Lucas on Education: We Need More Greek Philosophers and Cobblers

At yesterday’s 2009 World Business Forum, George Lucas shared his perspective on how to make learning more meaningful with more than 4,500 top executives from around the world. In addition, an interview with George Lucas was published in a special supplement to the Wall Street Journal.

In the interview, Lucas speaks of many of the core concepts that propel Edutopia as we shine a spotlight on education innovations around the country: project learning [2], social and emotional learning [3], technology integration [4], integrated studies [5], teacher development [6], and comprehensive assessment [7].

Lucas advocates for bringing back fundamental education practices common many centuries ago such as "the philosophical/intellectual side" of collaborative group discussions popular during the time of Aristotle and hands-on project learning similar to the times when a cobbler worked with apprentices to show them how to make shoes.

"The key to education is to help students find information, evaluate that information to test its accuracy, and use information in creative ways," he says.

We are pleased to make a copy of the interview available [1] to the greater Edutopia community.