Ok, so how are we going to do this? It’s a known fact (here and here). Education as we were taught needs to die soon. And, who will be in charge of the slaughter?
The students.
It’s very simple. We can find a lot of evidence on how schools have less interest now than ever before and at the same time schooled systems are as obsoletes as a BETA tape. Our students right now have more access to information than ever before in the whole history of mankind COMBINED.
What’s the need for schools then?
If you are a 15 year old kid who suffered a trauma and can start reading and learning how to fix that problem (a good example here) you do not need a school telling you which way your education should go. Schools should be a place to help students find inspiration and motivation and passion and love and many many things. They need to stop killing creativity as they are.
But, where to start?
In my experience the system has a fatal flaw that must be exploited. Teachers are actually willing to help the change. This change has to come from the bottom. Schools DO NOT CARE what system they use or how engaged their students are. Schools are businesses. They will be happy as long as the students pay and the teachers “teach” and every year they get to graduate any number of students. But schools don’t really care about how happy or how much the students learn. They brag about having some students getting in the best universities but that’s just less than 10% of even the best highschools.
The core problem is that more often those students are realising that school SUCKS big time and they DO NOT NEED IT for them to be successful. So why would students want to be in school? Imagine things going on like this for 10 more years and your 15 year old kid goes to school, paying for tuition he doesn’t need because his online business on baseball facts has grown 20% in the last three months and he wants to take an advanced course in online marketing in an online school that will give it for free or maybe 10 bucks.
So, the place to start is the teachers. Teachers have to change the strategy. WE have to change the strategy. School can’t stay like this forever. If there is anyone out there who owns a school and thinks it’s great business to change it into the future of learning that’s awesome, but the millions of students who won’t have access to that need to get help from teachers who can adapt their own curriculum to a modern model and have the curiosity of the kids grow and thrive.
If we ignite that light within our students, the limits are absolutely gone forever! They will not only think about great solutions for the planet, they will EXECUTE them.
Teachers need to stop thinking that their job is just a consequence of unemployment or the one thing they can do easily for a paycheck. Teacher transform lives forever. Either for good or bad, but they do.
All teachers need is to stop limiting students and show them they can do whatever they wish. All schools need to do is let them.
Really. The sky is the limit.