During the past month, there has been a media focus on the drop in Literacy and Numeracy standards in Australian compared to the global community. To arrive at a reason for this phenomenon would be too broad to address in this short article except to say that we either don’t have a rigorous enough curriculum or students are just not being taught within their own learning styles for success in the changing climate of 21st century educational needs.
It does beg the question as to what the education community as a whole needs to do to return our Aussie system to its former glory of being consistently in the top eight on the world stage in all learning areas until very recent times. To arrive at solutions often means looking back and analysing the way we deliver education to our students. Do we truly whet their imaginations to know how to be critically thinking “learners” or are we simply in a state of flux where no one seems to know the way forward in a world where the goal posts are shifting as I write.
Sir Ken Robinson image credit: https://blog.simonassociates.net
Recently I was reminded of a clever TED talk from Sir Ken Robinson called Changing Education Paradigms. It was an engaging expose on this topic and makes for essential viewing as this man’s brilliance and insightful. https://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_changing_education_paradigms
It was delivered 18 years ago and at the time when I thought he had really nailed the problem. However accurate I feel he was, and still is, we just didn’t heed his advice and continue to miss the mark. This was reinforced by a more recent video by Prince Ea https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqTTojTija8
Prince Ea rocks in his opinions on a variety of topics but what struck me was that this young man, from a different time and background saw exactly what Sir Ken Sir 18 years ago. Yet “the system” continues to haggle with the idea of change and how to make it relevant to our children. They are lost between the old formal way of learning and struggling to keep pace with how to implement changes that would seriously challenge the status quo as we know it. Innovations such as open classrooms, a return to project based learning and injections of funding into school based reading programs demonstrate the intention to find solutions, but are we missing the mark?
Prince Ea
Why am I bringing this to the attention of our readers? Well I tend to agree with both Sir Ken and Prince Ea. I am always trying to work on making education relevant to students and to ensure we have a diverse range of tutors to teach them. I know it is am imperative to give our children opportunities to reach their potential in a world that is ever changing. The sameness of the last century is just not reaching the mark!
Although the luxury of my stance as a tutoring business cannot be emulated in a busy classroom, we can really benefit from the wisdom of Sir Ken and Prince Ea – that time has stood still in the broader education arena for far too long and it is time to change the way we deliver education as a nation for the sake of our children and the future of our world.