Busting the Teaching Paradigm

Simply put, are today’s schools preparing students for the future that awaits them?

There seems to be a disconnect between our global environment that our students live in and the teaching environment we expose them to. Today some students go from a highly connected household to a virtually barren teaching environment. There is rapid uptake of technology by our young students but a much slower adoption of new software and hardware by our schools. Are our students actually taking a walk back in time when they enter the classroom?

As a soon to be educator, it seems to me that we grasp on to our old teaching norms and that these legacy methods of teaching may not be in the best interest of tomorrow’s students. Progressively changing our school curriculum’s to adapt to a new environment is essential to prepare our students for the future but this is not just my opinion.  Ms. Heidi Jacobs in her book Curriculum 21 Essential Education for a Changing World, identifies critical steps for achieving improvements in our future curriculum. First perpetuating our common teaching customs is not sufficient. As adults we tend to value what worked for us in the past and what we we recognize and feel comfortable with. Unfortunately the world has rapidly changed over the past 20 years and with this change has been an interconnectedness through technology. Now our worlds go far beyond our towns and cities. Accesses to information is virtually limitless. Harnessing this technology must be a part of our new learning. Our future requires innovating new methods of teaching.

Second, Ms. Jacobs also points out that learning to think alike is a regressive teaching function. She asserts this is what we tend to do in the classroom.  Instead our schools and curriculum should focus on promoting innovation and reflection rather than than perpetuating a narrow view of the world and a general fear of new ideas. Teaching our students to isolate themselves and not to consider other opinions will be an impairment to them in the future. One country, Singapore has been very successful in this endeavor.

Finally promoting creativity will help unlock our student’s future success. In this new technology age we are moving toward the right brain thinker, a thinker that uses high level concepts, who can better understand patterns and a citizen who can better understand human interactions. We should embrace technology to assist our students in expanding their educational reach where they can collaborate and obtain a richer and deeper experience with technology application like Blogger and Youtube.

Our new teaching methods can not relegate the teaching of arts to a lower level of importance. Rather the function of creativity we exercise in the arts must be brought forward and integrated into our other teaching forums of math, reading and writing. Only then will our students be better able to master their future environments that is far different than the one our current teachers entered years ago?

How do you prepare your students for the future, A future we don’t yet know? Will some of our old traditional ways still be useful for tomorrow?