Showing posts with label Education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Education. Show all posts

Wednesday 11 September 2013

What are you teaching your children?


I recently came across important questions on a blog of a famous American businessman. He was writing in connection to the beginning of a new school year in the fall and on educational achievement of school-going children. His main thrust was financial education.

The questions: “What are our schools teaching our kids? Is it really the information they need to succeed in life? Are they being taught to think for themselves and to solve problems?” The businessman contends that our traditional schools have failed to teach children to think for themselves and all key skills they need to be successful.

It seems majority of parents or guardians of young people consider that the job of educating their children belongs first to the state, or a school. As a result, parents focus on providing food, clothing, medical care and entertaining their children (or filling up houses with gadgets). Schools then do whatever they can in fulfilling the duty of education.

I will turn the first question to the parents: what are you actively teaching your children? Although I won’t belabour the case for parents as the first educators of their children; here is an alternative question. Where else do parents go when schools and higher education system fail to be good guides and become instead sources of confusion and hindrances to true education? In the heart of the child that each one of us is we would consider ‘going home’ to a parent, to family.

So then, what and how are parents to teach their children? I suppose every parent would want to teach their child what would make them competent in life’s varied circumstances (work, leisure, difficulty, and uncertainty) and ultimately how to find happiness.

How to teach? Let’s break down the task of teaching. Teaching takes place only when its intended result -- which must be known from the start -- is achieved -- when the child is taught.
One can try to teach their child forgiveness, but they have not taught until the message reaches the child and the he or she is seen forgiving habitually (even in petty matters).  Being taught means to perceive that what the teacher has said is true and valid, to perceive why it is so and to do it.

One way parents try to teach is by modelling the behaviour they would like taught to their children. Children usually assimilate the behaviour and messages (good and bad) in the home without the need to be drummed into them. However, the teaching is not done until the message (forgiving is good, forgiving helps relationships) reaches them and they practice it.
Parents who decide to leave education to the schools will find (albeit rather late) that their children did not learn much else apart from subject facts that are soon forgotten after receiving a grade. For those who choose to take up the challenge, there’s much work to do in learning and seeking wisdom to teach one’s children.  Parents who have the time and ability may decide to home-school whereas others may only manage to teach children how to play a musical instrument. Whichever course is taken, you will have made a choice to give of yourselves and that is an invaluable legacy for your children.

What can you begin to do now? Here is some inspiration from Paul Bregman.

Monday 29 July 2013

Woe to the teacher who has not embraced the internet

Last week the American businessman and financial education activist Robert Kiyosaki made a remark on Facebook that did not go well with many people who follow him. He said the ‘old idea of a teacher is obsolete; the internet and mobile devices are how people are learning’.
There were many individuals who insisted he was so wrong and that the statement undermined the work of teachers. They, like many of us who use public forums like this, were too quick to disagree without observing how Kiyosaki presented his claim. The key words there were ‘old idea of teacher’. With the opportunity to stay judgment until they have thought about the statement, many who disagreed may have a different take.

A few decades ago (and unfortunately in some places today), the transmission approach to teaching was the way schools operated. Teachers and prescribed text books were the deposits of knowledge and understanding. Students paid attention to learn as much as they could from the teacher. Once in a while, a prudent teacher realized the students also had something to offer and would incorporate discussions and feedback sessions. The students mostly took the teachers’ interpretation, who in turn may have gleaned it from a textbook author. In other words, one would learn what the teacher had learned.

It was important to learn what was expected because one would be tested at the end of a school term.
In many cases then (and today) what is not prescribed in the curriculum does not get taught.

The advent of information and communication technology and tools now gives the teacher and student new possibilities. The teacher may use podcasts with ideas and perspectives from other teachers to supplement their own effort. Almost all the knowledge the teacher previously brought to the class is now available for the student on the internet. The student only needs prudence to ask guidance on where to find reliable resources.

Robert Kiyosaki is not against teachers. He wants to point out that the internet and related technology tools are a big part of the teaching and learning process. Teachers who will not step up to the challenge of incorporating new technology tools in their practice are not only at a disadvantage, but dangerous for our schools. Although they can be great mentors and offer inspiration for young people, they offer an impoverished learning experience as they are likely to keep behind developments in their respective teaching areas.


Alvin Toffler has said that the illiterate of the twenty first century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn. 

Saturday 27 July 2013

Do you need that Master’s degree or experience?

You have hardly been a year out of university after a three or four-year Bachelor’s program. In these times I suspect most of the year has been spent enjoying your new found freedom from academic study, course tests and exams. After a few months of rest, the race to find work begins.  If you have found a job or started your own small business (as a sole service provider), you are now trying to stabilize in that new undertaking. In the case of those looking for employment, the search continues.

Hardly a year or two after leaving university there will be cries for you to acquire new qualifications. This is made to appear even more urgent for those who have no work or are in employment that they do not find fulfilling. You have been told that there are so many people ready to present a Bachelor’s certificate with their next job application. It will be at least a second class computer science, engineering, social science or physics degree. So yours is not that special.

It is true a Master’s degree may give you an edge at the job interview following elimination of many others. But this is not always the case.

