The CAP Method of Education
Consider the difference between a student practicing a speech in an empty room versus giving it in front of a live audience. Beyond the nerves involved, there is something about presenting in front of an audience that makes their words feel concrete and real. Now imagine that the audience is not just passively listening, but actually engaged, eager to take what is said and make use of it. Suddenly, their words are not only real, but they carry weight and the message has purpose.
Now think about the difference between a student doodling in a sketchbook and painting a mural on the side of a building. While a doodle is usually unplanned, and its design unintentional, a mural must be a more conscious exercise. It’s a piece of art that tells a story for the whole community to see. What if local artists and residents were invited to stop by, and were eager to contribute and share their stories and ideas? Suddenly, the student’s work would no longer be about creating an isolated image; it would be about contributing something to the fabric of the community, a piece of art that others will see and connect with for years to come.
Imagine if every teacher asked learners to participate in an activity or project that involved an authentic interaction with others and with society–just like in the examples above. What if, to graduate from middle or high school, students were invited to engage in a project of their choosing that involved a community expert and a real problem that needed to be addressed? Now, the learning would have purpose.
During the Renaissance and into the early Enlightenment, children were mentored from a young age to develop expertise in a particular area. Although only a minority of people could access formal education at the time, for the lucky few it was the kind of environment that propelled genius. It is thanks to mentorship that we remember many artists and scientists such as Newton, Descartes, Mozart, Galileo, Einstein, and Da Vinci. Even more recently, when we look at the highest achievers in our society, people like Serena Williams, Steve Jobs, Oprah Winfrey, Bill Gates, and Stephen Hawking, most can identify a mentor or coach who pushed them to excel and who guided them to greatness.
Our current education system, albeit geared for the masses, does not provide meaningful mentorship to students. We do not require students to work with others to address real issues in society, nor do we aim to create a high level of expertise or to foster genius in young people. Instead, our highest achievers in school are compliant test-takers, individuals who pay attention to what the teacher wants and follow every expectation carefully so they can gain the highest possible number of points on every assignment.
Formal schooling today is not about curiosity, enjoyment, or passionate pursuit; instead, it's about constant validation in the form of a steady stream of assessments. It’s about students having to prove they are learning; it’s not about learning for its own sake. Rarely are students invited to delve deeper into a topic that sparks their interest, to explore beyond the scope of the syllabus, or to develop a genuine area of passion along the way.
Over the years, we have made many valiant attempts to change education. We have talked about constructivist approaches and student-centered, inquiry-based models, but despite our best efforts, most schools still offer a conveyor-belt approach to education where what a student learns is defined by the month and year of their birth, and where all students are assessed on the same content at the same time. Students still pass from class to class and teacher to teacher. Their learning is largely decontextualized and piecemeal. Educators have struggled with how to integrate new educational practices which break free from the constraints of our well-entrenched system.
In today’s world of rapid innovation, change is no longer optional. Virtual AI tutors are knocking on every door, and soon they will be able to provide highly personalized learning and mentorship to students in a way that will surpass our current school system. Knowledge is at everyone’s fingertips, and it no longer makes sense for teachers to occupy the role of ‘expert’ in the classroom. The purpose of our schooling system needs to be reimagined.
Today, I’d like to propose a new way to educate our children. The CAP method of education involves a different philosophy of learning. CAP stands for Connections, Academics, and Purpose. This is how it works.
The CAP Method of Education
Currently, when a teacher plans a unit or lesson, they begin by looking at the curriculum. They organize it into topics or themes and then decide how to structure the learning around these ideas. If teachers are planning backwards, as is often encouraged, they will develop the assignment or culminating activity and then plan their lessons with this final assessment in mind.
What if, instead of starting with the curriculum, teachers begin by considering a connection that students could be involved in, or a real-world problem students could address with a community partner or expert? Now the teacher might begin by thinking, “How might I involve students authentically to address an issue? How might students connect with experts or passionate advocates for this issue, to be mentored and to build a robust knowledge base on the topic?”
Let’s reconsider the example I provided at the beginning, where a student is making a speech to an engaged group of decision makers. This example comes from actual Middle School projects we have been developing at Pickering College, a JK-12 independent school in Newmarket, Ontario, Canada. In this project, the students partnered with a local agency that is trying to alleviate homelessness in the region. After the City Council vetoed the organization’s proposal for a low-income alternative housing solution, our teachers decided it would be a perfect opportunity for students to provide their support.
