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True education allows students to open their minds

 

Is school boring? Are the children overly spoilt by parents or overly protected by some within education who believe that competition and challenge have no place in school-based education? Or have we ‘simply’ failed to adequately engage them due to our own perceptions and biases?

While parents have their own role to play in how their children approach school-based education, and we as teachers can complain about ‘some parents’ and their lack of support towards the positive education of their children / our students, our focus must be upon our own professional approach.

Many years ago, there was a young boy who was trying to get around Einstein’s Theory of Relativity in grade six. One day he was seen by the principal reading this material and was made to look foolish for doing so. The principal allowed his own prejudices and his own limitations affect how he spoke to a child whose only ‘crime’ was seeking to learn.

A year or two later, that same boy was reading a local library text book on atomic physics during private reading time in class. He was ridiculed in front of the whole class by his science teacher (who was also his form teacher). In such environments, how easy is it for young minds to enquire? Indeed, are they motivated to learn when they are so appalling humiliated and ridiculed in front of their peers?

Regrettably, I have worked with similar teachers in different schools, so this negative ‘character’ still exists and detrimentally affects children today.

Indeed, we must ask ourselves, as educators, if we are promoting inquiry or just parrot learning. Why is it that a very young child is curious about everything and yet by the teenage years much of this has gone, and by the time the young child becomes you or I, inquiry is often a mythical thing from the past.

I well recall the late Emeritus Professor Julius Sumner Miller stating on more than one occasion, via his various television programs but also in his books, that anyone could be taught to learn parrot style but the mark of a great teacher was to inspire thinking, to motivate inquiry and to lead students onto a path where they wanted to learn more.

The challenge for us as educators is to make education challenging and thus interesting. This does not mean making the challenge so tough, so difficult that it pushes children away, but that it offers them a range of choices to consider in how they approach their learning.

Should we then consider if, by being inquisitive and seeking to learn, is the young child effectively superior to their older brothers and sisters, to their parents and like generations?

The ancient Hellenic civilization created the sciences, philosophy, the arts, and so very much more on, they needed to know ‘why’. Why is the sky blue by day but dark by night? Why do I get a stomach ache after eating far too much? Why did Philidem win the race against a great field of other athletes?

Their ‘why’ or inquiry approach to learning, was at the very base, or the core, of their intellectual growth and prosperity. Centuries later, when the Renaissance period initiated the growth that has taken us to where we are today, they went back to the very roots of this Hellenic culture, this growth, this inquiry-based approach to learning.

Why do birds fly? How can a cannon be made to shoot further away? He can we better see the stars? These questions were answered by the likes of Galileo Galilee and Leonardo da Vinci. They went beyond what was already known and added significantly to the store of the world’s knowledge. But had they been satisfied with what they had, and thought no more about the deeper issues, then we would still be living in villages without information technology, multimedia and every other invention of the past few hundred years. This progress was all founded on inquiry-based learning.

Of course, there will always be teachers who disagree, such as those who have always argued strongly against all forms of competition, whether in the classroom or on the sporting field, against all types of tests and examinations, against essays. I have worked with such teachers and in my own ‘bias’ have come to regard them as espousing their own biases against what is in the best interests of students.

Julius Sumner Miller also once stated that ‘there is no such thing as a bad student, only a bad teacher’. While this may be subject to some interpretation, the premise is a sound one. It is up to us to motivate and inspire our children to learn and not to regard them as all the same, or dumb due to their ethnic backgrounds or place of residence. Yet there are schools in my own state of Victoria where that is exactly how some schools regard their students.

By comparison, a few years ago I conducted an ‘experiment’ with one commerce-related class. Having taught most of the class previously, and believing that I knew the children’s abilities and strengths, as well as their educational weaknesses, I determined to give them work that I had originally designed for one of my year 11 classes

I had to make a few modifications here and there but, essentially, the work was the same.

At first, quite a number of the class, albeit not all, found the work difficult but I guided and mentored them over the initial hurdles until they were able to continue on their own. The outcome was evident in their results. When I gave them their marks, each and every child in that class had passed, with two boys receiving the lowest grade of a D (50 plus per cent).

These two boys got up in the class and began to complain and argue when a couple of the girls called to them to sit down and be quiet: ‘You idiots, we’re all year nine and we just passed year eleven work’. After a silent pause, they both sat down in absolute silence.

When I subsequently advised parents, the only remarks were ones of incredulity, as to how their children could pass year 11 standard work. But my question was: ‘Why shouldn’t they?’ Do we not have programs in many schools that promote gifted children? Is not University High School in Melbourne, based on accelerated learning for the entire student population?

Having taught at university level, in ‘well to do’ schools and in the western suburbs of Melbourne (Victoria, Australia), I honestly believe that education is what we make of it. American images such as Coach Carter and To Sir with Love are not mythical and not divorced from our own world.

Certainly, this demands greater effort from us as educators but why are we in the profession of teaching: for ourselves or for our students? While it is difficult to teach at three levels within a classroom, we are expected to offer work to the ‘average’ level, for want of a better term, in every class. Then we must modify work for those with a range of learning issues and difficulties. But similarly, we must modify work in the other direction for those who seek more, who demand a challenge.

In one sense, this was what the original Victorian Certificate of Education demanded and many text books were written along these very lines. Books such as Victorian law for VCE (published by Longman, and written by Kenos and Cascone), with a range of inquiry-based questions and activities, with some deliberately asking more of the students who wanted something beyond the standard question. Then, as with year 12 examinations, they provided some questions that required students to utilise the media and modern relevant case studies.

By making education relevant to the world of the student, offering channels of study to investigate what is happening in their own world, student are openly encouraged to learn far more, to enquire more deeply and to go beyond what was asked of students in the past.

To this end, modern technology is of immense value. Through the all-powerful reach of the internet and its vast, almost endless library of information, students at any school can access virtually the same information, and the same resources. Through this medium, and with guidance to ensure that they are aware of bias in web pages, they can seek to learn almost anything that they can imagine.

The only limitations are the speed of internet access at school, the ability of students to secure access to a computer at school and, indeed, whether or not they have a computer with internet access at home.

But it still all comes back to us, as educators. Unless we place the effort into mentoring, guiding and inspiring; unless we open their minds rather than ‘train’ them to think like mental clones of ourselves, we are failing in our duty to them. It will not be easy, and we may need to demand far more support from governments of all political persuasions, but any school that does not seek to empower their students towards thinking, and continuing their education, has failed in its duty to the students, their family, their community and, more broadly, to the future.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mr AT Kenos, Australia House Consultancy and Training, Melbourne, Australia

 

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