The tragedy of our education system
when are we going to wake up to the necessity for change?
I recently read a blog written by an experienced teacher in the US, she talked about how untenable her situation had become, and how the daily stresses she faced were destroying her desire to teach. Despite having a lot of experience the unreasonable demands being placed on her to push kids through the system, endlessly test them and make sure that everyone made the grade was destroying her belief in education. She watched children lose their interest in genuine learning and knew the system was at fault.
We know that some countries and districts have huge problems hiring enough teachers, some subject areas are desperately understaffed. More and more children leave school without skills to take into the workforce, too many children leave school illiterate, many children leave school with experiences of being bullied by their peers or teacher. The system is failing, yet despite what we see happening around us no-one seems to be talking about alternatives and what can be done to change how education works.
In an attempt to redress the imbalance small pockets of change happen. Finland has abandoned nearly all subject teaching, some countries foster democratic schools, in Holland Steve Jobs schools started a few years ago.
There are enough You Tube films which talk about the necessity of educating our children differently. All of it points to the death in real educational experience in a national curriculum, or any system that requires constant testing and a system that talks about outcomes first, and which put the child second.
There is academic, and some political awareness, about what is going wrong in education - there are some high profile voices – look at Sir Ken Robinson - talking about the problem. Yet still nothing changes from year to year. Even Plato said, “Do not train children in learning by force and harshness, but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each” - yet here we are still doing the same thing in education for centuries.
We cannot say we do not know what is happening. As parents we see our children lose their sense of joy once they start school. As teachers we see children lose the interest to explore and engage in questions and the joy of wondering. As board members we see schools struggle to retain staff, we see the negative effect that testing has on morale for both staff and children. As a society we see our skill base is falling behind our needs and we see societies that are struggling ethically or morally because emotional education has never been dealt with in the classroom.
Despite saying all of this, how can we shift the passive knowing we have about the problems in education towards an active doing and drive for change? How can we, as individuals, make a difference to what appears to be a global political issue?
- band together with other parents
- create a poll demanding change, send it to your local/national government
- check out other types of schools that are available
- Join parent groups for education reform
- tell other parents there is something wrong.
- Take part in protests
- use your vote
- if you are teacher, use your voice to talk about the problems, go to the union, join teacher groups, take part in protests
Points of interest
Sir Ken Robinson -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wX78iKhInsc
How Finland is leading the way in educational reform
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfmFIEh2QjU
Global education monitoring report
https://en.unesco.org/gem-report/about
Can parents save education?
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/jean-johnson/can-parents-save-american_b_3314522.html