In August I took part in MOOSE – massive open online sessions – facilitated by Online Teaching Japan. OTJ arose as teachers organised to help each other to transition online during the COVID-enforced lockdown. It’s a great group.
This is the session I lead. (Video and more document links also below).
Destroying Education
Education is not fit for purpose.
The educational, industrial complex creates compliant workers based on an outdated, Industrial Age premise.
In many places “21st-century kids are being taught by 20th-century adults using 19th-century curriculum and techniques on an 18th-century calendar.” (Tom Hierck, education consultant and author)
Legally-mandated and institutionally organised education is standardised to a bell curve. It truly only truly suits a small cluster within that, and refines that cluster to an elite as we go through elementary, junior high and high school and university; perhaps on to post-grad or doctoral studies and become a professor or a fellow.
Organised education an exclusive, elitist, pyramid scheme supported by tax and private finance, often leaving graduates in huge debt with no guarantee of net gain.
It is the modern form of indenture.
The duty of schools
We believe it should be the duty of schools to help learners find their innate talents, help them to develop those talents, and turn them into skills they can use in the working world so they can lead meaningful, happy lives.
Schools should not:
set entrance qualifications
be repositories of knowledge
Use legally-mandated curricula or dictate study methods
group by age or subject
grade or test
pass or fail
set homework
A learner should not be able to fail school.
Schools must realise only THEY can fail the learner.
Schools should:
be places that facilitate learning
prepare learners for the future
take a personalised, holistic approach – mixing focus on the mind and body, combine the theoretical and the applied – not the academic and the vocational
facilitate work in groups, on multi-disciplinary projects, across national boundaries.
Learners should:
choose
discover, develop and revel in their talents
generate a body of work, a portfolio of achievement, not a resume or a collection of badges and certificates
gather testimonials
become masters of practice – not of ologies
I’ll follow up with notes on the session in subsequent posts.
The presentation slides are here.
The opening statement is here.
The task is here.
The questions of the day are here.
Please contribute and get in touch.
Organise. Destroy.
Thanks.