What is school for?
What is school for?
Have you ever wondered 'what school is for?'. What purpose does it serve and why do we have it? Please write down your answer to this question: what is school for?
What I think school is for
I have thought about this question alot. In my humble opinion school is there to help people lead a fullfilling life. For me the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey is a great tool for this. I find it very inspiring, consise and encouraging.
MoNaTISA model
For a fullfilling life we need to look at the whole picture of a person and society. Please watch the short clip below about this perspective and a changing society (and therefore education.) The voice over is in Dutch but it has English subtitles which you can turn on.
Circular economy & education?
Seth Godin TEDx
Please watch the TEDx talk below by Seth Godin. Here is some background on him: Seth Godin is the author of 14 books that have been bestsellers around the world and have been translated into more than 35 languages. Permission Marketing was a New York Times bestseller, Unleashing the Ideavirus is the most popular ebook every published, and Purple Cow is the bestselling marketing book of the decade. His free ebook on 'what education is for' is called STOP STEALING DREAMS and has been downloaded millions of times since it launched in January, 2012.
Seth Godin TEDx - Stop Stealing Dreams
How do people learn?
What metaphor best describes it?
I think it’s very important to talk with eachother about: what is school for? Although it can be very complicated to discuss let’s look at how people learn. Which metaphor is best applicable to learning? Is it more like filling a bucket or more like growing a flower?
System for learning?
In my humble opinion growing a flower best describes learning because we are organic creatures not mechanic machines. What do you need to grow a flower? You need an ecoystem. An ecosystem in which students have autonomy, aquire competency always in relationship with other people. This might be a teacher but let’s not forget students can also learn a great deal from eachother.
Dependent or Independent
Is everything dependent or independent from each other in such an ecosystem? The text continues after the image.
Actually it’s both. It’s a false set-off. It’s called interdepedence which means simultaneously dependent and independent. That we don’t directly see this false set-off is and are encouraged to think either/or is due to multiple-choice tests. These kind of tests instill in us to think in terms of or is or that and one single right answer.
7 Habits of Highly Effect People
The Whole World Is ...
This is also incorporated in Covey’s model about the 7 Habit of Highly Effective People, please see the image below.
The seven habits are: 1. Be proactive 2. Begin with the end in mind 3. First things first. 4. Think win-win 5. Seek first to understand, than to be understood. 6. Synergie. 7. Sharpen the saw. And notice how dependence, leads to independence and finally interdependence.
Kahoot quiz
Viktor Frankl
We didn’t tell you before what being proactive means so don’t feel bad when you got the ‘wrong’ answer. Either way now you know. For his book Covey read 150 years of literature and summarized it in the model he came up with. Being proactive has a very specific meaning: to act from the inside-out. Covey builds on the work from Viktor Frankl who survived Auschwitz. In his book 'Man's search for meaning' he wrote extensively about it. He found that we can choose our attitude in any given situation: which is at the core of being proactive.
7 Habits
Important to note here is that Stephen Covey combines interdependence and being proactive (habit 1) in his model.
Dreaming
Seth Godin:
The title of Seth Godin’s TEDx talk is STOP STEALING DREAMS. He is pointing out that the traditional education system is killing dreams which is a big deal because:
What shapes our world?
Dreams shape our interdependent world from the inside-out. Take for example the moonlanding or the iPhone. Everything we know started within the imagination of a person or group. In the 7 Habits Covey also alludes on this: everyhing is created twice: first there is an inner creation followed by an outer creation.
So, what is school for?
So far we have seen the traditional educational system (not teachers) are killing dreams which is a big deal since that’s how we shape our society, especially in this moment when we want and need to transition to a new economy, we need people to dream and make them a reality. Let’s come back to the central question again: what is school for? We have school so people can learn but should it be a factory for learning or an ecosystem for learning? A mechanic or organic model? What do you think?
What was school for?
I think/hope you might find the organic model more applicable. In such a model there is no room for force. You cannot force people to learn, but you can force people to be on time or fill in forms. This begs the question, why is/was force part of our educational system? I think this has to do with our collective thinking and organisational model. I think this is valid for communism and capitalism: both use force. See the tweet here.
So, what is school for?
Mihaly Csikszentmihaly
In his book about 'flow, the optimal experience' Mihaly shares a great insight on what he thinks school should be for, not just learning but transmitting the enjoyment of lifelong learning.
Summary
WHAT IS SCHOOL FOR? Please answer this question for yourself, since your answer will guide your thoughts and actions. Talk with eachother about what, how and why you see the things the way you see it. And protect your dreams.
Will Smith - Pursuit of Happiness
My answer would be something like this: School is for transmitting the enjoyment of lifelong learning by providing a rich environment, ecosystem, in which students, as well as teachers, flourish and start developing their dreams. The use their power to cocreate an interdependent world that works for all of mankind. Here’s a song to inspire you: climb every mountain, find your dream!
Sound of Music - Climb ev'ry Mountain
