I was watching Sir Ken Robinson on YouTube and he propounded his expert and thoroughly researched theories around the way we view education and where it’s failing our children.
It really got me thinking because much of what he said is in line with our Emotional Intelligence workshop. How we approach educating our kids during the formative 12 years of their lives has an enormous impact on everything around us. Ken Robinson reported that if America were to quantify the true cost of the amount of ‘drop-outs’ from their schooling system it would be in the trillions. As I have said, he is a world renowned expert in this area so he doesn’t thumb suck his ideas. They’re fact and many of us attest to the difficulty we or our children have had trying to unsuccessfully fit into a system that doesn’t allow for individuality.
Watch Sir Ken Robinson's video here:
Now, please know – this is not a teacher/school bashing blog. To the contrary, our schools and teachers are as much victims as the learners they teach. It’s also not unique to South Africa. The world over, with the exception of Finland, has education systems that need constantly to be overhauled and made into seriously child friendly systems.
Sir Ken said something which resonated deeply with me – he said that if you can spark a child’s curiosity, they will teach themselves, you become a facilitator rather than information ATM. How true??
Self-motivation is one of our multiple intelligences, and there is no question, we do better at things with which we engage. And we engage with things that interest us. How to spark the interest in the first place? Teach a child in a manner conducive to learning – not in regimented rows of kids who have to sit and listen and be quiet. In a perfect classroom, those kids would be moving as they learnt, they would be interacting with the subject material in individual and creative ways and the teacher would move amongst them gently guiding them through careful observation of each child’s specific needs.
Like I said – this cannot be a teacher bashing blog – ever! Our teachers simply do not have the resources both within the classroom and without, to operate at this level of engagement.
That means it’s up to us, the parents, to make up the deficit. Sadly, we often promote our need for our child to succeed in predefined areas, rather than recognising his or her need to succeed in areas relative to their unique set of multiple intelligences.
We have been taught to rate language, maths and science as those subjects that will get them where we want them to go and overlook the fact that many kids simply lack interest in those areas.
Does this mean they shouldn’t be exposed to subjects that don’t interest them or they find difficult? Quite the opposite! It means that if they were exposed in the correct manner their natural curiosity would carry them forward even in subjects in which they don’t hold a particularly high emotional intelligence quotient.
As I’m writing this article, I am realising how passionately I feel about this huge subject, so I’m going to break it up into a couple of blogs in order to do it justice.
Stay tuned!
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