I argue here that the best approach to the decision to advance to a Master’s degree is to consider what the extra credential will contribute to your productive ability. Furthermore, that the best measure of one’s productive ability is in what they can do with what they know (not just what they know). The best way to improve your productive ability is by obtaining work experience.

One is better off spending two or three years working full-time in a busy finance department of a large corporation than a year or so on a MBA program straight after a bachelor’s degree. If a Master’s degree does not offer you the possibility of working on real products or services for real clients (say with a semester of internship), you really have to think twice about spending money or time on it. Besides, working with real clients solving real problems gives you a wide range of experiences to take to graduate lecture discussions.
Should it matter if I’m offered a Masters scholarship? Yes. Time spent shuffling more pages in text books and solving structured problems keeps you behind colleagues who learn from performance challenges at the frontlines on the job.

Another way of looking at the decision is to consider what material rewards a promotion (resulting from a new Masters qualification) will bring or the intellectual rewards of advanced study in your discipline that gives you the capacity for deeper analysis of workplace problems.

I would definitely discourage young people fresh from university from advancing to Masters study just to fill time without employment.


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A must share: Bob Parsons' 16 rules for business and life





Monday 22 February 2010

What are we doing with computers in schools?


The last two decades have been a period of proliferation of information and communication technology in almost every aspect of life—from the mobile phone to banking and the remote tracking of motor vehicles. This technology revolution mostly driven by computer applications has also affected the education sector. There is ever growing concern about equipping classrooms with computers and to wire each of these computers to the internet. Private school TV adverts these days necessarily include a view of computers, perhaps as a up-to-date institution qualifier.
Technology-enhanced classrooms are inspired by constructionist theories that propose that learning is an active process wherein learners are actively constructing mental models and theories of the world around them. Social justice-inspired programmes like ‘One laptop per child’ also continue to roll out supplies of computers to developing world schools in view of what has been referred to as ‘bridging the digital divide’. 

The drive to provide computers is based on the thinking that if these machines are made available, they will be used; and if they are used, they will contribute to improvement of learning. Will computers deliver on the expectations of policy-makers and educational philanthropists? My argument is that the most needed energy for reviving and improving schools and higher institutions of learning should be sought in student agency manifested in reliable work habits and critical thinking skills.

Why bring computers to classrooms?
The social rationale is that digital technologies have become part and parcel of everyday life, and that schools should prepare students to be active participants in a digital age.  Similarly, the thinking behind a vocational, or market-oriented, rationale is that children should learn how to work with computers and later be able to compete for jobs at front ends of interview queues. Proponents of this position promote ‘computer literacy’ courses, concentrating on computer programming and the use of popular application programmes.  

The pedagogical rationale emphasizes a contribution to improving teaching and learning, sometimes through the use of new computer-assisted learning software in the classroom, or by using the computer as a tool that can expand and enrich knowledge acquisition and construction.

Another impulse for bringing computers to the classroom is from academics and educators in favour of self-directed learning for children. This coalition, inspired by John Dewey, Jerome Bruner, Maria Montessori and Lev Vygotsky, seek to transform schools in which learning comprises tediously absorbing large bodies of non-functional knowledge unconnected to life. They want schools in which teachers help students construct their own understanding.  Classroom learning has also been greatly influenced by growth of the internet and its World Wide Web resource stockpiles. Computer workstations that give students internet access increase the size of the available learning resources to consult and also the efficiency with which they can search huge chunks of literature for relevant references.
Although computers may be useful educational tools for quicker processing and analysis of information, they often present an opportunity for students to grow their leisure time and get away from learning tasks.

Educational tools or toys?
The potential for computers to facilitate learning is often met by a challenge of choosing what one may use from several applications on a computer. The standard desktop computer will come with word-processers, drawing applications and entertainment accessories like music and games. When the computer is connected to the internet, there are myriad opportunities for a student to access online games but also to link up with other people for a chat. When presented with a play arena and an opportunity to work out mathematics problems, the former is likely to become of secondary interest. A computer can be a collection of some of the most enticing distractions that easily overwhelms a teenage student who is still struggling to develop self-mastery.

Without appropriate guidance, many secondary (even university) students working away at a computer remain incapable of assessing the quality of the resources they have access to. Students using workstations with internet access are also susceptible to ‘pathological internet-use’ that could draw them into pornography or with the feeling that the internet is my only friend.
When computers are delivered to classrooms, they usually meet archrivals, the teachers.  Teachers are not always enthusiastic about altering their ways of working to accommodate new technology. Even though some teachers are willing to undergo training in the use of new learning support facilities, they rarely acquire pedagogic expertise to help them make the most effective use of ICT in their lessons.

Instead of new and bigger investments in computer infrastructure, schools should also invest in giving students skills that increasingly get neglected: writing and reasoning, reliable work habits, capacity for concentration and face-to-face communication. Computers are useless without primary material—ideas and concepts generated through dedicated study and thought; and this can only be done by human beings.

I’m of the view that learning mostly depends on what human beings, rather than computers, do best. The teacher may be the one to meet a most important need for the student—lighting a fire in the student’s heart, role modeling and nurturing as these can contribute more to learning now and in the future than the neatest hyper-linked courseware.