An Assumption-Questioning Education

"I know I can't change the way I look.  But maybe, just maybe, people can change the way they see."  Quote from "We're All Wonders" by R.J. Palacio

We live much of our lives without being fully conscious of our actions and their meaning.  We make countless decisions based on assumptions that we have never unpacked and deconstructed.  Many of these assumptions are learned at school and taken as unquestionable facts.  This is perhaps the fatal flaw of education.  

Instead of indoctrinating students to one way of thinking and acting in the world, which students often blindly accept as just the way it is, we should equip students with tools for making conscious choices about how to live their lives meaningfully.  School should be the place that we question assumptions reflectively in order to make decisions that are informed, deliberated and intentional. 

The focus of education should be on how we act and why, after all the problems that we face in the 21st century are all too often the result of unreflected human action.  By taking a step back from our reality to analyze it and situate it within a wide spectrum of possibilites we can change our perspective.  Through dialogic meaning making about our actions in the world together with others can we come to perceive the world more fully and reason through our decisions more thoughtfully.  This type of assumption-questioning education is the basis for the Contemporary Education Framework as a new, innovative educational design.