July 10, 2006

Maybe the tide is turning

The other day I posted a link to Ken Robinson's brilliant talk at TED, about how our schools are educating out the creativity of our children. Today I came across this piece by Maurice Holt on what he calls Slow Schooling. The whole piece is well worth reading. This extract gives a feel of what he is talking about:

"Since education is essentially about equipping our children with the ability to act responsibly in a complex society, the idea of a Slow School follows very readily from the metaphor of Slow. It brings to mind an institution where students have time to discuss, argue, and reflect upon knowledge and ideas, and so come to understand themselves and the culture they will inherit. It would be a school that esteems the professional judgment of teachers, that recognizes the differing interests and talents of its pupils, and works with its community to provide a rich variety of learning experiences.

This is a far cry from schools that measure their success by the ability of students to pass tests and meet numerical targets defined by obscure "standards" - where you get a good grade, as W.E. Deming remarked, "By feeding back to the teacher the same marbles that the teacher gave out to the class." Ticking boxes on multiple-choice tests has very little to do with education, yet this is the basic driving force behind the No Child Left Behind Act in the United States, and in England as the result of policies established by Conservative governments and reinforced by Mr Blair's New Labour administrations. Public education in these two democracies has taken as its model not the moral character of slow food but the commercial character of fast food."

Posted by richard at July 10, 2006 5:29 PM
Comments

http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html has some mcluhan-style thoughts about schooling vs education, and his full book is online at his site :-)

Posted by: Dave Crossland at July 15, 2006 11:43 PM

Gatto's paper provides a useful caricature of the schooling system, that highlights some of what is going on, but like any caricature by highlighting some features it also obscures other, equally important, features and so in the end provides us with an over simple picture as basis for action. But thanks for the tip anyway Dave, which has prompted me to think about writing something based on what he is saying and expressing some of my reservations.

Posted by: richard at July 18, 2006 12:05 PM
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