Anxiety about education is high, and everyone seems concerned about what our education system needs to prepare our children, and our society, for the future. I've been thinking, writing, and speaking about education for more than 10 years, and I've come to a number of conclusions.
First, the education system we have now is not the education system we will need. What we have now is essentially modelled on 19th century mass production techniques where we move students through an assembly line of grade levels. But this results in mass production workers, and the world no longer wants high-wage, mass production workers. Instead, high-wage countries like ours need creative, innovative workers, each of whom has been educated in a unique way to bring out their particular talents and abilities. This requires an education that is customized for each student.
To accomplish this, we will need three major shifts: a dramatic increase in distance education to widen the range of experts available to teach; an intensive effort to harness computers to allow older students to pursue self-directed learning; and a significant change in the role of teachers from lecturers to tutors. None of this will happen without a long and messy battle among the eleven groups involved in the education process. Children will suffer, and education results will vary dramatically from place to place, and classroom to classroom.
But what can we do to improve education right now? I believe there are two things. First, we must tell parents that they have the primary responsibility for their children's education, and must act accordingly. Increasingly, the children delivered to school are, as a group, ill-mannered, over-stimulated, violent, undisciplined brats, addicted to television, computer games, and the Internet, ill-disposed to learning, and unreceptive to the efforts of their teachers. It's not all children who are like this, but there is a sizable and steadily growing minority that is.
Accordingly, schools and governments should embark on a campaign to inform parents of their responsibilities to the system. Specifically, it is parents' responsibility to deliver their children to school receptive and ready to learn. Entering students should be self-disciplined and polite, and enjoy books because their parents have read to them since birth. It's also the parent's responsibility to be involved and know what's going on in the schools, and to blow the whistle if schools are not doing their jobs.
The second thing we can do right now is to firm up school discipline policies. This is not a 'zero tolerance' policy, because every rule needs to be tempered with understanding. Instead, it is a policy whose only aim is to create a secure and supportive environment for learning. Any child that repeatedly disturbs that environment should be removed for the good of the others. If this means alternative schools for the troubled or troublesome, so be it. If it means expelling students who have no interest in learning, let it be. Teachers are spending far too much time coping with discipline problems, and it is interfering with their ability to teach.
We have a lot of work to do regarding our education system, both now and in future, and it is too important to leave to the politicians and educators. Each of us need to get involved because education will determine the kind of world we will be forced to live in.
© Copyright, IF Research, September 1999.
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