Although the month is March and not November, it is never unseasonable to count up the blessings for which it is well to be thankful. In fact, from the standpoint of education, the spring is perhaps the appropriate time to perform this very pleasant function. As if still further to emphasize the fact that education, like civilization, is an artificial thing, we have reversed the operations of Mother Nature: we sow our seed in the fall and cultivate our crops during the winter and reap our harvests in the spring. I may be pardoned, therefore, for making the theme of my discussion a brief review of the elements of growth and victory for which the educator of to-day may justly be grateful, with, perhaps, a few suggestions of what the next few years may reasonably be expected to bring forth.

And this course is all the more necessary because, I believe, the teaching profession is unduly prone to pessimism. One might think at first glance that the contrary would be true. We are surrounded on every side by youth. Youth is the material with which we constantly deal. Youth is buoyant, hopeful, exuberant; and yet, with this material constantly surrounding us, we frequently find the task wearisome and apparently hopeless. The reason is not far to seek. Youth is not only buoyant, it is unsophisticated, it is inexperienced, in many important particulars it is crude. Some of its tastes must necessarily, in our judgment, hark back to the primitive, to the barbaric. Ours is continually the task to civilize, to sophisticate, to refine this raw material. But, unfortunately for us, the effort that we put forth does not always bring results that we can see and weigh and measure. The hopefulness of our material is overshadowed not infrequently by its crudeness. We take each generation as it comes to us. We strive to lift it to the plane that civilized society has reached. We do our best and pass it on, mindful of the many inadequacies, perhaps of the many failures, in our work. We turn to the new generation that takes its place. We hope for better materials, but we find no improvement.

The papers of this volume fall into three groups, two of the three being written by myself. From my writings on education I have selected only those which may have some claim to permanent interest, and all but two have been tested by previous publication. Those of the first group deal with questions about which we teachers, eager about our immeasurable art beyond most professional persons, never cease to wonder and debate: What is teaching? How far may it influence character? Can it be practiced on persons too busy or too poor to come to our class-rooms? To subjects of what scope should it be applied? And how shall we content ourselves with its necessary limitations? Under these diverse headings a kind of philosophy of education is outlined. The last two papers, having been given as lectures and stenographically reported, I have left in their original colloquial form. A group of papers on Harvard follows, preceded by an explanatory note, and the volume closes with a few papers by Mrs. Palmer. She and I often talked of preparing together a book on education. Now, alone, I gather up these fragments.

George Herbert Palmer

1908

Üstün yetenekli öğrencilere yönelik özel eğitim hizmetlerinin kalitesini arttırmak amacıyla yürütülen Üstün Yetenekliler için Toplum 5.0 isimli projede 100 BİLSEM öğretmeniyle 27 Kasım – 4 Aralık 2022 tarihleri arasında bir çalıştay gerçekleştirildi. AB Katılım Öncesi Mali Yardım Aracı-IPA tarafından mali destek sunulan proje Bornova Şehit Fatih Satır BİLSEM tarafından yürütülürken Turgutlu BİLSEM, Dokuz Eylül Üniversitesi ve Celal Bayar Üniversitesi proje ortağı oldu.

Çalıştay kapsamında öğretmenler farklı etkinliklerle uygulamalı olarak proje yönetimi, tasarım odaklı düşünme ve yaratıcı düşünme becerilerini geliştirdiler. Çalıştay farklı üniversitelerden ve BİLSEM’lerden gelen isimlere ev sahipliği yaptı. Farklı uzmanlar ve STK’lar tarafından seminerler gerçekleştirildi. Öğretmenler eğitmenlerimizin danışmanlığında tasarım odaklı düşünme becerilerini kullanarak projeler geliştirdiler. Çalıştayın son gününde ise Bornova Şehit Fatih Satır BİLSEM’de bir uygulama gerçekleştirdiler.

Eğitim sistemi içerisinde yer almaya başlayan tasarım odaklı düşünme sisteminin kullanılması ile oluşacak yeni fikirlerde, tasarımlarda, projelerde ya da sanat yapıtlarında, amatörce ama profesyonel bir ruhla hazırlanan bu kitabın katkısı olması umulmaktadır