"Kind
words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless."
- Mother Teresa
This is a very circuitous post.....
I had lunch
with a teacher I work with. I teach part-time at Humber College in Toronto. I
am teaching a dual credit course at a high school in Oakville. He and I have
similar thoughts on the education SYSTEM and the talking heads that are running
it. It was a refreshing lunch.
Just in a
nutshell, we are ruining the education system by not being dynamic and changing
to suit the changing economy. Our education system was designed and built to
meet the needs of the industrial revolution. Kids are taught the most inane
things….. And some things that were taught are no longer being taught.
Conor and I
both agree that we should be focussing on a few key areas. These areas include
but are not limited to numeracy, literacy, philosophy, art and science.
Wait a
second I can hear you asking – philosophy? Yes indeed. Teaching young people
how to think critically is paramount to such things as conflict avoidance and
conflict resolution. If people cannot understand how some of the great ideas in
this world came about they won’t be able to formulate any ideas of their own.
Numeracy –
we do not teach the simple power of compound interest. If young people could
learn the art and science of saving money, we would not be in the debt crisis
we are now in. Students can`t even check their paycheques to make sure they are
being paid correctly.
Literacy and
languages. Personally, I took French every year I was in school. I can`t even
ask for a hot dog but I bet I could conjugate verbs. We need t teach people how
to read first and foremost and then we need to teach people the value of being
able to communicate. Communication, clear communication is the key to life. And
one of the keys to conflict avoidance and resolution. Learning more than one language is something I
am going to work on.
Art – wow.
Well well well. I cannot tell you how
strongly I support expanded art and music programs. Art and music are the
easiest way fro human beings to express themselves. Without art the world would
grind to a halt. We have cut these programs because the three “r’s” are more
important to those in the ivory tower.
With
literacy, numeracy , philosophy and art taken care of we can then move to science,
history and geography. Both history and geography are important and really can
be covered under science. Maybe history under philosophy as well. I do not
agree with specializing science too early. I think kids are scared by words
like PHYSICS and CHEMISTRY. Just a broad general understanding of science is
good.
If young
people could enter post-secondary being able to think – the world would be
better.
There is a
young lad I taught last year. He has profound learning and emotional hurdles.
His parents think he will be the next “big thing” scholastically. He is
violent. He was in my class and I did not know about his challenges. I gave him
a knife and taught him how to take cuttings. He told me that he could take
cuttings each and every day but no one would hire him. I told him he was wrong and
proceeded to tell him why.
This lad is
a victim of the education system. He will be shunted aside by the system being “inclusive”.
I bumped
into him last week and he was excited to see me. I guess the kind words I
offered him were echoing in his mind. Conor is trying to get his parents to
leave him in the horticulture program. Let’s wait and see.
Be kind to
everyone you meet. You never know. You just never know.
No comments:
Post a Comment