To address the issue, students started by learning about homelessness and its causes. They worked to understand the stigma around their city’s unhoused population and why the town council might have rejected the original proposal. They talked with people who had been helped by the organization and who were able to get back on their feet as a result. To provide an alternate perspective on homelessness, they created and presented graphic storybooks to help persuade the City Council to reconsider the organization’s proposal.
When learning is about more than meeting a set of criteria or getting a grade, the results can be transformative. Projects that have real-world implications show students that their contributions can make a difference. Education then moves beyond theory and simulation into real, connected work which empowers students, changing not only their engagement but also how they see themselves and their place in society.
The new middle school program at Pickering College is designed with connections in mind. Once a connection is established with community partners (and hopefully with expert mentors as well), academics are aligned with the focus of the project–that is, the real-world problem. The end goal is to help students see their learning, and their lives, as purposeful: Connections, Academics, Purpose. This is the CAP method of education.
A Connected Middle School Program
In this middle school program, students begin by selecting a project of interest from a set of options. Each project relates to an authentic problem that students must address and involves a community partner or expert. The projects have been developed within broad interdisciplinary themes that include the following:
Technology: robotics and coding
Environmental stewardship
Justice and advocacy
Identity and community
Designing for now and the future
Students are grouped based on their interests, not their age. In this way, each project involves a mixed group of students from grades 6, 7, and 8. Student learning and participation is tracked individually, and students have the agency and opportunity to develop a deep passion and interest within their project. Community partners and local experts provide feedback on the work students produce and, given that the output has a real purpose and goal, students are expected to use this feedback to improve the quality of their work until it meets a high enough standard for authentic use.
As I write, we are in our first year of implementing this program. However, projects have already involved students in developing an interactive walking tour of our town for the local Historical Society, supporting a start-up business that is launching a service dog program, creating interactive video games for seniors to help lessen their feelings of social isolation, and organizing a local farm-based fair to share agri-tech and sustainable farming solutions.
Through these projects, students have worked directly with business leaders, local politicians, our town’s History Hound, video game developers, farmers and technology experts. Students have learned how to interview people and how to respond to constructive criticism. And, at this pivotal middle school age, they have learned how to be respectful and respected when discussing important issues with adults.
Connecting to Develop Purpose
A key element to the Connection component of CAP relates to the human psyche. This involves students looking at their own work through the eyes of another person, someone who expects them to meet their goal and who needs their interaction, someone who will feel let down if they don’t try their best. The Connection component of CAP is the essential starting point for teacher planning. It requires a win-win scenario where the community partner authentically needs help on something they are struggling with, and where the students authentically need feedback on their learning to ensure their contributions represent their best work.
As the teachers shared progress updates on their projects recently, I was struck by the comments made by one of my colleagues. She compared the projects to an interdisciplinary unit she taught in Middle School French, where students acted out a scene from a famous historical battle in a beautiful outdoor setting. Through this work, students learned about history and French, and they were physically active outdoors. She thought at the time that it was a fantastic unit. But now, looking at the middle school projects, she got goosebumps. There was one element that made the difference: every project had an authentic partner and a real purpose beyond the scope of the school. Her students loved re-enacting the French battle, but there was no purpose to the activity other than fulfilling the expectations of the teacher and proving they had learned the content. Students were not expected to engage with or contribute to the real world. This is the key, the core element missing in how we educate young people today.
Our education system is taught in isolation from the rest of the world, disconnected from real experts and mentors who are passionate about their areas of focus. Our school system sits parallel to everything else that happens in the world, yet is completely removed from it. There is an African proverb that says, “It takes a village to raise a child.” We need to return to this kind of thinking. We need to structure our schools so that the community is a part of the education process, and the school is integrated into the community. We need to connect students with experts, with mentors, and with authentic partners to address real issues and to learn together. The CAP method of education can get us moving in this direction.
Dr. Cinde Lock is Head of School at Pickering College in Newmarket, Ontario, Canada. She has worked as a teacher and administrator for over 30 years in Canada and in international schools in Egypt, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Trinidad, and South Korea. She is passionate about redesigning our education system so that it meets the needs of all students to help them find a sense of passion and purpose in life. Stay tuned for her book, which should be coming to market in 2025, to learn more about how you can put the CAP framework into practice in your own school.