THE SKILLS TAKEN AWAY IS WHAT MATTERS

Your school’s classrooms should offer to the students a chance to go beyond the required syllabus but not only in terms of academia – classrooms should be the places where they are able to question and to find their identities, where they are able to engage with their emotions, to observe others, to slow down and to wonder about Life’s meaning and to reflect upon their thoughts, words and actions. If students can get such experiences, then you are providing something of a much higher value than some certificate or diploma – you are providing a space where a mind of a youngster is being formed and shaped and where you have a chance to contribute to the improvement of their Life and to the progress of Humanity as whole… 

This requires seeing the problems we are facing nowadays and with an open mind recognizing the suitable strategies while adapting them into education models. The current education in many schools is still often based on mass production with teaching subjects as imparting the information, rather than interacting with them, processing and connecting them, which would lead to creating solid interdisciplinary knowledge and broad set of skills. These can be used not only to improve one’s circumstances but play a vital role in society advancement as well. Thus, our schools should not be built based on the needs of the society from 1960 or even earlier. We have developed, we have moved on, we progressed, and we face completely different challenges nowadays than we have faced 60 or 100 years ago. Back then, people usually lived their whole life in the tiny villages, not being aware what is going on in the next valley, country, continent. We are more connected than we have ever been, we are more aware of things than ever before. We can’t afford to spend the time in school by solving the colors of the hair or a shape of the ties on the uniform. In the global perspectives these things are absolutely irrelevant to the quality of the education being offered in our institutions. 

Education is the creative process and does not need a tie on the neck to be successful – a tie is for a special occasion and being creative should not be special, it should be a daily norm not dependent on hair color or the right uniform… We may require uniform that brings us joy, in which we feel comfortable, in which we can relax, and which does not close our creative channels of curiosity… Offering the state of art campus, iPads to every kid or smartboards to each classroom, without changing our approach leads to what I call “factory style education” – meaning: let several hundreds of students enter the building, from which a quarter of them walk out with the diploma at the end of the year… 

But education is much more. It is one of the paths to better understanding of ourselves. That is why we should be rather asking: how many of the students have reached their true potential, how many did we support beyond what is required, how many had a chance to develop in different areas, and last but not least – how many of them have a clearer understanding of who they are, of their Lives and the World around? 

Two Latin roots with different meanings are both reflected in the word Education: the first, “EDUCARE” (edú-kare), means to train or to mold. The second, “EDUCERE” (edú-kere), means to lead out… In the past we have mainly seen education based on educare – as a process of preservation, passing down the knowledge and shaping of youths in the image of their parents – we trained students to remember, to recall and to know and to be like us, because that must be the best. When we look at Education based on educere approach, it is seen as preparing a new generation for the changes that are to come, making them ready to create solutions to problems yet unknown.

While some of us still see education as mastering rote memorization and becoming good workers, the other part of the community although seeing the certain benefits of such model, also recognizes the need for developing the skills of questioning, thinking and creating. And despite trying to balance those two approaches and to support latter, we often allow in schools only those activities that promote “training” rather than “developing understanding and creating meaning”. Clearly, the basics are important in the education of any individual. However, a person who is schooled only to pass the test is ill prepared to cope with today’s rapidly changing world.

This is true worldwide, but as I was recently working in Dubai and China, it resonates well with my observations. Schools often focus on results and although they rank at the top statistics, this is very often a result of relentless drilling and focus on test-taking performance.3 In these systems with no or very little emotional connections I learn, because someone makes me, not because I want to. Jiang Xueqin says this rewards utilitarian, unethical and short-sighted behavior that destroys a student’s intrinsic curiosity, creativity and love of learning. And as he points out, any system that highlights achievements and goals above process and attitude is bad for the students.

