In many ways, the education system of today still looks a lot like it did decades ago, besides the addition of computer technology, obtrusive security cameras and maybe a few more cars on campus. Everything in the world around it has changed and will continue to change drastically, while education, as a global system, remains largely untransformed, which leads me to wonder what future are we really educating children for?
While true education begins at home (that’s another article for another day!) there is much that the school system can and should do in adding value to the education of young minds and creating confident, competent, astute and employable candidates for the adult world.
But it’s not going to be as easy as some minor tweaks. It’s going to take a complete overhaul. As educational expert, Sir Ken Robinson championed, what we need is not reform but revolution.
Here are the systems and skills that would make 21st century education truly worthwhile:
- Apprenticeship — The only thing students leave high school capable of doing is being students. But what if apprenticeship was a foundational part of a student’s learning experience from the time they enter high school? Students would get experience in the working world by shadowing a professional in a particular field, seeing how they work and even getting a chance to do some of the things, not as a one-off opportunity, but as a fundamental part of their education. Learn more about this idea in my previous article, Apprenticeship and Internship as the Future of Work and Education.
- Immersion and Content-Relevance — A key part of why apprenticeship works is that students are immersed in an environment where they can apply what they are learning in school immediately as they learn it. The modern education system is predicated on the idea that what you learn now, you will apply years later. That does not foster true meaningful learning. That is not how the human brain works. Students need to see immediate, repeated and useful applications of what they learn in school. If I catch some water in my watering can with the intention of watering my plants next week, then by next week, when I return to the watering can, I’ll find some of the water there but most of it will have evaporated. That’s how knowledge works too. The longer you wait to use it is the more you stand to lose it. And then, as adults, students have to learn a lot of the fundamentals all over again and then what were the 16 years of schooling for?
- Clear paths defined early — Students need to see where this whole education thing is going so put them on a career path early. Instead of letting them pick subjects in school, let them pick careers and stick to them for a while. You might be thinking, Won’t that limit their options, boxing them into careers so early? What if they hate it and they get stuck? Clearly, they would be allowed some flexibility, maybe pursuing a new career each academic year or sticking to one if they truly feel that it’s a good match. However, the truth is that the sooner they are exposed to career fields in a sustained way is the sooner they can truly decide which one truly fits and the less likely they are to make poor hurried decisions at the end of high school and end up stuck in a field they hate for the rest of their adult life simply because of bad information.
- Career exposure — Annual Career Day is not enough. Students are confused and limited when it comes to career choices. Even the most brilliant and capable students finish high school and university bewildered as to what to do with their lives because liking or excelling at a subject in school does not necessarily mean that you will like it or excel at it as a career. Furthermore, the world has so many careers to offer but many students continue to be caged into the various subdivisions of the doctor-lawyer-Indian chief narrative. Internships and apprenticeships can help with this but there also need to be career talks that are more targeted and more regular than just once a year. Check out the first episode of my Miseducated Career Guide Series here.
- Working together across age groups — School is the only time in our lives when we are limited to working only with people of the exact same age. In the real world, there are no age barriers. They certainly don’t exist in the workplace. Even children, when they are not in school, play, work and build relationships with their siblings, cousins and neighbours who differ in age, so why are classrooms divided by age? This, I believe, is one of the root causes of ageism and generation gaps that create barriers to growth and change in the workplace. The alternative multi-age classroom has been shown to have innumerable benefits to students’ learning autonomy, interpersonal skills and critical thinking ability.
- Integrated studies — Yes, there is a subject in the Jamaican primary school system known as Integrated Studies but that’s not what we’re talking about here. When I listen to economists on the news forecasting the next economic downturns I think, “Wow! They’re such great historians!” Yet, in school, we treat economics and history as discrete fields, neatly package them and call them “subjects.” But there are no subjects. These divisions are arbitrary and artificial. There is only one subject and that is life. All these other fields are just avenues to learn about that one all-important subject. Yes, subject divisions make it easier to hire teachers, to create timetables and to shuffle students from one class to another throughout the day but it does not serve to build the critical thinking and problem-solving skills we are so desperately longing to foster in our children. Interdisciplinary and trans-disciplinary learning are not ideals. They are a need. The world is full of wicked problems, so inextricably intertwined that the roots are invisible. In the real world, there are no divisions and once we teach students to see that economics is history and geography is science and biology is chemistry and literature is physics is music is art is life, then we will start to see the “wicked solutions” we so long for.
