Will Richardson says schools need to put more emphasis on students (and teachers) as learners—as opposed to passive consumers of knowledge:
I want so badly for my kids to be learners, not knowers first. Not that there aren't things they need to know, but I would much rather they have a yen for learning, for the "patient problem solving" that Dan Meyer talks about, a comfort with ambiguity and failure that is the hallmark of so much deep learning. Broken record, I know, but we're "right answering" our kids (and our teachers, to some extent) to death in this country. Hard to watch.
If you’re interested in this line of thinking, please check out our interview with Richardson in the new issue of the Teacher PD Sourcebook, which just went live today and focuses on 21st-century learning. I actually asked him specifically about his views on the learning vs. knowledge question—which is really (the more I think about it) a central one in education today and especially in the arguments surrounding 21st-century skills.