Hey Teacher!
Hey, teacher, leave them kids alone.
It was back in the ’80s that the British band Pink Floyd was playing „The Wall” and trying to redefine education with a musical revolution against the teachers. It was a whole society approach to „educate youngsters” which was wrong. Those were different times and the „revolution” against education has helped free a little bit the kids. Now it is time for a new change. We need to take one step further to understand the needs of the upcoming generations.
In the historical approach to education, no change was visible in the public education for a very long time. As the private education rises more these days and parents are investing more into their children paid education, there is need for a new approach. I have marked paid education because besides the state schools, there are private schools and several extra curricular activities which parents are willing to pay for. Teachers being gods in the classroom is no longer useful to the development of kids. It’s true that there is a great lack of home good manner education missing in nowadays world. In the Romanian society you can see the impact of the last 50 years of communism, lack of consideration to nature, lack of involvement in the environment matters, the lack of manners in society and the impact of poverty. Yet despite the great lack of manners, the rise of incomes, the consideration to parenting from society, I see nowadays a totally different need for education: brilliant minds, free access to information, hence learning is more about questioning and no classic education will work for these kids.
THE TRADITIONAL EDUCATION
Although first education used to be something done within the community. Back when there were no social classes, just warriors and hunters, the family was building an education for the future adult. Simple survival skills and experience were shared within the family. And the family was quite numerous.
The first schools appeared in Europe in Greece and Rome due to a social evolution. They were private and the curriculum would be different in each school. Parents from rich or poor families would invest in their son’s education to help them grow into a better person later in life. Girls did not receive the same investment. I can only mark the great gender differences which we no longer witness nowadays.
The spread of Christianity in Medieval Times has opened the choice of schools. It was a good reason to spread the biblical words, to grow heritage for the Latin languages and future generation learnings. Church was educating its public to have them understand the preach. The Medieval Times has built the pillars of the later education from a society point of view. Yet this was the need at the time. Kids needed to move from hunters to society members and learn not to kill, not to steal, to show mercy, etc. These are the pillars of modern urban society, but religion is no longer a key point in our education.
AGAINST TRADITIONAL EDUCATION
The public school education was something more of the 20th century. The industrial age and women starting to work gave children the equal opportunity to spend time together in schools. The rise of public education meant literacy for individuals, democracy for the newly established nations, and equal opportunity for individuals coming from different backgrounds. This also leads to more students going for higher education, to nations investing more in scientific research and less illiterates (at least in the civilised world).
With the development of sciences, the discoveries in various areas, there are no longer questions about God. Today it’s rather about simple personal intimate belief. So church schools are not so much an option for the future.
The system of education relates to the socio-cultural environment of the child. Based on the development of technology and integration of it into our lives, nowadays we have different challenges for the educational system:
- future of industries
- early learning options
- exposure to a wide variety of curiosities
- multitude of choices in every matter: food, sleep, living, entertainment, play, education
SCHOOLING SYSTEMS
As a country with recent development into the private school options, Romania is exploring several methods. Some parents are thrilled to send their children out into Waldorf, Montessori, Reggio Emilia or other International systems. Some of them were built in different times and the education, as free as it may be, it’s not up to date to what needs to be guidance for the little „geniuses” we meet. After learning about each system, I still declare them as being old. I feel the need for something outside the box/the classroom, the teacher center education, the introduction of children in the old society.
STEAM education
While trying to find the right type of education for my son, I have learned about the STEAM play sets and guiding books. It was STEM initially which refers to mixing inter-disciplinary Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. Later the Art was also considered to be important as we need to develop a beautiful practical world. I had very little ideas about this before having a child, but I have learned the pros and cons. As an overall assessment I believe there is a general tendency that school should rather guide children in their learning than trying to force them into learning silly non-sense things. Also when understanding the world around us, there are several multi-disciplinary options which can guide our kids to learn better. If you think of the laptop you are using it is a mix of: science, technology, engineering, art and math. So is the car you are driving. It only makes sense that kids study more into multidisciplinary direction. This is a system still in the early years and it requires a rethinking of the curriculum to mix the disciplines we’ve learned for ages.
THE IMPORTANCE OF THIS GENERATION REQUIREMENTS
They are born with so many devices, so many choices, so much more learning. We are not limited to what we can find within our small universe, we are not building a traditional world, but an international one. And this is how I learned that the stories my son will read need to be curated by us as parents. So I started reading through the titles, the lines, the pros and cons. I spent money on a lot of books, but feel happy to have curated a good list of books which makes him choose right even in the future. We read books with learnings from our international universe, not the classical theft and bribery, gender inequality stories. It’s a hard choice we are fighting to keep, but it will certainly pay off.
THE GREAT LEARNINGS
I started out with books in Romanian with the Conni stories and this was a good start. Conni has different happenings and they are all full of learnings. Then I continued with a few more emotional stories and then we discovered Sharon Rentta. These stories build around common professions and events of how to address the social environment we are familiar with. We also bought books about science and art from our travels. It is very important to curate a good list of books for the children.
THE MODERN CLASSROOM
Even the space where classes take place is no longer the regular teacher centered. It’s more about looking and discovering out the windows, through the glass or by direct experiments. It’s no longer about trusting the adult in the classroom. It’s about challenging the adult and building new ways. The classroom no longer needs to be the classical amphitheatre where you have one central speaker in the room, master owner of truth. These kids don’t care about one adult telling them what they have to do or what is right because others have said so. These kids need to hear options and build stories, robots, design new ways.
WE DO NEED EDUCATION
Against the Pink Floyd lyrics, I reinforce that now more than ever we need education. We just need to help the little ones by curating the books, courses, schools etc. It’s difficult to name the right path for the kids nowadays. They are so great and there are so many possible scenarios that there is no right path. Education should answer their needs and also guide them in the right direction based on all their skills. But I do feel that if education doesn’t change its approach this generation will be made of massive drop-outs and with good reasons.
My first previous thoughts on education here.
