THE WHY
Why is a change needed?
First let's first ask ourselves, why would we want to change it?
Perhaps we aren’t getting the outcomes we want. Maybe because the process to get the outcomes is a long and unhappy one. Or maybe we lose something vital in the process, like creativity or mental health. If one of these things was true, immediate reform would be the minimal requirement. If all were true, a complete overhaul of the system is required.
Are we getting happy, healthy and prepared young adults?
Let's check.
The Desired Outcomes
For a parent, what is the reason for an education system?
We would like our children to be prepared for life as an adult.
So, what do we mean by ‘prepared’?
1. Knowing a level of basic skills and general knowledge so as to not appear unintelligent.
To be fair, the current education system does achieve this. However, anyone spending 12 years around people and society, even someone starting at 5 years old, would learn the importance and benefits of things such as reading, writing and math, and would teach themselves at least the basics, well before the end of it. I think this one is a freebie for any system.
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2. Knowing what they are passionate about and how that might lead into a career once they graduate from the system.
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Some children might find their passion. Some might want to be sports players, mathematicians, scientists or teachers. These being the only roles they actually get to see and participate in regularly. However, there is a lot more variability to life and career options.
Knowing math is your favourite subject, is a lot different from knowing you only enjoyed it because it was as close to a puzzle you were likely to get in a class and what you really want to do is design escape rooms.
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Our children should not be considered prepared if they do not know their next steps or even know themselves. This was my experience on leaving year 12 and it’s still a problem our young graduates face today.
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Challenge 1:
Ask yourselves, what your experience was for the first few years after leaving school.
The Process
Outcomes are important, but through our lives, we soon begin to realise that it is about the journey, not the destination.
Imagine being 4 years old, being the happiest creature that has ever lived and you finally have the reasoning skills to make decisions based on your current level of knowledge, limited as it may be. Now, as a young 4 year old, I’m going to put you in a room with a bunch of other people whose knowledge base is as limited as your own and put you with a much older human who has absolute authority over you. They have been instructed on what you need to know by the end of the year. You will listen to this person of authority for up to 6 hours a day, 5 days a week, 40 weeks of the year. For years this happens!
The person acting as the authority will change, but the act will not.
Where’s the independence? Where’s the creativity? Where’s the freedom?
I would not feel happy in this environment. It is only the most resilient and adaptable of kids that are capable of keeping a smile throughout.
Challenge 2:
Ask the school attenders in your family what they like best in school. Not their favourite subject or class.
If it’s not time with friends, keep digging. That is usually where it ends.
The Losses
When calculating a loss, it is hard to prove. Especially when the creativity and social skills are already hard to quantify, let alone when the damaging implementation starts at 4 years old.
So instead of trying to prove a negative, I’ll ask you to imagine a situation again. You can go back to being an adult.
You arrive at work and you are told exactly what to do and how to do it. In fact all your peers are lined up and are told the same things. Day after day, week after week, year after year. This is all you need to know and all you need to do, in order to get your paycheck. Either, all at desks doing it at the same time, or taking turns one at a time, depending on the task. No talking now, the authority is busy telling you what to do.
How long do you last in that job?
Oh sorry, you can’t leave. Not for 12 years. It’s not so bad. You’ll get promoted each year, the work will get progressively harder to keep you feeling challenged and like you’re progressing.
At the end of your time there you’ll get a bit of paper telling everyone how well you did. Or not. Doesn’t matter, no one cares past your next job anyway.
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Creativity:
Apart from the incredible sense of time wasted. How is your creativity after 12 years of being told how and what to do?
It’s hard to maintain creativity when you are constantly being told that this is the question and the right answer, this is the right thing to think, this is how you are meant to feel in this situation.
They might tell you that, in this hour it’s time to be creative, but you can’t tell someone to be creative, you have to let them.
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Social skills:
In your rows of desks with your peers at work, you are not to talk as you will disturb the others. Unless it’s for a special class or activity you’ve been told to do. Your job is required to give you time to have a break, and during that break you can go outside to play and chat with whoever you like. As long as the activities you pick include the specially designed playground, the manicured oval, places to sit and talk, or back inside in a library.
The amount of time you get is limited, the activities you can do it limited, the different ages you can interact with are limited. Then it’s back in the rows. Back to the clearly defined boundaries of behaviour and tasks.
When someone is forced to only interact with people of a certain level of knowledge and experience (8 year olds to 8 year olds), it becomes easy to see why behaviour is maintained or at least, progresses very slowly.
Now let’s sprinkle in the competition and judgement of grades and bell curves and see what happens to our mental health.
Back to the original question:
Why is the change needed?
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Well are we getting the happy, healthy and prepared young adults we would like to see?
No.
What we see are unhappy, diagnosed and unprepared old children.
Mental Health Concerns
Most of our youngest people just want to be active. To run and jump, to learn how to use the machine they'll be driving for the rest of their lives.
However, after 5 years, Rikki is required to start sitting down and listening to the all knowing adult. Rikki has a lot of energy, like a puppy learning to sit.
He's off, if there was a door to the outside, he'd be on the grass in seconds. The door is closed so Rikki plays with something he shouldn't and is disturbing the others that lasted longer than Rikki.
"That's not good behaviour", the adult thinks. The adult tells Rikki he has to sit inside and think about his his behaviour while the others play outside.
Rikki tries so hard but he just has so much energy. He needs to let it out! Oh good, Mum's here. Rikki goes home and finally releases the energy unchecked.
Rikki is free at home.
There is a parent/teacher night, the adult tells Mum and Dad about Rikki being unable to control his energy. Mum and Dad think about how much energy Rikki has and agrees. The adult sees this a lot and makes a suggestion.
This is obviously a fictional story but not uncommon in our schools. It highlights that young people, just want to run and play in order to learn how to operate their consciousness car. This is an important lesson, but once they start to get a handle on it (age 4-5), we trap them in a room for most of the sunny hours of the day. It’s no wonder they have so much energy left when they’re back home.
Nobody is the villain in this story, just a bunch of well intentioned people doing the best they can for everyone in their care.
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Aside from the need of fidget toys, worse problems arise.
Non attendance is up by a large amount since COVID and is not showing any sign of recovering. With remote learning and school closures, the students broke regular attendance habits. Having the time and freedom of home learning, the post-pandemic school refusal surge is, potentially, our youths' way of letting us know they want a better way.
Suicide and self-harm being a big one. In a world where you don't feel free, you still have control of one thing. So, to prove it to themselves, well…