To School or NOT TO SCHOOL?
Are we heading towards a global educational catastrophe? There is a global ideology gaining tremendous momentum: coined 'unschooling'. It is not a rebellious streak of hippie parents looking for the the next hype. It is a very real movement that is forcing us to ask some very important questions about the success of the current schooling system.
The schooling system as we now it today was started with the onset of the industrial revolution to assist families where both parents flocked to the cities to earn an income working in factories. The schooling system was based on the same principles as the industrial revolution: mass production, linear process thinking, subordinate to the hierarchy and promoting consumerism at all costs.
For example: Westerners with their 'superior' educated minds flock as tourists to indigenous cultures in remote areas and are fully impressed by the natives way of life that speaks of kindness, hospitality, humility and usually a high level of spiritual understanding. Then the westerners 'out of their kind-heartedness' think it necessary to help alleviate their perceived poverty by providing them with schools.
Convinced that their children will become important doctors and lawyers, the parents spend all their income to sent their children to these boarding schools often very far from their remote villages.
Here the children are taught that the western culture and way of life is superior to their 'backwards' rural ways of living. Almost never are they taught how to improve on the farming capabilities of their culture or how to earn an income with the locally produced crafts.
Once the child is sufficiently molded, they seek employment in the big cities only to find out that most of them can't find their feet in the rapidly changing economic environment of big urban centers. Mostly they end up becoming servants, cashiers or cleaners.
From the documentary 'Schooling the World' a parable is presented where the old women of the Himalayas regret sending their children away to school. They compare it to the story of the dog that accompanies them to the washing areas by the spring, and hangs about until they return to their homes. This dog neither belongs the washing area, nor to anybodies home. The children from these cultures become in-between people, and they are falling between the cracks of an in-between world.
These statements can be made plausible by the fact that most of these 'converted' cultures end up with the highest rate of drug and alcohol addiction in the world (as with the Aborigines, Maori, American Indians & Bushmen of Southern Africa etc).
Once these children leave the schooling system they did not learn the handed down knowledge of healing herbs, food cultivation, spirituality, culture and artful expression.
They are caught up in a consumerism world where the end goal is the accumulation of the ever-evasive pots of gold (fortune/fame).
Now you see a world that is based on manufactured quick-fix solutions that can be bought over the counter. And we the citizens of this world can't help but sense a feeling of hollowness at the end of another day in the rat race, but as with everything else in our lives, the opposite duality also exist, and that is that we can now provide opportunities for our children that will see them safely into the adult world.
What is the future for our children and how can we equip them with the skills they need to flourish in the ever-changing socio-economic world of today?
Unschooling propose the following:
1) The parents become the curriculum. The children learn skills from the parents as they do their day to day duties, whether these be cooking, exercising, gardening, working on the car, or even where possible, follow them in their day to day business. Much like the trade guild system without the restrictions.
2) Children need to perform chores. Usually it is suggested that a child of 3, should be able to do 3 chores, a child of 4, 4 daily chores and so on.
3) The parent that is to be the primary mentor for the child/children should be able to have insight into what the individual child loves doing as soon as possible and the main focus of the day should be towards providing the setting for the child to live out this passion (natural talent).
4) The mentoring parent should use the guidelines of HAND, HEAD & HEART when planning the structure of the days. As per article from Julia Singleton named 'HEAD, HEART AND HANDS MODEL FOR TRANSFORMATIVE LEARNING: PLACE AS CONTEXT FOR CHANGING SUSTAINABILITY VALUES' where she writes that Head, Hand and Heart is a holistic approach to developing ecoliteracy. The model shows the holistic nature of transformative experience. It includes:
cognitive domain (head) for critical reflection
affective domain (heart) for relational knowing &
psychomotor domain (hands) for engagement.
The model provides a framework of authentic experience for deeper reflection, sense of belonging and body/sensory stimulation that acts as a catalyst for deep engagement required for transformation.
5) The student should be encouraged to partake in the societies socio-economic environment from an age as young as 8. This means that they should be encouraged to sell their products or skills. This replace the situation we have today where our kids are placed in a waiting period until they are 'big' enough to play a role in the 'real' adult world.
6) Creativity should be encouraged. We are moving into a scenario where it will be extremely easy to develop one's skills through technological applications and sell these to the world community online. Never before is 'out of the box' thinking more needed than to survive today's ever complex, fast moving world of technology.
7) With knowledge readily available to us with the touch of a button, children will no longer need to parrot-learn facts - but instead time can be allocated to focus on holistic learning including emotional intelligence, independence and self-sufficiency.
8) Children should be educated as the Leaders of Tomorrow. Often it is the parent that cannot see beyond the current boundaries enforced by societal thinking and once the parent is sufficiently 'unschooled' it becomes obvious for her to grasp. Thus making the term 'unschooling' almost more applicable to the parents in dire need of a paradigm shift.
9) Free online tutoring programs and curriculums are widely available and can be sourced to meet the individual learning style of the child. Should the child want to pursue his academic skills, he can enroll for an international home school curriculum that will enable him to enroll for tertiary education.
In my home country South Africa, a mere 4% of school graduates find work and 600 000 university graduates are without work. Clearly the purpose of school -to make you suitable for the working world- is failing.
Predictions state that the jobs our kids will be doing in the next 10 years, do not exist today. That means we are preparing our children for jobs that will be absolute by the time they enter the job market.
10) When you stop learning, you start thinking! see TED talks by Eddy Zong and Jacob Barnett as listed below
For more information on this topic:
Schooling The World: The White Man's Last Burden https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLSIgZWNR9M
The Journal of Sustainable Education and the article by Julia Singletonhttp://www.jsedimensions.org/wordpress/content/head-heart-and-hands-model-for-transformative-learning-place-as-context-for-changing-sustainability-values_2015_03/
Dynamis Learning: http://www.dynamislearning.co.za/
Khan Academy: https://www.khanacademy.org/ (free learning)
Forest Schools: http://www.forestschoolassociation.org/what-is-forest-school/
Forget what you know | Jacob Barnett | TEDxTeen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uq-FOOQ1TpE
How school makes kids less intelligent | Eddy Zhong | TEDxYouth@BeaconStreet:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Yt6raj-S1M
Pink Floyd - Another Brick In The Wall: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR5ApYxkU-U]
Why are Finland's schools so successful? by L Hancock: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/why-are-finlands-schools-successful-49859555/?no-ist
Pioneers of our past have always been those that were brave enough to step into the unknown by following the better judgement of their hearts. May you also find the courage to do what is best for our children.
