Education is too important to leave to schools

There is a major problem with education today: it is left to schools and education is too important for that.

I can’t quite believe in the promised “Education Revolution”. My problem is that it is almost exclusively about schools and schools are not the only, not even the best, place for children to learn.

Schools continually change in terms of new classrooms, new programs, new text-books, nicer desks, more computers, a lower teacher-to-student ratio and so on.

As far as politicians are concerned what children actually learn in school is of little importance except as rhetoric for their next speech. No real change takes place in education because, to politicians and bureaucrats, there will always be students - nameless, ageless, faceless students. What does it matter to politicians and bureaucrats if one set of faceless students morphs into another over time while they make their promises and write their policies and implement yet another wonder-program?

In the real world, children grow up, while politicians and bureaucrats continue to talk about the good of “the nation’s children”. Kids are still sitting in a classroom for much of their lives being taught a set of predetermined skills and facts by people who have very limited knowledge of the individual children themselves or what they are really interested in.

When will kids get to spend more time out of the classroom and in the real world? Do they have to wait until they grow up to learn the skills they really want and need to know?

Many of the facts being taught in schools today will be obsolete by the time they grow up. When I was in school I learnt the unquestionable fact that there were nine planets in our solar system. Now the official count is eight plus three dwarf planets and a further 397,000 odd minor planets.

A lot of emphasis is still placed on handwriting in schools. “A good hand” used to be the mark of a well-educated person, and handwriting was an important work-place skill. These days few of us do much hand-writing apart from our shopping lists. Typing is now much more important - although by the time our children have grown up it may have been replaced by texting, or maybe enunciation will be more important if voice-activated technology takes off.

My point is that human knowledge is expanding all the time and technology is rapidly changing the skills required. Schools don’t have a monopoly on knowledge and certainly can’t be relied on to keep pace. This is why the concept of a national curriculum seriously jars with me. There has never been a set of absolute knowledge that all children must learn before being admitted to adulthood and there never will be. A national curriculum implies there is.

Until a couple of hundred years ago education was a far broader concept than school. For hundreds of years kids lived and worked alongside their parents and learnt everything they needed to know as they grew - through practical life-experiences, through conversation and through formal and informal apprenticeships.

The industrial revolution changed all that. Huge numbers of people flocked to the cities and a time of unprecedented social change ensued. In 19th century England the Factory and Education Acts defined children as a separate, non-adult population and protected them from the evils of the industrial workplace. This was motivated by very real needs but, at the same time, the erosion of the parent’s role as the primary educator had begun.

Dewey recognised this in the late 1800s when he claimed that the “modern” society was at a serious disadvantage in communicating its purposes and skills to the next generation, and urged schools to take on this role.

For a long time there was still significant recognition of the role that parents played in their children’s education. For example, in Victoria The Education Act 1872 made education compulsory but contained a non-attendance clause “if a child is under regular and efficient instruction in some other manner”.

The hours and times of school were also set to allow children to assist with harvesting or other work as they had always done. In this way children still spent a lot of time with their parents and other adults in apprentice-style learning situations.

The scope, hours and responsibilities of schools have been increasing ever since and parental involvement in children’s education has now almost exclusively been handed over to schools. Today schooling takes up a huge percentage of children’s lives both in time actually spent within school-grounds and time spent on homework.

There is still some recognition of the importance of parental involvement, but we tend to hear about it now from the negative angle, when teachers lament that they are unable to correct neglect by irresponsible parents in the preschool years.

Today it seems that many people have forgotten that children can and do learn much outside school - from their parents and communities. They also teach themselves a great deal by following their own interests. (Remember poring over your favourite magazines and books as a child? Think about how much you taught yourself rather than learnt in school.)

Maybe children even learn most of what they need to know in spite of schools rather than because of them. Maybe if children spent more time at home they would have more time for reading and researching and they would learn more still.

OK, most people aren’t going to pull their kids out of school and take on educating them at home, although, in the digital age, home education is a more viable option than ever - a fact I can personally attest to. However, no parent can solely rely on school to do the job of educating their children for them. Learning takes place throughout life - quite literally from the cradle to the grave.

Education does need to be compulsory and we do need schools to provide an education to those who aren’t going to get one anywhere else, but education does not exclusively mean schooling and it never has.

In my Education Revolution there would be far greater recognition of the parental role. There would be recognition of the important learning experiences gained by spending time with parents and other trusted adults - whether reading, playing board games, traveling or out in the community with their parents acting as mentor-guides. This would give children more time in informal learning situations on a one-on-one basis with people who are familiar with their interests and enthusiastically involved in their education.

Even more radically, I would give children far greater control over their own education. They would be afforded trust and respect in their own pursuit of knowledge, given time to follow up their interests and encouraged to educate themselves.

The average teenager is already more at home with new technologies than adults and, if given the time and freedom to pursue their own interests, will educate themselves by reading and researching in the appropriate direction for them - just as adults do.

Attending school would be just one option in the process of getting an education - attendance would not be compulsory and schools would have to lift their game in order to attract students. Libraries, neighbourhood centres, clubs and community groups would receive more funding and increase their scope in terms of providing learning opportunities targeting both kids and adults. Families would receive educational vouchers that they could choose to “spend” on schooling or other options.

School-children wouldn’t be at school all the time. They would spend time out of school - with parents, in community learning situations and making excursions in smaller groups that could have more interactive learning experiences than is possible in a large group herded through for a quick look at something.

Family holidays during school time would be encouraged as these open up so many learning opportunities- even time spent on the beach, playing in the sand and water, watching the tides and poking around the rock-pools is valuable.

Kids would also spend time in workplaces - doing informal work experience at a younger age to help them find out what is involved in different careers and in work situations - this would help them gain practical experience and make career choices.

More parents are working from home these days and children could spend time working with them there - gaining work skills in a practical environment and improving family relationships at the same time.

The same goes for those whose parents are in shops or other small businesses. Such work helps children to pick up skills in their proper context. For example a boy of around ten served me in the local milk bar recently and his maths skills were fantastic. This kind of work can and does form part of kids’ education. The modern fear of child exploitation is taking this kind of experience away from more and more kids. To get a paper round kids under 14 now have to obtain a signed letter from their principal stating that the job will not interfere with their studies. This is ridiculous.

We now live in an information age where facts are changing so fast that we need to speak of “known facts” and “current theories” rather than absolute facts. In this new world, textbooks are quickly obsolete (and if the government invests big money in the digital equivalent, these too will quickly become obsolete). Why invest in textbooks and computer programs of such short practical use when there is so much good quality information available through trade books, the community and the Internet?

In this age of information we now live in, it is time for families to take back at least some of their educational role - it can’t be left to schools.