[originaltext] I have been teaching for a long time, and in doing so I have

I have been teaching for a long time, and in doing so I have acquired a body of knowledge about kids and learning that I really wish more people would understand about the potential of students. In 1931, [16] my grandmother went to school to get the information because that’s where the information lived. It was in the books; it was inside the teacher’s head; and she needed to go there to get the information, because that’s how you learned.
    When I was a kid, we had a set of reference books at my house. It was purchased the year I was born, and it was extraordinary, because I did not have to wait to go to the library to get to the information. The information was inside my house and it was awesome. This was different than either generation had experienced before, and it changed the way I interacted with information even at just a small level. But the information was closer to me. I could get access to it.
    In the time that passes between when I was a kid in high school and when I started teaching, we really see the arrival of the Internet. Right about the time that the Internet gets going as an educational tool, I take off from Wisconsin and move to Kansas [17] where I was teaching my favorite subject, American government. I put in front of the kids an authentic experience that allowed them to learn for themselves. I didn’t tell them what to do or how to do it. I posed a problem in front of them, which was to put on an election forum for their own community. They produced flyers. They called offices. They produced an election forum booklet for the entire town to learn more about their candidates. They invited everyone into the school for an evening of conversation about government and politics and whether or not the streets were done well, and really had this robust experiential learning.
    [18] The main point is that, if we continue to look at education as if it’s about coming to school to get the information and not about experiential learning, we’re missing the mark. And everything that everybody is talking about today isn’t possible if we keep having an educational system that does not value these qualities, because we won’t get there with a standardized test, and we won’t get there with a culture of one right answer. We know how to do this better, and it’s time to do better.
    16. How did the speaker’s grandmother get educated?
    17. What subject did the speaker teach?
    18. According to the speaker, what is the main point of education?