Teaching Our Kids To Thrive
People seem to think they know what school is for; and it is teaching our kids to thrive, but do they really? This was the subject Amazon, my daughter studied last week: What is the purpose of education? I reckon you might be surprised of her findings.
Yeni okul yaklaşımının unsurları; kişiselleştirilmiş, çeşitlilik içeren bir eğitim programı, bu programın çocukların içinde bulunduğu toplulukla etkileşim halinde olması, öğretmenlerin desteklenerek öğrencilerin ilgisini uyandırabilen ve öğrencileri sürece dâhil edebilen kolaylaştırıcılar olabilmelerinin sağlanması olarak sıralanabilir.
What Has Been The Purpose Of Education
Seth Godin , one of the contemporary innovative minds of our époque, in his Ted Youth Talk ‘Stop Stealing Dreams’explores the same question.
Amazon wondered if the school was creating a cultural cohesion amongst people that led to more harmony. Was education increasing the pool of knowledge available to us all? Maybe it allowed people to make better decisions about everything?
Seth explains that our ancestors built schools to train people to become productive workers for the growing industrialised economy. Therefore schools taught spending time indoors as opposed to in connection with nature, obedience to authority figures and sitting passively for long periods of time.
Özgür Bolat, a rising figure in Educational Leadership and School improvement draws our attention to similarities between schools and prisons. Most institutions limit freedom in this way.
Schools have also been training people to buy more consumables, so that there are enough people buying what is produced. We learn in schools to hold back, because we are likely to be asked to do more.
Technology allows us to search for anything on the Internet. Therefore we don’t really need to memorise anything. Why, then, do most education programmes emphasise that children memorise facts?
Repurposing Education In The Future: Providing An Environment Of Learning
We know that as humans we are naturally curious, diverse and creative. According to author and educator, Sir Ken Robinson teaching our kids to thrive would involve a personalised, diverse educational program with community interaction, support for the teachers to become engaging and stimulating facilitators.
More and more people find ways shaping their own learning experience. For example, founded in 2006 as a non-profit organisation by one man, the Khan Academy‘s 3,400 top quality teaching materials has reached 10 million students for free in just ten years.Their mission is to create ‘a free world-class education for anyone anywhere.’
In the Post Industrial, Postmodern world we need to cultivate creative minds. Satish Kumar says children are like the seeds, all they need to grow to their nature, is water, sun and good soil. Let’s provide the milieu for the seeds of our kids’ talents and potential give fruit!
Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)image:NWABR
