Good Idea
There are a lot of practical skills that are not a part of traditional notions of school but that arguably could or should be. Basic financial skills are usually included in such a list, as well as anything to do with car, home, and work-life maintenance. Why schools provide...
Read on blog →When I Approach a Child
In posting this quote, I wanted to know if Louis Pasteur was religious. The answer appears to be: sort-of. Catholic by birth, spiritual by temperament, believing in an ordered universe, but dedicated to the ability to think freely. In the language of our day we might say,...
Read on blog →We Learn More by Looking for the Answer
Lloyd Alexanderwrote a series of fantasy books for youth that I read and loved as a boy. (Until I looked up the Wikipedia link for him I had no idea we shared a Philadelphia and Haverford College background--nice!)I can't be sure I fully understand what he meant by this...
Read on blog →Does the Student Want to Learn More?
This quote was referenced in a discussion online, but I haven't been able to verify that it's accurately attributed. But it does seem pedagogicallyaccurateto me.Another way to say this, as I've heard Pat Farenga remark, is that you can tell the quality of the learning by who...
Read on blog →Genius Is an Exceedingly Common Human Quality
John Taylor Gatto is an interesting figure in the history of US education. Ask anyone in the alternative education or homeschooling worlds, and they will know of him. Most everyone else will not.Mr. Gattowas New York City teacher of the year three years in a row, then New...
Read on blog →Twenty Years from Now We Will Wonder
Twenty Years from Now We Will Wonder
Read on blog →Stretching People's Minds Is Part of Educating
The above quote, for me, isn't just about students (although, trusting students and ultimately working toward their agency is a major theme for me).It's also about trusting parents and educators.I'm always intrigued by groups that meet and work together to discuss a...
Read on blog →Upon the Subject of Education
I'm interested in how hard it can be to have a thoughtful, candid discussion about education--not schooling, not testing, but education as inlearning. Since it feels like it's often all I talk about, I'm always surprised when I have a good, deep conversation with an educator...
Read on blog →Education Reform
Have you ever had a thought come to you with such force or clarity that you realized your thinking, from this point forward, will never be the same? I'm sitting in a workshop at the AERO conference this weekend.
Visit dedicated site →If a Child Is to Keep Alive His Inborn Sense of Wonder
This is the adult I want to be.My ability to understand and share in the ideas, aspirations, desires, concerns, hopes, fears, and dreams of others is a sign of my own maturity. If I'm self-focused and unable to do this, which life does sometimes demands, then my goal is to...
Read on blog →We Should Seek to Be Fellow Students with the Pupil
There's a great, small character in the bookATreeGrowsinBrooklyn, the elderly and stately janitor Mister Jenson. He's beloved by the students, the principal, and the teachers. This one sentence about this one small character lives with me still: "When they were teaching, Mr....
Read on blog →Self-Education Is the Only Kind of Education
Technically, I don't agree with this quote. There are all kinds of ways that education, teaching, learning, and schooling take place where external pressures or motivators supersede the self, where submission to power or authority is at the heart of what is learned.But...
Read on blog →I Find Television Very Educating
I Find Television Very Educating
Read on blog →If You Want Happiness for a Lifetime
Investing in and caring for future generations is surely the hallmark of a mature society. It is the motivation of almost everyone I know who teaches.The catch-22 of an education systems which produces so many students who feel like failures (and often have literally failed),...
Read on blog →The Beautiful Thing About Learning
The Beautiful Thing About Learning
Read on blog →Curiosity Is a Delicate Little Plant
Having researched many quotes only to find that good ones tend to get credited to famous people (maybe because that lends them more credence), I have no idea if Einstein really said this, but here's a fuller version of the quote attributed to him:It is, in fact, nothing short...
Read on blog →People Stop Learning When They Fear Failure
Failure is not a fun word. It's something negative. When we try and celebrate failure in education (and I understand the positive reasons why this is tried), it falls flat for me.It's not failure that we want to encourage. It's taking a risk. Nothing gets done without some...
Read on blog →Play Is Serious Learning
Well-worth reading on play:https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201505/early-academic-training-produces-long-term-harm"For example, in the 1970s, the German government sponsored a large-scale comparison in which the graduates of 50 play-based kindergartens were...
Read on blog →Never Let Schooling Get in the Way of Education
Like many other clever quotes, this does not appear to have actually been said by Mark Twain, but is often attributed to him. It appear that the original thought, which appeared in slightly different ways in his work,was from the author Grant Allen.The quote does capture the...
Read on blog →Place Responsibility and Trust
I'm thinking about the corrosive effects of criticizing teachers.If you're in a business, you talk about "managing" people. But in a social endeavor, in doing work that we believe helps people, it's a word and a concept that I think is fraught with misunderstanding.When you...
Read on blog →The Halting and Painful Steps of Success
I've notice in my own life how long the arc of learning sometimes is for me. Grappling with difficult thoughts or challenges I sometimes measure in months, if not years, rather than hours or days.Learning that leads to change is different than memorizing. Collecting "data,"...
