Reasons to be cheerful....or not

Recently two of my Facebook friends posted this link to “21Things That Will Be Obsolete by 2020” – an article that makes interesting reading.  The article was first published in 2009 and had been updated with this response by the author since publication.

Normally I try and stay away from the comments on articles, too often they seem to reflect the very worst aspects of humanity with the trolling and insulting that take place, but this time I was curious, so I spent some time reading them last evening.

As it happened I also spent a couple of hours last night at the school of my eight year old daughter talking with a couple of teachers and parents about curriculum and specifically about the use of technology and social media in education.  It was interesting and a little depressing.

Flickr: Corey Leopold

Much of what was said by other parents echoes some of the comments in response to the article, namely, that students need ‘traditional’ knowledge and skills and methods for learning these.  That they need books and to learn things off by heart. There was a very real and genuine concern that ‘modern’ methods were failing children.    

 One parent shared with horror the fact that our local university has adopted a problem based learning approach to the training of medical doctors (full disclosure – this is not the University where I work) and how these could therefore never be ‘good’ doctors.   Another then continued that with a story of a member of his own family who had used information ‘found’ on the internet to challenge his own medical doctors prognosis.  Imagine that, questioning a doctor? 

I seemed to be in a small minority who thought that these were good things.  That it is wonderful to be able to discuss your illness with your doctor and the alternatives therapies available, that having knowledgeable discourse was a good thing.   That medical doctors treat a whole person, not isolated symptoms and seeing this in a holistic, problem based fashion was probably also a good thing. 

Critical without understanding.....

I started to realize after a while that at least part of the problem here was that the people did not really know or understand what is meant by these terms.  To them problem based leaning meant ‘doing what you liked, following your interests’, that there was no rigorous assessment in PBL.  But alas discussion of assessment opened another can of worms – the importance of memorizing facts to ‘regurgitate’ in an exam situation was still the most highly praised skill for these parents.   When I pointed out that I would, for example, rather have a pilot who had been assessed in a simulator under a range of emergency situations than one had had written an excellent essay on landing in strong cross winds, what followed was a discussion of how most of flying is now done with technology.  Sadly no one saw the irony of their own conclusions, indeed the observation was stated as if it were a loss that pilots have lost the skill of flying!

"Children need to be digitally literate."

Then we had the 'extremist parent' who has banned the internet from his home.  I will not give space here to the reasons he gave for doing this to protect his son and daughter and I acknowledge that this was driven by genuine concern.  My response was to argue the case for the importance of children being digitally literate. For education to enable and empower them to critically deal with all information and otherwise that is now open to us online.   It seemed to me that his position is not unlike banning books because some authors write some things you would rather your children did not read. 

What genuinely surprised me was how often the teachers were more in the camp of those terrified by technology and resistant to change.  They were not among the extremists thankfully, but certainly were very cautious. Most worrying to me is how they might be influenced by the views of these few parents.  Linked to this is the very low turnout of parents.  Does this reflect a disinterest or apathy or a view that schools are doing fine and we as parents should not get too involved?   The danger with that is then it is the opinions of the few ‘squeaky wheels’ who want an education for their children to be the same as the one that they received (and lets ban the internet and burn books while we are about it).  Get back to traditional education.... the cry.

 "We need to educate children to be better than we have been, not the same."

I am not one of those who believe that technology will solve educations problems; I just see it as a tool to be used by quality teachers for sound pedagogical reasons, because it can enhance learning.   What really does worry me though is the notion expressed in the comments section to the article and that I heard last night, that we should educate for the past, for a time that no longer exists, rather than for a future that is unknown.   We need to aspire to educate children to be better than we are.  The generation that are now parents, grandparents and teachers have done of fine job of screwing things up on this planet, acting as if there are no future generations.  We need to educate children to be better than we have been, not the same.  

In this final section I am of course alluding to conspicuous consumption as a life goal, the use of finite resources as a measure of economic growth and success, the cult of the self-centered individual above the common good for the people.   I admit that today I do not feel so optimistic about our future.

*NOTE.   For those who know my location and context I should explain that the evening above was held in English and the parents in attendance were all expatriates.  So perhaps the discussion is different in the meetings with Finnish parents and the issues and concerns are different.   This may well be true.   It is of course always true that the people who attend these kind of things often have a vested interest in addition to their concern for their childrens education.  I admit that my own interest in this specific area was a driver for my attendance and it may be that for others it was the desire to express support for 'traditional learning'.  Again I cannot say.  Perhaps I should draw hope from that?