10 ‘Home Truths’ about Schooling and Education
I was frustrated last night as dougbelshaw.com wasn’t working and I couldn’t post the following. These came to me at various points yesterday and kind of melded themselves into a blog post.
So here’s what’s on my mind:
- For there to be ‘good’ parents there must be ‘bad’ parents. The same is true of teachers.
- It is almost impossible to effect a fundamental change in worldview in an individual whom you see as part of a class of ~30 for less than an hour per week.
- To learn how to ride a bicycle you have to take the stabilisers off at some point. In the same way, Internet safety cannot be taught effectively in an artificially closed, filtered, environment.
- More content ? more achievement.
- Being good at passing examinations does not mean an individual will be of benefit of society or ‘flourish’ (in an Aristotelian sense)
- Technology often serves to magnify talents and, moreover, weaknesses in pedagogy.
- If some pilots knew the same about flying as some teachers know about ‘real’ teaching, the aircraft would never get to its destination.
- It may be a cliché to cite time-motion studies that show that the majority of time in school, children are waiting for something to happen. This does not mean, however, that the situation has been rectified.
- If the school is a business, then each department should know how the others fit into corporate aims and philosophies. If it is not, and is child-centred, it needs to have a holistic approach. Either way, most schools need to improve communication between subject areas.
- One of the chief functions of schools in the 21st century is to babysit children for ever-increasing periods of time (think: extended schools).