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Lisa Amphlett
Stafford, United Kingdom
Recent Activity
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Lisa commented on the article |
As we move on into the 21st century, agile businesses (ie. the ones who are going to survive and adapt) and their HRM practices are beginning to challenge the lazy approach of simply using whatever college or university credential as an essential criterion for candidate selection.
I wholeheartedly agree, Bruce - I want the person who can do the job, and who is able to demonstrate their skill and passion to me in a range of innovative ways, rather than the person who has the piece of paper that says they can do the job. I immediately doubt anyone who insistently relies on that piece of paper to assert their expertise - whether they're a doctor, teacher, mechanic or plumber. Far easier to convince me by showing me!
The implication of this perspective is that teaching young people a lesson of dependence - that their value and success is measured against someone else's quantitative framework (teacher, examiner, employer, for example) - is woefully inadequate. Successful, happy and independent young people will learn to seek their own, more qualitative measure of value and success as their starting point. Sounds like Sudbury encourages that...
We are so far from even glimpsing this here in the UK - yet parents who consider often very costly private education (whilst still funding a public system they choose not to use) are lambasted for being elitist; those who can't find what they're looking for in the private system are treated with gross suspicion for home educating.
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Lisa commented on the article |
Bruce - this is so well articulated, thank you.
How do we get people to challenge such deeply held assumptions in order that we can see change? In the main, we currently do not see the capacity for learning as a wholly individualistic and unique ability that each of us possesses and can develop using a potentially infinite combination of media, methods, content and approaches. So many of us have been taught to see "learning" as hierarchical - something that we give to someone who is lower down the pecking order than us, or something we are given by someone higher up.
Many conventional relationships that adults participate in appear to bear this theory out - I see a scary dependency on "experts" (academic, governmental, professional, medical, social), whose very existence relies on the perpetuation of such a dependency myth. So, is it possible for many (most?) people to challenge these assumptions, when their daily life appears to reinforce the principle belief that one's path in life is, to a greater degree, dictated by other people who are higher up the social chain?
I speak mainly in relation to the UK state education system, but the majority of parents (and adults in general) I speak to see the answer in more structure, control, discipline and conformity, rather than less. The concept of children as inherently lazy, stupid and ignorant prevails, and any suggestion that giving control of learning (back!) over to the individual is typically treated with scorn and mistrust. Children are viewed as pathological, rather than the system.
Despite their many disempowered experiences of a finite, meagre education and subsequent unsatisfactory or unfulfilling employment, those people still believe the answer is more schooling, not less. Unless people experience the joy of controlling their own destinies through lifelong, self-directed learning, they will always see the destinies of children as rightly in the hands of others. -
Lisa commented on the article |This is the stuff! I wish I could see an explosion of such commentary from UK state school teachers of all disciplines. I think we're probably 50-100 years away from that.
I would also add that the framing of video games and TV as unhelpful to learning is probably itself pretty outdated. All these channels are part of the world in which we now live: a learner can always engage with them productively, assuming that valuable skills are not necessarily conventional, academic, typically vocational or even quantifiable. Passivity is the choice of the individual, not the fault of the medium. -
Lisa commented on the article |@Meenakshi - I think that we're all in agreement aren't we? Standardisation is not necessary for learning (I would go so far as to argue it destroys real learning). I cannot comment for the US, but certainly in the UK I see a government-driven standardisation used to achieve a level of efficiency in state schools, rather than an opportunity for profit-making.
I am not just talking about SATs or examinations, of which there are relatively few. Standardisation is anything that sets an externally-defined standard of education to which children are expected to comply and I include the national curriculum in that.
To illustrate my point: all state-educated children in the UK are taught to read at a much earlier age than their European counterparts as per the national curriculum. It's efficient because a teacher can then deal with larger classes and supposedly children need less of his or her individual time. Is it effective? You bet not. We have some of the worse levels of literacy in Europe, particularly amongst boys. And they just fall through the net. If children were allowed to progress at their own rate, this wouldn't happen to anywhere near the same degree, but that wouldn't be seen as "efficient".
Whether standardisation is costly or not (and I don't think in the UK it is, it's just an overrated, paternalistic groupthink assumption) we all agree that it's unhelpful. What is undeniably costly in the UK are the attempts to fix the problems that standardisation starts - all of a sudden, small classes, non-classroom environments, choice in learning styles/paces, choice in learning content are held up as innovative in helping what are now labelled "problem children" to learn! This is what really costs the taxpayer. Such a waste when learning could cost next-to-nothing, particularly given the technologies we now have.
To finish my point, as a director of a very 21st century business - we design web-based applications and services - I wouldn't be interested in using the national curriculum of ANY country as a yardstick by which to measure a potential employee's suitability. We don't think that school, in and of itself, is important, or that exam results tell us much. What we look for are very smart people who are passionate about learning, people who can and do teach themselves, and people who are happy to take on responsibility, holding themselves to account. We don't see many of them, but when we do, we snap them up. I think that as industries evolve this century, our approach will become more and more common (it already is). Thanks for this awesome discussion. -
Lisa commented on the article |
Hear hear. I would love to hear other people's ideas of what "thinking big" actually means.
Standardisation of teaching inevitably means standardisation of pupils, and an increase in standardisation results in ever-decreasing margins of acceptability between which children must fall (comply) or be excluded from the provision of education (in a variety of senses).
This approach towards standardisation is understandable if ill-conceived - when trying to improve something, it is a very human desire to subject it to scrutiny and and attempt to control it. In addition, the requirements for the efficient operation of a school with limited resources often requires that the approach taken is about the delivery of a package of education rather than being pupil-centred.
However, a standardised, conformist workforce is the last thing that 21st century industry is looking for. School systems as they typically stand were far better suited to a pre-war era, where industry dictated the need for a predictable quota of skilled/semi-skilled/manual employees to pass through the system. The problem (as I see it) is that technology and industry has moved on far more quickly than schools (and universities etc) have evolved.
Successful attempts to make schools more pupil-centred (recreating homely or other external environments, valuing the importance of creative play and less specifically measurable and markable activities, allowing children to be more autonomous in their learning etc) have clearly demonstrated the real abilities children possess when their chosen path of learning is unhindered. But this kind of approach is obviously very costly - and, some might argue, rather pointless when there is a real world already out there for the taking.
My big thinking is that the very technology that the 21st century has only just started to provide us with will be the catalyst for real, radical change. It could very well be that schools aren't the most appropriate medium through which many children are best able to learn. The internet has already made access to information far easier and more equitable than ever before - and developments are occurring so quickly I think there is very exciting stuff ahead.
The shift is moving from "teaching" and "education" to "learning" - the learner holds more power than ever before. And the best teachers (the ones who see the problems with standardisation, for example!) are the ones that knew that all along.
