Give classrooms back to teachers
I want to talk about the way technology companies and furniture/design companies have hoodwinked the Ministry of Education and schools.
The avalanche of iPads, tablets and open plan learning environments in schools is shocking. I challenge anyone to show the evidence they benefit children’s learning on the whole, over and above traditional methods.
I’m talking about primary where the main purpose of schooling is to help children learn to read, write and count. That’s it. Everything else will flow on from there.
Schools have turned learning into sects of academies. They are trying to get children to sprint before they even know how to crawl. Tech companies insist you need to keep up with the school down the road and double down on the number of iPads and Chromebooks you have on hand.
Furniture and design companies want walls torn down and 60 kids roaming a big open space like wilderbeasts. Where is the proof this benefits a group of kids on the whole? There isn’t any, believe me I have looked.
In every class there will always be one, two, or even three kids if you are very unlucky, who are disruptive to other children’s learning.
Modern learning environments, on the whole, do not serve these children well. They need tight boundaries and firm guidance to achieve success. Their success in turn benefits the rest of the class due to less disruption.
I’m not suggesting the tail should wag the dog, but it must be considered we have swung too far to the other end of the spectrum where independent learners can operate with minimal teacher contact and work on their iPads.
What works best is a pitch to the middle that is the bulk of students in a classroom. A traditional approach to learning focuses on literacy and numeracy with afternoons to dabble in the arts/sports. Give the classrooms back to the teachers and take control away from corporates who are only looking to peddle their products.
Our system was never broken. It didn’t need fixing or saving. New technology could have been absorbed into it to benefit all. Instead we now have a system that’s a lurching Frankenstein of ad hoc agendas and gimmicks.
At the end of the day I will still get paid and have my holidays. But the children, in general, coming out of this system will not be better off for it.
There will be a shift away from our current madness back to a more traditional teaching approach, mark my words. Ideas about education always come and go and come back again, but if I was a parent today I would be pretty angry my son or daughter was caught up in this particular cycle.
What do you think? Email jenny.ling@fairfaxmedia.co.nz or write your own reader report on stuff.co.nz