I had the privilege of attending some amazing schools when I was growing up. Schools that had produced important political leaders, national sports captains, titans of industry. And yet, I now look back on my upper middle class education and I feel robbed.
I’m not here to bash our education system. Other, more qualified people can do that. And, let’s be honest, they have. The modern education system has enjoyed a proper beating over the past two decades. From this TED talks by Sir Ken Robinson all the way through to often repeated insights like, memorisation and standardised testing is outdated and focused on creating a workforce based on the outdated needs of the industrial revolution. This article by the World Economic Forum is an example.
What outcomes does our current education system aim to deliver?
Instead, I want to ask one question; what outcomes does our current education system aim to deliver?
My daughter is eight and she goes to our local public school. By all accounts it is a pretty good school. From what I can tell she goes to school for myriad reasons. Here are a the most obvious ones:
- So she can read and write
- In order for her to know ‘stuff’
- So she can learn obedience – her school’s motto is: Courtesy and Co-operation (which I translate to obedience and compliance)
- To make friends – and learn social skills
- To learn how to fit in. This is a big one. What I see amongst her peers is an almost compulsive need to be accepted – it amplifies an already powerful human instinct
- To learn how to speak in public confidently
- For her to learn that she needs to respect adults and authority
- To memorise important facts (as deemed by someone in the education department)
- So she can grow an interest in science and maths
- To be competitive – not that she needed any help with that
- To keep her in a safe environment while my wife and I work (glorified babysitting)
By looking at the list above, if I had to answer the question on what our education aims to deliver, I would say it is to mould our children into contributing, amenable members of society while we, their parents, are amenable and contribute to society.
And it works. My daughter reads, writes, is developing a work ethic, and is incredibly weary getting things wrong and of hurting other’s feelings. But she’s losing something in the process. She’s lost some of her confidence and no longer expresses herself through what she wears. She has lost her indifference to being wrong. And she doesn’t reach the peaks of pure joy she did before starting school.
And I play a role in this system. I’m waking up to the fact that part of what I believed parenting to be is nothing more conditioning a child to be well behaved, to be respectful of authority, to not make mistakes. And I do this because as part of my conditioning I inadvertently learnt that, that is the right way for kids to be.
I’m also realising that the behaviour I want from my children erodes something in them. Something that’s free, full of vitality, that allows play and embraces fearlessness. And as I think about what I’m seeing and what I am putting my children through, I know I don’t want to take this from them. I want something different for them. I want my daughter to feel free to wear clothes that match her mood, I want her to break things, to defy me, and I want to be OK with her doing these things.
The reason I feel robbed by my education is because that part that needs to die for the acquiescence and the conformity to take hold never does die. Instead it hides in the dark like an abused animal trying to stay invisible. And over the years the child-like quality comes back, out of the darkness. It’s disappointed and hurt at the abuse it had to endure. It feels betrayed, and I feel I missed something, something that could have changed my life significantly had I only known it was still there and how to listen to it.
Maybe we have to ask a better question.
I don’t know how to fix our education system. I don’t know how we allow our kids to hold onto their creativity or how we move away from the traditional schooling system. There have been several avenues that seem to have delivered promising results. Schools such as Montesorri, Steiner and others that encourage child-centred education methods.
However, the first step to a solution might be to build an education system with the sole aim of helping our children answer the question, what does living a good life mean to me?
Hey G – interesting. If you haven’t already checked it out, have a look at the Scandinavian model – they don’t start formal schooling til 7 in Sweden & Finland. All play based before then, as it should be. As a teacher I have to say that your last point is problematic!!
Hey Milly… I had a look at Norway – which many claim to have one of the most progressive systems in the world. What I like best about their system – which you mention, is that children are allowed to maximise their time playing, that they aren’t given homework etc. And I agree – my post is problematic in that it does, perhaps, ask for the impossible. But what I am thinking is, if we could rebuild our education system today, what would the ideal look like? Would we have schools? Would we have different schools for different kids based on their interests and how they prefer to learn? Would we have teachers? What would classes look like? Because, surely, schools should focus on enabling little people to become anything they want, and help them understand what they want?
And once we have a vision of the ideal, that would be something we could strive towards. Would love to know what you think.
Finally – on the last point. It’s an observation relating to a structural shortcoming of the system. If you consider what teachers are paid and how, during COVID, the Government’s aim was to get kids back to school so that parents could focus on or go back to work – speaks volumes. It does the teaching profession a great disservice.