The Future of Educating the Future

Originally Posted September 20, 2012

"The typical Canadian K-12 curriculum is based on an ideal designed a hundred years ago."
Gary Mason, The Globe and Mail

The current school system is based on an antiquated model that has little bearing on what kids need to learn today and how they need to learn it.

I feel for the teachers and administrators who clearly understand there needs to be change but are held captive by the boards. They struggle to do what they love within the financial and policy constraints of the current system. Bigger classes, more kids with special needs, less help, less money, less time, more demands ... the teachers that stand out are working hard and even working nights and weekends to do their very best under less than ideal circumstances.

Individual learning styles, teaching to a deeper understanding, creative thinking, problem solving and risk taking...these are all key aspects of great teaching that are now the buzz words of all the “school reform” articles you'll read.

So, I was excited today to see all of this terminology being the crux of a Globe and Mail article about plans in B.C. to revamp their education system. Here is an excerpt:

“The typical Canadian K-12 curriculum is based on an ideal designed a hundred years ago. When it was conceptualized, educators didn’t know much about the way people learned. Consequently, the system was built on rational assumptions, not science. 

The goal was to get facts into students’ heads. A teacher’s job was to transmit that information in the most effective way possible. The definition of success was based on how well students could use simple mathematical concepts and recall facts such as the country’s provincial capitals.

It became known as the standard model and initially prepared students for the industrialized era of the early 20th century.

Today’s economy is obviously much different. It’s increasingly based on the production and dissemination of knowledge and information, not just goods and services. The world is now fuelled by human creativity; in that sense, the standard model is designed for a world that’s rapidly disappearing.”

When and how B.C. plans to implement these changes remains to be seen. It will demand a radical change in thinking, support, money, manpower and teaching teachers to change they way they teach. It is not going to happen overnight but if I were young (oh, if I were young) today and planning a family I might allow myself the utopian view of a future in which my children would be taught very differently than kids are today and it would be a national plan to benefit all children from coast to coast to coast.

Full Globe and Mail article - here