More of This. Less of That.
An important challenge and opportunity for a school leader evolving educational change is parent education. How do we engage parents to provide the background information and “why change” rationale? For the most part, our personal educational experiences mimic parent educational experiences. I work at a private international school and almost all of these highly educated and successful parents followed the traditional, factory model education from kindergarten through university. The results of this education worked for them. Why not their children? Here is an alternative view on the factory model theory.
The Future of Education
*First published in November 2010
The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. Alvin Toffler
While paging through the Borneo Post on my return flight from a recent EARCOS conference, I came across a photo showing hundreds of adolescent boy students standing at attention and pledging “to work harder to get better exam results.” I can only imagine the rote memorization needed for them to succeed on the exam and just how far from the future they are at this time. I also wondered if they had mobile phones in their pockets. If so, they are much closer to the future than I thought.