Remodel of the education system

 

After watching Sugata Mitra's Ted Talk , it really got me thinking about the history of the education system and where we are at today.  Sugata describes the present day education system -not as broken, but as obsolete, outdated and irrelevant. I agree that although 300 years ago there was a need to focus on hand writing, reading and math, todays desired skills are much different and our education system needs a remodel.  Even though we don't know what the jobs of the future will be or what skills we are going to need, we can start to look at the future of learning and consider alternatives to our current way of doing things. We can consider how we can adapt present day schooling to prepare students with current day skills they will use in everyday life.  

We want to encourage students to be creative and think outside the box yet our current education system treats all students the same and does not provide for individualized learning. The idea of students teaching themselves resonated with me because very little of what I learned in school prepared me for my career. I self taught myself through motivation and learned through experience. It reminded me students learn best in the absence of a teacher. In Sugata's Ted Talk, when he gives the students computers, he is curious about what would happen if he gave them an advance challenge in a foreign language and the children had no experience. What he learned is they figured it out and didn't give up. They helped each other and independently through broadband, collaboration and encouragement learned how to use the computers he left.  Regardless of other disparities, and nobody teaching them or showing them how to do it, they learned without even realizing they were learning. This proved it wasn't just the rich kids that were smart, it meant the rich kids had more access and when the less fortunate students had opportunities they too could learn. He made it his mission to provide access to computers to all students. 

Having a hired  "grannie", to ask supportive questions and praise progress as they went along, certainly might have also helped their independent learning. After watching this Ted Talk- I pondered the question what if we can all be "grannies" in teaching. What if learning is the product of guidance and support instead of lecturing and teaching? This seems like a logical approach so why don't we see more of it? I agree with Sugata that encouraging and saluting students learning works better than telling them what to do.  My favorite quote was when he said "It's not about making learning happen it is about letting it happen. The teacher sets the process in motion and then steps back in awe of the learning process". This aligns with my philosophy of teaching and my preference for facilitating a classroom. 

I also reflected on the idea of setting up organized, self learning environments and reflected on my own experience with self paced webinars and alternative independent learning styes.  I considered the question he asks- what if we don't need to go to school at all? When you need to know something you find out in 2 minutes, this is true,  I reflected on his thoughts about heading toward a future where knowing is absolute. I think he is right. It is more important to know how to find the answer to then to have all the answers. Information is changing so quickly that to stay up to date and relevant we need to have a more fluent adjustable way to get information to young people and to adults. The internet is our current day encyclopedia and gives us access to lots of information and we need to help students learn how to navigate it safely for themselves with little censorship. I do worry about relying so heavily on technology that we take the human connection out of learning.  I worry about students missing out on the relationships during independent learning, so we need to make sure that it also includes clear expectations, opportunities for support, encouragement, collaboration and growth. We know since the covid pandemic that we have started to shift the way we teach and the way we learn. Many families began working and learning out of their homes and lots of asynchronous education happened.  In person teaching had to quickly shift to online platforms and breakout rooms became a teaching strategy. We have had to adapt our teaching and the way we teach now is much different than the way we taught pre-pandemic. The virtual world within google classroom and zoom requires a lot of independence and teachers had to quickly learn how to structure their instruction to keep students engaged virtually. It also required students to be disciplined while they avoided at home distractions.  While in person learning has returned in most places, the desire to continue engaging classrooms must persist and continue to be improved. We can't stay outdated in teaching and need to remodel the way we do education to make sure it is updated, useful and meaningful.