Education

Finding a definition

On our first class together we tried to define the concept of Education. We agreed that this term not only refers to the combination of knowledge we acquire at school, but also it refers to the kind of knowledge we learn at home (respect, politeness, manners…).

What is the problem with Education?

If we focus on the Education we receive at school, we will discover that it is not good at all. We spend a lot of hours sitting on a chair pretending we are listening to the teacher and at the end of the day we cannot remember anything. This is an important problem in our society and we have to try and solve it.

We can say that the main cause of this problem is that Education is controlled by the Government. That means that all the political reforms that take place to “improve” the educational system only aim to pretend that the governing political party cares about education. For this reason, the reforms do not work and children do not learn, but rather that they only get bored.

What Ken Robinson has to say about Education

Ken Robinson, who really cares about Education, has noticed this problem and has tried to offer different solutions. During this class, we saw a video in which he gave a speech about creativity and education. According to him, we all are very creative when we are born. We are not afraid of mistakes and that means that we tried to solve our little problems with extraordinary solutions. If they do not work, nothing happens, we just try again. The problem is that we lose this creativity when we begin school. It seems a bit strange, but it is the reality. As Robinson says, school kills the creativity of children. They have to memorise a lot of concepts that they do not really understand and if they make a mistake they get in trouble, so why are they going to try to answer the questions of the teacher?

How can we solve this problem?

After watching this video we can guess that one of the solutions to this paradigm would be to completely change the school system. This is something that we, as teachers, cannot do. This change has to be done by the Government. So, what can we do? We have to change our way of teaching. We have to promote cooperative learning and give our students something enjoyable. They have to learn, yes, but we both decide how. We can make things more attractive (debates, talking about topics that they really enjoy, doing a different kind of activities, playing games, doing projects…) and they will learn more while they are having a good time.