Education either functions as an instrument to bring about conformity or freedom. Let’s give our children freedom.
Trish Millines Dziko
A lot of the behaviors from school you get rewarded for, you ultimately get punished for later in life
A lot of the behaviors from school you get punished for, you ultimately get rewarded for later in life
George Mack
1. Education ignores the realities about life and emotions.
Nothing really important about life is taught in school. Instead we learn much more facts than we need. Facts are learned and forgotten. Children learn to think only in narrow fields, they don’t learn to make the connections needed to invent. Worse still, no one teaches us how to deal with feelings, emotions and our internal world.
2. Wrong goals
Number one priority for any educational system should be fostering a supportive atmosphere where children care for each other until they grow up and enter free-of-oversight life with an open heart, honest thoughts and an emotionally intelligent mind. Feelings can not be excluded from school. A system ignoring and suppressing feelings is psychologically damaging.
Love/Empathy and Freedom are the building blocks for the good in life. The aspiration for truth, which is the basis for science and education, cannot even be understood if you lack Love or understanding of why Freedom is important. It’s meaningless if you don’t care about whom the truth concerns. Especially to kids.
3. Wrong structure
The entire structure of school should foster empathy and freedom.
Freedom means only rules the students agree with. There is no other way if you want decent engagement later.
On the Love/Empathy part no words can describe what you can see for yourself in this short documentary about a Japanese schoolteacher.
Here are some ideas:
- No smartphones in school under 16. Thus no support for social media. We have to destroy the current addiction model.
- School should not begin before 9:00.
- Outdoor activities and games can make even the most boring subject fun.
- Music has its place in school outside of the music class. Music is magic and we cannot deprive children from it.
- No religious or political subjects. Most kids and adolescents don’t have critical thinking developed yet so this principle is needed to protect against their manipulation and indoctrination in questionable belief systems.
- School can be the natural support system for the many children with abusive, neglective or otherwise broken families. They can learn empathy from a young age.
4. Wrong subjects
The world changes and so should what we learn in school:
1. Your Language
2. English
3. Mathematics (the foundation of science)
4. Logic, intuition about numbers, statistics & sources, critical thinking and research
5. Anatomy (You have to know your body)
6. Psychology (You have to know your mind)
7. Economics and entrepreneurship
8. Productivity and optimal use of your computer
9. Productivity and optimal use of The Web
10. A diverse world (to build intuition about cultures)
11. Physical education plus spending as much time as possible in nature.
Optional Sciences:
1. Physics
2. Chemistry
3. Biology
4. Ecology
5. Geography
Optional Humanities and Arts:
1. History and Culture
2. Literature
3. Music
4. Dance
5. Theater
6. Mixed arts
Optional extra sports, both individual and team.
5. Wrong teaching
Schools make one wrong assumption about students: they are all already motivated to learn. While in fact creating the conditions for this motivation is their main job.
Schools then make another wrong assumption: it needs to be systematic in order to be effective.In fact systematic things tend to be boring, the motivation is gone.
The main ingredients of education success are motivation/curiosity and understanding founding principles.
What happens if you have only 20 hours of chemistry a year? You have to make it interesting and interactive. You have to build understanding and pinpoint the founding principles. So after the 20 hours you will know the basics. The teacher will have to focus on the students and be effective. Simplicity is underrated. Because the distractions and overcomplications will be gone.
When we accept mediocre educational systems, we accept mediocrity not just then and there. We accept it for the whole world, for life. And this is absolutely unacceptable.
We just need to throw away our current education system. Not reform it. Destroy school as it is and rebuild it from the ground up. In the new system, the student and their happiness and motivation will be the priority. Not teachers, headmasters, corporations, the government or the occasional crazy ambitious parent. The student should be in charge and be mentally and emotionally supported and entertained, so they want to learn, no matter if they are ten or thirty years old. It’s possible and there is no alternative. Otherwise we settle for mediocrity with no end in sight.
I leave you with 3 wonderful and funny talks of the great Sir Ken Robinson that are radical enough to be actually valid.
- Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity?
- Sir Ken Robinson: Bring on the learning revolution!
- Sir Ken Robinson: How to escape education’s death valley
