Education - where are we going and why?

 Over the last few weeks there have been a number of articles and books that have come my way about education in general and where we are heading. It's something I have been in the midst of for a long time, looking at change and how the system is working, or not. I feel very strongly about this and every time a new article comes my way I read it and am sitting here going yes, yes, but how can we get others to do the same thing?

I think we would all agree that the current system of education does not fit everyone, there will never be a one size fits all, but the question is, when are we going to change what we are doing so we cater for more of our young people. I wrote a blog about this in 2018 - nothing seems to have changed in that time and I wonder when, or if, anything will. There seem to be a bunch of people keen to move forward, but then a group definitely keen to stay put, or even go backwards! One of the podcasts I listened to this week even comments on the way the NCEA changes that are currently in progress are actually taking us back a step. This podcast is a conversation with Bevan Holloway, the founder of SMATA, ex HOD of English at Wellington Girls College. This podcast talks about the concept of 'play' in a secondary school and the experiences that schools can offer that challenge what many would consider traditional secondary school. Well worth a listen. It reminded me of my blog around the Lifelong Kindergarten - play being an important part of learning at any age.

I think that the education system that has been around in the same format for a very long time has not kept up with what students or the current employment system needs. There is a great blog by Robin Sutton published this week about this very thing - I love the title:

Our educational purpose: compliant economic units, or creative human beings?

He says "There was a general view that education didn’t meet the needs of the group of young people who are most at risk." I believe we have known this for a while but not all schools are trying to do anything radical about it and when they do, they are often slammed for being too radical, or not focusing on the qualifications at the end.

Derek Wenmoth's Futuremakers blog Pedagogy of Compliance talks about our actual system of schooling and Frederick Taylor's pedagogy vs John Dewey. It gives a good background of how we got to where we are but also challenges us to move forward and make change, to take risks and to move forward. Derek is always writing about the future and what we could be doing and his Futuremakers site has more to read on this very topic. I look forward to his blogs -  I read them and say yes, yes, yes....

As the world is slowly moving on from Covid19 there have been many articles around changing the education system to better cater for needs of students. Many young people excelled by working from home - others wanted to be in a school environment. It brings up many questions about what we are wanting to achieve and how students learn. Time to revolutionize our education system is an article around schooling in Massachusetts but is relevant to us in New Zealand as well. It challenges educators to:

 "create the conditions necessary to meet students where they are, and move toward student-centered, whole-learner approaches that are trauma-informed and more responsive to individual students’ needs."

So, where to from here?

The system needs to change. This will not happen overnight, but we can make it happen, one small step at a time. Keep pushing those boundaries, keep challenging each other, keep sharing information and ideas so we can move forward.