Time magazine is running an article on education and how little it has changed to meet the demands of the technological age (thanks to Dave Warlick for the pointer). It seems to me that those holding the reins of the education system have a tendency to fixate on things. For example, take the total obsession with Shakespeare (whose work I love, incidentally), as if there are no other playwrights in the English language worthy of a teenager’s attention. What about Marlowe, Stoppard, Shaw, Pinter, Beckett, Wilde, o’Neill, Williams, to name but a few?

Perhaps this is not the case elsewhere in the world, but in the UK, certainly, GCSE English includes a Shakespeare as standard. Most kids hate it, don’t understand it, can’t relate to it, see no point in it.

But English literature isn’t the only or even the main problem. The gap between the skills taught in schools and the skills needed to make headway in the world is enormous. In this article, Wallis and Steptoe say: “This is a story about the big public conversation the nation is not having about education”. Not having? Bloggers have been banging on about this for ages. Perhaps now that the subject has gained a profile in such a reputable publication, however, we will start to see some results.

In America, at least, apparently, “this week the conversation will burst onto the front page, when the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce… releases a blueprint for rethinking American education from pre-K to 12 and beyond to better prepare students to thrive in the global economy.”

Recently, I attended a lecture given by Joe Harkin, during which he indicated that a taskforce was investigating the future of education in the UK. This was in response to my observation regarding the proposed raising of the minimum school leaving age in the UK from 16 to 18. My argument was that extending the amount of time disaffected or marginalised kids must spend in a school system that is already failing them would do nothing but massage a few numbers so that the government could tick some boxes – it would add absolutely nothing to the lives of those young people. Dr Harkin asserted that this taskforce includes representatives from tertiary education facilities as well as employers. Hopefully we will begin to see some sensible changes being introduced. My concern is that the system is now so far out of touch that “some changes” will be woefully inadequate. As the Time article puts it: “can our public schools, originally designed to educate workers for agrarian life and industrial-age factories, make the necessary shifts?”

One increasingly important skill is critical thinking – something that is being majored in for me and my classmates on this MA course. The assumption is that we are now in a position to aspire to this level of thinking. However, with the surplus of information available to them on the Internet, kids needs to be learning this skill from the off. Research quoted in the Time article echoes my own observation of my sons who will harvest great swathes of information from the web and submit that as research into a subject, having made no effort to assess the objectivity, validity, reliability of the material. The observation was: “We kind of assumed this generation was so comfortable with technology that they know how to use it for research and deeper thinking, but if they’re not taught these skills, they don’t necessarily pick them up.” I suspect they are not alone in their initial assumption!
My classmates and I recently undertook an online discussion about collaborative learning. How I wish that this paragraph had been available for me to quote before it closed: “Teachers need not fear that they will be made obsolete. They will, however, feel increasing pressure to bring their methods–along with the curriculum–into line with the way the modern world works. That means putting a greater emphasis on teaching kids to collaborate and solve problems in small groups and apply what they’ve learned in the real world. Besides, research shows that kids learn better that way than with the old chalk-and-talk approach.”

I suspect the system needs to be revamped from the ground up, and that is going to be one heck of a hard sell!