'Hey teacher leave those kids alone' - just a rebellious song from my youth or a metaphor?
'All in all we're just another brick in the wall'. Who on Earth wants to be a brick, who wants to be a part of a wall?
'Hey teacher leave those kids alone' - just a rebellious song from my youth or a metaphor?
'All in all we're just another brick in the wall'. Who on Earth wants to be a brick, who wants to be a part of a wall?
Are children in today’s schools simply becoming the bricks and mortar of a crumbling outdated defocused over bombarded system? Are children being processed through a mincer which grinds the creativity and imagination out of their awesome brains? Have we forgotten what teaching is about, as in the child?
I believe we can do better than grinding and mincing...
We need to rescue our educationalists out of their governmental straight jackets and begin to create and pursue a Plan B.
I know my previous ramblings are filled with open disdain and angry mutterings and I want this one to be more positive and even solution focused.
So what is Plan B?
Plan B education systems are being spoken about all over the globe and we need the powers that be to listen to the experts and climb onboard. There are willing trail blazers out there like Sir Ken Robinson whose voice resonates through education corridors and organisations with haunting truths, yet still the suits refuse to hear us.
We cry out to those suits i.e. the DfE and HMI from our heads, hearts and deep recesses of what we call qualifications and expertise. Our cries seek to be fully involved in redeveloping an education system which provokes curiosity and creativity and doesn't just teach to a test.
I believe teachers join the profession and work really hard at it, understanding they will be entrusted to engage and educate our children by using their own and the children's individuality and imagination. It's not happening though, too may tick boxes and highlighter pens and too much emphasis on targets and data. Our children deserve more than this?
Many of our children are being penalised for having an imagination or even just for being individual, they are being labeled with all sorts of ambiguous conditions which mostly stem from misunderstanding the uniqueness of each child and the various developmental stages of childhood. Too many classrooms have become places where historical ideologies and information processes are fed to our children then simply regurgitated without any real life context or application.
We can do better than this and we should...
Bring forward the schools where children run through the gates to see where the wonder of the day will take them. Bring forward the schools brave enough and free enough to let teacher and learner grow together. Bring forward schools that are not deemed failing because they didn’t hit a draconian benchmark. Bring forward the educators whose own creativity has long been subdued. Bring back the ‘magic’ to education.
That’s my Plan B
Are children in today’s schools simply becoming the bricks and mortar of a crumbling outdated defocused over bombarded system? Are children being processed through a mincer which grinds the creativity and imagination out of their awesome brains? Have we forgotten what teaching is about, as in the child?
I believe we can do better than grinding and mincing...
We need to rescue our educationalists out of their governmental straight jackets and begin to create and pursue a Plan B.
I know my previous ramblings are filled with open disdain and angry mutterings and I want this one to be more positive and even solution focused.
So what is Plan B?
Plan B education systems are being spoken about all over the globe and we need the powers that be to listen to the experts and climb onboard. There are willing trail blazers out there like Sir Ken Robinson whose voice resonates through education corridors and organisations with haunting truths, yet still the suits refuse to hear us.
We cry out to those suits i.e. the DfE and HMI from our heads, hearts and deep recesses of what we call qualifications and expertise. Our cries seek to be fully involved in redeveloping an education system which provokes curiosity and creativity and doesn't just teach to a test.
I believe teachers join the profession and work really hard at it, understanding they will be entrusted to engage and educate our children by using their own and the children's individuality and imagination. It's not happening though, too may tick boxes and highlighter pens and too much emphasis on targets and data. Our children deserve more than this?
Many of our children are being penalised for having an imagination or even just for being individual, they are being labeled with all sorts of ambiguous conditions which mostly stem from misunderstanding the uniqueness of each child and the various developmental stages of childhood. Too many classrooms have become places where historical ideologies and information processes are fed to our children then simply regurgitated without any real life context or application.
We can do better than this and we should...
Bring forward the schools where children run through the gates to see where the wonder of the day will take them. Bring forward the schools brave enough and free enough to let teacher and learner grow together. Bring forward schools that are not deemed failing because they didn’t hit a draconian benchmark. Bring forward the educators whose own creativity has long been subdued. Bring back the ‘magic’ to education.
That’s my Plan B
