The 1987 Presidential Address Learning In School and Out

Abstract

opular wisdom holds that common sense outweighs school learning for getting along in the world-that there exists a practical intelligence, different from school intelligence, that matters more in real life. As is often the case, this wisdom is difficult to assess directly from a base of scholarly research. But recent research on the nature of everyday, practical, real-world intelligence and learning is beginning to provide a basis for understanding what distinguishes practical from formal intelligence. Drawing on this work, I want to explore in this essay four broad contrasts which suggest that school is a special place and time for people-discontinuous in some important ways with daily life and work. Then, in light of these contrasts, I will consider where and how the economic, civic, and cultural aims of education can best be pursued and whether schooling itself should be reorganized to take account of what we are learning about the nature of competence in various aspects of our lives.