Raising Heretics, the Podcast: Recent Episodes
Dr Linda McIver
It's time to change the world. We need creative problem solvers to address catastrophic climate change, income inequality, pandemics, ecological collapse, misinformation, radicalisation, and many more problems facing humanity. We need critical thinkers. Rational Sceptics. People willing to challenge the status quo. Raising Heretics explores the impact of Data Science and Technology on the world around us. Linda McIver examines the role of evidence and ideology in our society, and how our understanding of science lets us down. This podcast lays out the foundations of a new approach to raising our children that encourages them to be the heretics we need to save the world. "Raising Heretics: Teaching Kids to Change the World" brings you Dr Linda McIver's groundbreaking book in audio form.
The final episode of Raising Heretics: The Podcast!
Education has really failed to evolve. Sure, we’ve tweaked around the edges, but fundamentally my kids are still experiencing classrooms the way I did, the way my parents did, the way their parents did, and on down the ages. We need to make change.
So how do we make this happen? Support Teachers, Lobby Governments, Buy and share Raising Heretics: Teaching Kids to Change the World, and donate to ADSEI at givenow.com.au/adsei
People often assume that Data Science in Schools has to be secondary school only, because how could primary kids do Data Science? The truth is that Data Literacy and Analysis skills can be built into the curriculum from as young as 5 years old. Here's how.
In the beginning, there were toys. The fundamental message, which underpins all of the issues with the toy approach to teaching technology, was that the students could not see the point of what they were supposed to be learning. And kids can be quite pragmatic – when they can’t see any point to what they are doing, they don’t do it. So what happened when I switched to teaching programming and critical thinking skills using data science with real datasets? Find out in Episode 8 of Raising Heretics: The Podcast.
Getting comfortable with uncertainty is not a panacea for all of our educational woes, but it is an excellent start in allowing students the room to explore different solutions, and in training them to critically evaluate their own work. After all, if your answer is confirmed by the textbook solution, there’s not much room for further evaluation. If we can use real problems without right answers as the basis of at least part of our education, then we will surely prepare our students for the real world.
In Episode 6 we look at how we assess students, what our assessment says about our priorities, and what we really value. How can we change assessment to measure what we really care about?
In Episode 5, Science is Solved, we look at the problems with both academia and science education in schools, and explore how they contribute to problems with the public perception of science. How can we teach science as a way of understanding the world, rather than as a matter of facts and known processes?
Imagine, for a moment, a society driven by evidence. By data. A society that uses science, reason, and compassion to figure out the way forward. How would that be different from the world we see today?
Who runs the world? Not girls. Increasingly it's tech entrepreneurs and data scientists.
Episode 2 of the Raising Heretics: Teaching Kids to Change the World Podcast contains the second half of the introduction, and explores why Data Science Education can teach kids to be rational, ethical, creative, heretical problem solvers. Raising Heretics: Teaching Kids to Change the World Pocast, Episode 2 Raising Heretics, the book, is a blueprint…… Continue reading Raising Heretics: The Podcast! Episode 2
Welcome to Raising Heretics: Teaching Kids to Change the World, The Podcast! Raising Heretics, the book, is a blueprint for an evidence based world, and a radically more engaging and effective education system. What would an evidence based world look like? How can we get there? What’s wrong with the way we teach science and…… Continue reading Raising Heretics: The Podcast!