Read on blog →How You Treat a Child Is More Important
How You Treat a Child Is More Important
Read on blog →Not Everything Worthwhile Can Be Measured
This is my take on an idea that has been voiced by others, and which reminds us of the limitations on quantifying true value.My hero in measuring isW. Edwards Deming, who basically taught that it's very easy to draw the wrong conclusions about data (see his "Red Bead...
Read on blog →The Aim of Education Should Be to Teach How to Think
There is a common fallacy in education (and maybe just in general) that I call the "A to C" fallacy.We're at point A. We want to get to point C. So we try to mandate, or create, C as though there were no intermediate steps.All of life has steps to be taken, we don't go A -->...
Read on blog →Brilliant Teachers and Those Who Touch Our Feelings
There is an exercise I like to do with people or groups.It starts with the question: "Can you remember a specific experience when you felt like you were really learning--when you were deeply engaged and growing as a learner?" (I usually have to say, "inside or outside of...
Read on blog →The Right and Obligation to Be an Individual
This quote, so well-known, is maybe a litmus test for us when we hear the political and policy debates about education. Education is often touted as necessary for our strength and "competitiveness" for nations, but is education driven by large-scale standardized testing and...
Read on blog →Nine Tenths of Education Is Encouragement
As the parent of four children, there are certain counterpoints (or tensions) that I feel I am balancing as I work to help my children: structure and freedom, play and self-discipline, being outward-looking and having an inward focus....I am inclined to think that most people...
Read on blog →When Salary Depends on Not Understanding
This has been a favorite quote of mine for years. In taking care of my dad last year, I discovered he had a copy of it taped on the wall of his kitchen. It's a reminder of the human frailty around personal interest and seeing things clearly, and it's an argument for...
Read on blog →Our Lives Begin to End When We Become Silent
Our Lives Begin to End When We Become Silent
Read on blog →Everybody Is a Genius
The above quote is often attributed to Albert Einstein, but the incredibly extensive investigation documented athttp://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/04/06/fish-climb/seems to indicate that he never said it. Two quick notes on that:If you're famous, people will give you all sorts...
Read on blog →Almost All Education Has a Political Motive
The fuller quote is:Almost all education has a political motive: it aims at strengthening some group, national or religious or even social, in the competition with other groups. It is this motive, in the main, which determines the subjects taught, the knowledge offered and...
Read on blog →Children Go to School and Have Things Arranged for Them
This quote is echoed in the writings of lots of accomplished people--often in the form of how they needed to overcome schooling to accomplish their life's work. I think it reflects the cognitive dissonance we have about the school experience--believing that we are trying to...
Read on blog →Human Beings Are Curious by Nature
This question of our inherent nature is at the heart of how we think about teaching, learning, and formal education. Can and will children learn on their own? Is curiosity the main component to learning, or is it disciplined activity? Of course, both are important, but which...
Read on blog →Escaping the Education Matrix (Mind/Shift)
“We tell a story about the power of learning that is very different from what we practice in traditional models of school,” says Steve Hargadon, education technology entrepreneur, event organizer, and host of the long-runningFuture of Educationpodcast series. If we really...
Read on blog →A Global Education Declaration
A Declaration of the Value of Global EducationPresented at the 2013 Global Education Conferencehttp://www.GlobalEducationDeclaration.comBecause we are citizens of our individual nations and also part of a larger human family;Because it is important to learn about other...
Read on blog →My Beliefs
I produced a version the following "Core Beliefs" and "View of Change" statements for theHack Your Education TourI did in the fall of 2012. I think they give some context to my recentA Student Bill of Rightspost, and I welcome any discussion of them.My Core Beliefs:That every...
Read on blog →Student Bill of Rights
This first pass at a "Student Bill of Rights" was inspired by: 1) " A Bill of Rights and Principles for Learning in the Digital Age " that Audrey Watters and I were able to discuss at length in a podcast, and that I felt was unimaginative and particularly reflected an…
Visit dedicated site →Hacking at the Roots of the Learning Revolution
I'll be a guest again on the Connected Learning weekly webinar series tomorrow, with esteemed host Howard Rheingold, and getting provocative. Read the following at your own risk.Date: Thursday, Dec 20Time: 10-11am US Pacific Time (international times)Event page and...
Read on blog →A Tail of Two Ed Tech Agendas
At theDigital Media and Learning (DML) 2012 Conferencein San Francisco this past week, during a panel discussion on investment in education innovation in which promises of large amounts of funding for schools were being dangled as carrots to an all-too-fawning audience, Rudy...
Read on blog →Web 2.0 Is the Future of Education
It was not, I know, what I was supposed to talk about. But it felt so important, as though the idea needed me to say it out loud. And it was magnified by the impression I was having that we're about to have the biggest discussion about education and learning in decades, maybe...
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