- Highly qualified passionate and well-paid facilitators — We cannot raise education to the next level if we do not raise educators to the next level. Read that again. Find out more about a bottom-up approach to a good education system in my article, Adding Value to Education from the Bottom Up.
- Basic adult knowledge and skills — Building a résumé. Creating a career portfolio. Filing taxes. Mental health education, emotional hygiene and coping skills. Driving. Basic entrepreneurial skills. Cooking. Home gardening. How insurance works. Investment. Kitchen gardening. Basic home repairs. Basic car repairs. Communication skills. How to act in an interview. Sound health and nutrition practices. How to establish an online presence. Brand building… and the list goes on. Like I said, education starts in the home so I’m not saying all of these things need to be taught in school. But somewhere between birth and the time a human enters the adult world, the things they are actually going to need to know for day-to-day living should be taught.
- Civics — It is a relic of a Jamaican education that I never met but I have heard many people in my life sing its praises. By all indications, it really seems like something worth revisiting. There is so much talk about molding children into decent humans, teaching them to be good citizens and yet, we got rid of the one subject in school that was solely devoted to doing just that. Now might be the time to bring it back, no?
- Tailored syllabi focused less on information and more on skills — In a world where students can access bucket loads of information right at the digits, shouldn’t we be more focused on teaching them how to sift out the irrelevant, how to think, how to synthesize, how to manipulate information and other requisite skills for navigating the modern world? If they can access raw information anywhere, whenever they need it, do we need to spend 8 hours a day 5 days a week loading them up with content? Brains are not buckets. Brains are builders.
- Dynamic syllabi and infrastructure that change with the times — The world is ever-changing. In their content, their organizational systems and their physical infrastructures, schools need to be designed in an agile way so they can move as the world moves. Multi-purpose spatial designs, multi-purpose time slots, flexible syllabi — that is the future of education.
- Critical thinking — It’s been the biggest buzzword in education for the past decade. It’s the central goal of every single educational reform programme in the world right now. But the big question is: How do we do it? How do we get students to think critically? The answer is simple: get students to solve real-world problems as a regular part of their daily life. Well… how do we do that? That is not as clear-cut. It looks different wherever you go. The good thing is it is what underpins a lot of the ideas we’ve discussed previously — the dynamic syllabi and infrastructure, the focus on skills instead of content, integrated studies, apprenticeship opportunities and the like. It’s not far-fetched. We just need to open our minds to the revolution.
- Minimal focus on ranking and grades — I see how it destroys them and there’s no real case for how it benefits them in the real world. The Scandinavians and other Europeans have been seeing great success by pursuing this learning style. Maybe the rest of us could give it a try, even incrementally.
- Respect the arts and other non-academic disciplines — We need art. There! I said it! We need it! Art and artistic careers are not going anywhere but students who hold on to their creativity in school often have to fight for it. Students who want to pursue something “non-academic” like a hands-on trade or skill have to fight for it. They have to fight teachers and students and a vast world of adults to view it as valuable. But the arts are valuable to all of us. And integrating creative arts and skills training with learning can even make the learning process more fruitful. As famed psychologist, Dr. Brené Brown says, “There is no such thing as creative people and non-creative people. There are only people who use their creativity and those who don’t [and] unused creativity is not benign.”
I don’t have all the answers. I don’t even have all the questions. What I have are facts and lived experiences and informed opinions. What I know for a certainty is that the way we continue to do education will not sustain us. We need the revolution and we need it now.
If you have any revolutionary ideas I have not mentioned here, I would love to hear them. Please leave a comment or email misseducationja@gmail.com.
Miss Education JA 