Education Stuck in a Rut

Obsolete with an excessive bias towards the academic, slow dull and suitable for another era, this could be a description of our current educational system.

The country or countries to catch up with our kids and adult learners will be the country that will excel. Life has moved on from the current educational model, it is no longer relevant we need to change and move forward to reflect the new world, We then need to foster innovation and creativity in our education system but first we need to catch up.

We have not adjusted to YouTube, Google, face book, Be BO Twitter, Blogs, Internet Marketing,

Can you imagine learning spaces that inspire, link to the outside integrate with the fabric of their village,town or city. Spaces that use form, proportion and colour to energise. Spaces that are filled with light that facilitate creativity and learning.

Classrooms that allow movement, encourage engagement and participation, learning places and learning spaces. Can you imagine a teacher who asks questions, draws out the views of learners, a teacher who is open to learning rather than lecturing.

Knowledge and data are freely available now on the Internet, cramming learners with data is like overfeeding our kids with junk food. We all need to learn the skills of problem solving, research, questioning and this needs to happen in a complete world or planet view context.

Subjects need to become whole and connected rather than separate, subjects like economics need to be learned in a living responding environment, and the impact of economics on communities and the environment included. Our education needs to move from linear thinking to web thinking with the connections receiving as much attention as the individual subjects.

So much to consider and change..... when will we move from our current stodgy rut ?

Learning

Perhaps if we approach each other from the perspective of accepting that we all have unique life experience and that one experience is as valid as the next. We do tend to classify experiences as good or bad, perhaps they just are !

People often say that kids know so much today, do they really ? or do they just know different things and not know lots of things that we know or knew. We have huge expectations of people in all areas of life and if they are trained or qualified we tend to forget that they are like us, human with fears and vulnerability.

A nurse once told me of the trauma she experienced in A&E when she began working there. She was expected by all to be able to cope because she was trained..... There is no training that can prevent the feeling and trauma of many life events. This nurse felt that most nurses struggled with witnessing the pain and suffering of others. She felt she was a young girl with no real preparation for the shock and awfulness of some of the scenes she witnessed. We have similar expectations of police , ambulance, fire and social workers and lots more.

At the end of the day we have so much common vulnerability and profession or uniform do not exempt any from the impact of tragic tragic events. Perhaps we need to realise that we are all just people, struggling with life to a greater or lesser extent.