I have long held a passion for education-and its potential power to inspire, create and motivate. The older I got, however, the more I found this concept to be far from true. In too many cases, I found that school-education-had just as great a power in de-motivating, crushing dreams-and disabling children to reach and realise their potential.
I remember as a small child telling my parents that I wanted to have my own schools around the world, where every single child can do what they wanted to and be what they wanted to be. I clearly realised early on that schools were not necessary institutions based on equality of opportunity.
I, personally, did well in school. However I attribute this success mainly to that, which I received within my home. My parents were rather strict parents and firmly believed in expecting nothing less than the best from their children, and exposing us all to a plethora of educational opportunities. We were explored to the arts, various types of sports, literature evenings at home, math games, travel around the world. Even baking in the kitchen with my mother, she managed to include educational elements of math and science into it, in a fun manner.
As the story goes, I started off school as a straight A student. And with each progressing year, I would waver between As and Bs for the most part. I remember finding school work easy, and was often bored. At 9 years old, I decided to stop working, but still managed to bring home a range of Bs and Cs on my report card one term.
I thought nothing of it, as my teachers told me how good it was, and that I should be happy with it. So, if they were happy, then I was happy!
My mother recalls me sowing her my report card and she went ballistic!!!! The subsequent scolding and detention from play-time was enough to let me now that I had done something horrible! My mother went into my school to speak with the teachers, asking about this drop in grades. My teachers response was that it was fine. On further questioning by my mother, my teacher told her that I had ADD.
To confirm this diagnosis, my parents had me tested in various boards, only to discover the fallacy in that diagnosis. It seemed as if I was not being challenged enough, was demotivated and simply bored with my education within school. I am convinced that this is the case in several ADD cases. Luckily enough, I had parents who took initiative and was being to rectify this situation.
The point, however, was that once I realised that my teachers experced less and less of me, I performed accordingly. I allowed my teachers to decide what my golas should be, and was quite complacent in meeting them.
I remember as a small child telling my parents that I wanted to have my own schools around the world, where every single child can do what they wanted to and be what they wanted to be. I clearly realised early on that schools were not necessary institutions based on equality of opportunity.
I, personally, did well in school. However I attribute this success mainly to that, which I received within my home. My parents were rather strict parents and firmly believed in expecting nothing less than the best from their children, and exposing us all to a plethora of educational opportunities. We were explored to the arts, various types of sports, literature evenings at home, math games, travel around the world. Even baking in the kitchen with my mother, she managed to include educational elements of math and science into it, in a fun manner.
As the story goes, I started off school as a straight A student. And with each progressing year, I would waver between As and Bs for the most part. I remember finding school work easy, and was often bored. At 9 years old, I decided to stop working, but still managed to bring home a range of Bs and Cs on my report card one term.
I thought nothing of it, as my teachers told me how good it was, and that I should be happy with it. So, if they were happy, then I was happy!
My mother recalls me sowing her my report card and she went ballistic!!!! The subsequent scolding and detention from play-time was enough to let me now that I had done something horrible! My mother went into my school to speak with the teachers, asking about this drop in grades. My teachers response was that it was fine. On further questioning by my mother, my teacher told her that I had ADD.
To confirm this diagnosis, my parents had me tested in various boards, only to discover the fallacy in that diagnosis. It seemed as if I was not being challenged enough, was demotivated and simply bored with my education within school. I am convinced that this is the case in several ADD cases. Luckily enough, I had parents who took initiative and was being to rectify this situation.
The point, however, was that once I realised that my teachers experced less and less of me, I performed accordingly. I allowed my teachers to decide what my golas should be, and was quite complacent in meeting them.
I believe that the core value and purpose of the education should be to build an equitable society, where all children around the world have access to the resources they need to realise their potential to become positive contributers to the society within which the live.It is therefore critical that all children receive such opportunities within the school environment which will enable them to develop the relevant knowledge, skills, competencies and confidence required to enable them to become active agents of development on a sustainable basis.
Too often however our education systems are based on top-down approach of passing down knowledge for recipients to remember, recall and regurgitate. Too often the type of knowledge which is honored and required within the system has no bearing-no fit to the culture outside of the school, making it meaningless.
I strongly believe that education should aim to foster creativity, innovation and the ability to think critically and adapt quickly. It should lead towards the development of the whole brain-the whole being, in stimulating the multiple intelligence's that exist within an individual. It should equally foster the ability of the individual to learn how to learn, make connections, analyse, and find solutions to problems. This for me is what a sustainable education should be about. In this section, I present a number of inspiration educational leaders from around the world, who share this view and are doing things to revolutionise the way that education it is currently constructed.
1. Sir Ken Robinson on Creativity
1. Sir Ken Robinson on Creativity
