A few days ago we reviewed the history of the birth of the school as we know it and, in addition, an exhibition of the other ways of learning and teaching that we have used humans throughout our history. My intention was to expose that the school we have today is neither the only one, nor possibly offers the best way in which we should consider the training of today's children to now talk about school failures.
Who decides what children should learn?
One of the questions that I would like to encourage you to think about is the content. Themes, approaches and even the complete contents are something previously chosen, repeated year after year and, despite the educational reforms, very similar for a hundred years. The subjects, the separation of subjects, each didactic unit, hardly any changes are perceived since, at least, my childhood. most of decisions about what children should learn They were taken long ago and the changes have been small.
The way of teaching, classrooms, age groups and, above all, psycho-pedagogical approaches, in practice the changes have been tiny. The same is still being done on the same contents, despite the fact that the Pisa Report, international organizations and even the most reputable specialists insist that this model is obsolete and is not the most appropriate.
The educational reforms, continuous, in recent years, seem to respond more to economic pressures or political interests, but ignore the progress in neuroscience, biology, anthropology, pedagogy, learning psychology and development. It is worrying.
What is failing?
If we made a list with school system failures These should be included: different learning styles are not met, High Capacity students who need appropriate methodologies and not content extensions with the same approach are undervalued, children with different learning needs are abandoned, they are referred to those that are, in the end, labeled as problematic, bad students or hyperactive.
But above all it fails in two vital questions: the importance of the student as the protagonist of significant learning and the value of new technological possibilities, including them as companions of the same method. One thing that attracts attention is that, while banning mobile devices in schools, ICT and teacher blogs are, in many cases, a way to put on the computer the same type of content and formulas that we find in the Text book.
The disconnection with the real needs of the students and their interests are something superfluous, because it seems that those who decide on Education believe they know what within 10, 20 or 30 years they will need to know and know how to do.
Begin at the beginning
Maybe before reaching the situation of demotivation and difficulties of understanding and critical thinking that we perceive in adolescents we should start at the beginning. Despite the effort made in policies for educational improvement and the long years full of school hours and duties of children the results are not as expected, and my opinion is that, while in the stages of Infant (which is, in fact, unnecessary as an educational stage although schooling is inevitable in these ages for socio-economic reasons) and in Primary do not work with more appropriate guidelines for child development and learning performance, the difficulties will continue.
Rather than including or excluding subjects and distributing the educational stages in one way or another, the methods would have to be modified very deeply. We introduce parceled and decontextualized information, valuing the short-term acquisition of certain written and medium-term content, preparing evidence similar to oppositions aimed at the acquisition of qualification. Education is not that and that really is not what prepares for life and its changing reality.
In addition, the interests of children, their concerns, their impulse, their desire to investigate self-motivated and the human capacity to build group projects, are issues that are addressed, if attended, in a way always directed and oriented, in the end , to externally imposed curricular results. And although the programming and design of objectives is indispensable in educational matters, it cannot be something purely directed and disconnected from what the student wishes to discover and create.
Some school inconsistencies
The organization of the school as a space, as a structure and as a concept seems to be justified by its own nature as a precursor and provider of education, but, the reality is that many of the things we take for granted as indispensable, have historical, socioeconomic or customary, but that are relatively negative for the normal and natural learning process.
Schedules, buildings, organization, age groups, ratios, times, education systems, content division, invasion of leisure time and family ... are some of these inconsistencies that make the school, as we know it, as really a system that hinders learning. Of all these points, in detail, we will speak in another occasion with more depth because there is one last aspect that I would like to highlight: the importance of teachers.
The importance of teachers
The society does not recognize the teacher value and, studies and profession are poorly valued in addition to not working in the best possible conditions, especially in their class schedules and ratios. One of the aspects that should be taken care of more in Education is to give value to the profession of the teacher, but not only of "mouthpiece" but betting on training, improving conditions, salaries and in the search for good professionals from the Beginning of your studies.
In addition, if more and more teaching hours are required, the less time they can devote to programming and self-training, the less invested in permanent training, the worse their preparation will be to adapt to progress and changes and the greater the number of students per Minor educators will be the possibilities to give personalized attention or to perform unfolding when they are advisable.
With this we have finished this brief review by the failures of Education and the school we know, and, later, we will analyze specific aspects in more detail.7
