A teachable moment for our education system

Let’s not go back to the way things were before, James Watts says.

We are approaching the end of another school year. However, this is not just another school year. COVID -19 and its ensuing quarantine have changed almost everything about the course material being covered, the way we have taught it and how assessments have been performed.

For years, teachers have lamented that education has not kept pace with the social and technological advances, and that the structures that are imposed and the methods we employ in our classrooms predate the invention of the automobile.

The global pandemic, with all of its negative aspects, might, conversely, be the catalyst for positive change.

Out of necessity, we have moved our high school classrooms onto a cyber-platform where incidentally, all the information now resides. The result, at least in our school’s experience, is that students are finding new and adapted ways to learn. Attendance in our Zoom-based classrooms is better than it was in our physical building, communication among students and between students and their teachers is not restricted to the time frames in between bells, and the quality of research and work being produced has improved dramatically. Experiential learning has become the norm. Whether it be planting seeds, interviewing family members or using kitchen products to reproduce science experiments, being hands-on is expected.

It is critical, then, at this potentially pivotal moment, that we not squander this opportunity to change the way we educate our young people. We have altered the content of the curriculum and, in many ways, we have improved upon it. We have been forced to find alternative ways to teach. We have been obliged to change the way we assess students’ learning. Let’s not go back to the way it was before.

Changing the content of the set curriculum is long overdue. What is required is well beyond the cosmetic alterations that have happened over the years. We must drill down to the philosophical underpinnings of curriculum development. The content of our courses needs to be less anthropocentric and more ecocentric — less about the individual, more about the environment in which we live.

During the quarantine, being healthy has been a preoccupation. We need to reintroduce our young people to their planet in tactile ways. Excursions into forests, hikes down muddy trails, growing vegetables and herbs, kayaking and mountain climbing, walking barefoot in the grass, getting fresh dirt beneath their fingernails will instil a valuable appreciation for the air, water and land that keep us all alive.

Next, we must change our antiquated modality of instruction. As teachers, we need to let go of our illusion that we control our students’ access to information. The internet has, for the most part, democratized that kind of knowledge-based power. Instead, educators need to be helping students discern fact from fiction, what is valuable information from what is entertainment, and how to test information for reliability and validity.

Finally, we need to change in the way we assess learning. Due to the closing of our schools, the Ministry of Education has been forced to cancel ministerial exams. They will be relying upon teachers’ training and our judgment to grade our students. Will the Ministry of Education notice how much time, energy and money they have saved by allowing schools to perform their own, perhaps even more accurate, assessments?

In place of tests and exams, we need to use more concrete, experiential, collective assessments that employ storytelling, group discussions and knowledge-sharing activities. This quarantine has spawned a rise in collaborative project-based learning and students’ video presentations, proving that it is possible to verify whether students have mastered concepts without op-scan sheets!

This worldwide event has placed many industries at a crossroads. We have a rare opportunity to rethink and revise everything.