Making Intentional Choices in Education to Secure More Meaningful Connections
As a society, it would be wise to start focusing our energy on our children. They are the most important resource we have for the future. It is through more intentional choices in education that we can secure more meaningful connections.
We need to adapt how we educate our children to better reflect the world we live in today. Even though the world has changed tremendously since the school system was introduced, the teaching methods and content we teach have not.
Meaningful Connections
All humans especially children need to connect. The stressors placed on parents these days are phenomenal. The need to work combined with the desire to be present means that parents carefully select what their children do when they are not with them. Parents want to provide the best opportunities and guidance to their children. One of the greatest opportunities is choosing the right environment for their child to strive. Parents spend hours looking at graduation results, special programs, and anything that may advantage their kids in the future. This is done with the idea that school is only way to educate children.
Schools’ purpose is not for connection it is for the sharing of information. Kids learn in school to be obedient, task-oriented citizens. They learn to follow a regular routine and schedule. They learn the importance of hierarchy in the chain of command. However how relevant are these skills for their success in the future work market? Can we make different choices in education to make school more meaningful?
The task of going to school is harder to justify these days. The addition of the internet and now artificial intelligence models have been catalysts to expose how outdated school has become. What is the motivation for our children to go to school when they can learn whatever they want in the comfort of their homes on their computers?
Information is more accessible than ever before yet our children don’t seem motivated to learn. Or maybe they are just not in this context.
Feeling safe enough to make mistakes
Learning only happens when we feel safe enough to make mistakes. In order for our children to feel safe, they must be securely and positively connected to the person providing the learning opportunity.
Currently, our children are experiencing many disruptions in their learning environment. The lack of qualified teaching personnel and resources has a definite impact on the quality of their education. It is hard to learn from someone we don’t know and trust.
The resources allotted to schools are increasingly stretched. This leads to an increase in the number of students under a teacher’s charge. The result is that teachers have less time to connect with each pupil.
Creating opportunities for connection is increasingly hard, especially at the high school level. The addition of technology makes this increasingly challenging. The reduced amount of time available for small talk, and follow-up means that our children feel more isolated in schools than before. This is no small sacrifice.
Intentional Choices in Education
We educate our children to be aware of their needs and emotions. We encourage them to question the status quo.
Yet we send them to institutions where this is not supported and even frowned upon. Children need to express themselves, play, and make mistakes to learn. But there is no space for them to do this in schools. They must sit, listen, and conform to what is being asked of them. When the majority of kids are struggling at school maybe it is time we take a step back. An analysis of the effectiveness of the structure, the environment and the task is required.
Comparing instead of caring
The current system focuses on quantifying results to make comparisons possible instead of learning and focusing on the community.
There is an emphasis on getting things right. Yet we know that in life we need to get it wrong before getting it right. Learning to ride a bike only happens after multiple failures. Our brain actually needs to lose its balance to figure out how to “not lose it.” If we bypass the “falling” process then we bypass the attempt at learning.
Improvements in task completion should be prioritized over the accomplishment of a task. Kids can memorize tons of information and do well on a test but that doesn’t mean they are smarter than the kids who cannot actually do this task. It just means they are good at test-taking. How many tests have you taken recently in your “real” life? How well has this skill served you? What are we sacrificing by putting our emphasis on numbers instead of people? What would happen if we made more intentional choices in education by taking all of this into account?
Child Development
We know and understand so much more about child development than we use to and yet we still teach the same way. Kids’ inner children are not invited to play at school. Their sense of creativity is not encouraged by an environment that fosters trial and error. Their bodies are not allowed to move and they are always inside.
Something Needs to Change
It is through intentional choices that we can provide future generations an opportunity to grow into the best versions of themselves. In order for this to happen the schools need to join us in the present by changing their methods. Our kids deserve better. We need more options to meet our child’s learning needs. We need more alternative and hands-on ways of teaching skills rather than content. And we need to connect more with our children.
Life, teaching, and parenting although challenging can be fun if we all work together to accomplish meaningful learning. Currently, our kids are wasting their time at school. We need to make more thought-out choices in education.
There needs to be drastic changes in education to make it a more productive learning environment.
Thank you for being here, I look forward to sharing this journey with you! Please do not hesitate to contact us if you want to share your thoughts! You can also find us on Facebook on the Mutant Teacher page.
