Keeping Abreast of Education

As the education revolution (or is that evolution) continues to roll forward it becomes increasingly difficult to balance time and resources - firstly, to ensure that education is relevant, secondly, that education is interesting and thirdly, that there is actually time to fit in all the competing subject matter.

How many times do we hear people complaining about the standard of today's education and demanding a return to the 'good old days' of the three R's, rote learning, and learning a lot about a little. Today kids learn a little about a lot as our knowledge as a world grows exponentially. I would love to see how we try to go backwards. Can you imagine in a world where kids embrace technology in the womb, how they go back to boring, unimaginative, regimented learning. Yes, I personally think the world is a little out of kilter, where technology is used as a babysitter and our children are wrapped in a cocoon of over-protectiveness. These issues however, are ones that should be dealt with at home and not in the haloed halls of eduction.

Schools have enough troubles keeping kids focused with the competition of smart phones opening up the mine field of social media, the time sink of Candy Crush, and the general concept of the internet in general. You should try getting them to refer to a text book when researching!!!!! Thank God the content of Wikapedia is actually improving and as for those answer sites - OMG! Why on earth would you ask anything of importance on a site where everyone else is of the same standard?? The answers roll into assignments and the cringe factor is only surpassed by the standard of grammar. So how do we fix this? How do we get parents to spend more time with their children's learning when they themselves are so time poor? Does it even need fixing? Do we need to be as pedantic  about maths and spelling and grammar? After all, we have all these tools that do, and fix, all that for us now!

Technology alone changes at a rate never seen before. It changes and challenges our lives in every way as we struggle to accept change and keep up with the concepts that the bright young minds of today keep exploring. Five years ago, no-one would ever have dreamed that the 3D Printer would be on the cusp of printing prosthetic limbs, houses, electrical circuitry for the heart and even organs. Yet, now we talk very matter of factly about one of the most exciting and life changing phenomenon since the discovery of antibiotics. Let's hope we don't bugger this one up, like we have the antibiotic scenario. This rate of change shows us that the clever young minds are out there, willing to explore concepts that the majority never dream of.  Many of these geeks are the ones who 'fail' miserably with conventional education. They are the ones who are often the worst behaved at school as we fail to keep them interested or stimulated. Yet, they go on to change the world in ways we never think possible.

So the challenge for those responsible for educating our children is not only to provide the basics for all, not only to somehow pacify the parents out there who refuse to take any responsibility while demanding more and more, but to somehow embrace and stimulate these brightest minds who at the moment succeed in spite of us. We need to think outside the square. I work in Science and our challenge every day is to deliver the content yet stimulate the curiosity and, most of all have fun.One Institution rising to the challenge is Dr Claudia Diaz at the Melbourne Institute of Technology where her students in Human Anatomy paint muscles onto the body of another student. The end result is amazing and I am sure that none of the students involved will ever forget the name or location of one single muscle in the human body :)

Photos: Simon O’Dwyer | The Age

These are the type of learning tools we need to embrace. If only we had enough time! Maybe, in our exploration of the education revolution (or is that evolution) we need to throw out our preconceived ideas of text is best and embrace the visual, the technology, and let our brightest minds learn at their own pace.

I believe there is a place in society for each and every one of us. There is also a job for each and every one of us. We need our truck drivers as much as we need our brain surgeons. We need our cleaners as much as we need our engineers. Our education system is slowly tailoring itself to such a concept with TAFE based training becoming the 'norm' in schools but we still fail our brightest. We need to stimulate them, let them run their own race and not be impeded by the shackles of 'one size fits all'. 

At a time when education is well and truly in the spotlight with the brawling over funding, of public versus private, of who should pay and who should not, let us also debate not only the use of  this funding but the quality of education of all young Australians. Australia has always been a leader in invention and innovation so let us keep the ball rolling and keep our enquiring young minds excited. 

Give us your thoughts and ideas!

Photos: Simon O’Dwyer | The Age