Craft had already in 1984 pointed out, that in order to achieve balance, educators must start by changing the organizational structure or the ways in which decisions are made. Utilizing stakeholders’ perceptions in determining aims and facilitating a change in educator’s roles are initial steps. To accomplish a change in thinking, educators must examine their own personal mastery and mental models of educations.5

Humans are evolving and we can’t apply the same methods in our education over and over hoping to get the different results. There is a slow but crucial shift happening in schools around the world – shifting from teaching seen as dry delivering information (educare) to teaching deeply interconnected with learning where ability of creating meaning and making connections lead to the deep understanding (educere). This kind of teaching does not depend only on the sound knowledge of the subject content. The real art lies in the pedagogical approaches which make this content accessible for the students. Thus, we need teachers who in addition to cognitive and psycho-motoric domain of development also engage affective domain in their teaching. In other words, these teachers use their hearts and they get students to use their hearts as well. They involve emotions and cultivate the feelings of students in their teaching. We need teachers who are able to break the knowledge down to smaller pieces, pass these onto students and then guide them in the process of connecting these pieces back. It is in this process where students are creating their own meaning and so gaining the deep understanding. As a bonus they are becoming independent thinkers with the ability to communicate their findings and to further build upon their knowledge. If in addition such teachers are using a deep human-to-human connection and a genuine care in their mission, then they truly lead the students out, out of darkness – preparing them for the world, where aforementioned skills are extremely important and needed.

Someone might say this is easy when you work with high ability students. I disagree as I worked with students of various abilities. I say, there is absolutely nothing wrong with accepting the students to your school, whose abilities are low and yet need to be developed, whether in English or math or other subjects. What is fundamentally wrong, however, is accepting these kids to the school, without providing special support programs for them and misplace them into the mainstream classes doing incredible harm to them, undermining the little confidence they might have had… With students who have been labeled as “low ability”, the attitude adjustment is key to academic success. A student who feels or is made to feel as a failure will act as a failure by completely withdrawing from the educational process. A lot of research has emphasized the importance of teacher expectation to student’s performance and using affective domain in learning process. No one will remember the pure facts and all the knowledge you shared, but everyone will remember how you made them feel. 

I will give you an example. You accept the students into grade 9 with basic English skills, but you put them to classes of nine or ten different subjects, out of which majority depends heavily on the text comprehension. In addition, you provide two classes of pure mathematics a week for the students who do not know how to say plus or minus just because you wrongly believe they can learn math without having appropriate language skills. Although you know that even native speakers are given two or three classes a week, you expect these kids to improve their comprehension skills along with developing deep understanding of math in the same time-frame. We do not serve these students, we put on them unrealistic expectations while setting them up for the failure. How do you think that student might feel? How would you feel?

Yes. Sadly, many schools do this. They are either not aware or are ignorant. But that does not make it right. As someone clever has pointed out already, wrong is wrong even if everyone is doing it. Right is right even if no one does. If you truly want to succeed in making a difference, then go smaller; especially at the beginning. Have maximum two classes in each grade level, with smaller numbers of the students while keep the teacher-student ratio still low. The less students you have, more you can learn about them, deeper connections and stronger relationships you can build with them. Because genuine interest, care and human-to-human connection is the basic keystone of a successful holistic education. I liked the quote which nicely sum this up and I shared it with the students and trainees: you don’t have to be perfect to make a difference. You just have to care.

Where skills development is aligned to content mastery, students will have enough time and chances to be involved in the discussions growing with the deep understanding of that what matters the most are the skills they are taking away from the classrooms and the schools; not only to University but well beyond. To daily Life. An ability to analyze and to make connections, to reason, to communicate, to control emotions, an ability to admit I do not know, skills to listen and skills to look for a compromise. This way you will be able to prepare them for the constant change that will be omnipresent during their lives. And you may prepare them to face the fact, that satisfying only materialistic side of being will not bring them fulfillment – they should also focus on experiences, being, knowledge and relationships… When we start to learn about and from each other, when we open our minds to different thoughts and try to understand how fragile our life is, we may realize what impact we are having on the people and environment around us. 

In those settings you will raise genuine, passionate and empathetic leaders, whose leadership style may be built based on the cooperation, mutual respect and peaceful coexistence rather than on our individual selfish interests. And our world so desperately needs them.

(RB, 5.11. 2019; Guangzhou, China)

  1. Craft, M. (1984). Education for diversity. In Education and cultural pluralism, ed., London and Philadelphia: Falmer Press.
  2. Bass, Randall V.; Good, J. W. (2004) Educare and Educere: Is a Balance Possible in the Educational System? Educational Forum, The, v68 n2 p161-168 Available at:  https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ724880 [Accessed 23 Sep. 2019].
  3. Rubin, C.M. (2014) The Global Search for Education: Creative China. [online] HuffingtonPost.com, Available at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/c-m-rubin/the-global-search-for-edu_b_5665681.html  [Accessed 23 Sep. 2019].