I have been involved with the Education System in many roles. I have been responsible for the education of children and adults and I have advised many companies and institutions (including the Dutch Ministry of Education) about education.I want to write a few blogs about this issue. This is the first one.
The first issue I want to write about is the System itself. I think the System is at the end of his life-cycle. It is dying.
The current System was created just after the war to handle many children (now called the baby-boomers). It’s focus was efficiency.
To be efficient the System was organized according to the paradigms that where part of the “Spirit of the Time” at that time. The main paradigm was the Factory.
The main product of the Factory is of course a product and the product has to be tested (exams).
There are many product-lines and they deliver products of high (University) and low quality.
The product-lines produce workers who are prepared to work in the product-lines of the next step, the real product-lines in the factories.
They deliver the norms for the previous step. At this moment the factories are using robots and we don’t need human robots anymore.
The current educational factories don’t know what product they have to deliver.
One serious problem is the Input. The Input has become more conscious every year. When I was at school we were accustomed to being programmed. We listened to the teacher and tried to do our utmost best.
This attitude changed of course when we got older and created big problems in the state of puberty. The state op puberty (resistance to power) now starts at a very early age. Females are much earlier in this state than males.
The big problem now is motivate children to learn something. They are easily bored and need an exiting environment to become motivated.
This environment is provided by commercial companies. They attract and manipulate young people with ease and provide them with goals in life that are very unrealistic. They also provide them with tools (games) that are much more exiting (and educational??) than what they are getting at school.
The last point is that we live in a highly materialistic society. This society provides simple goals that are related to making a lot of money. Many parents support their children in these goals and “making a lot of money” determines the major choices made in school.
At the end of the assembly-line the product looks around and is very dissapointed. There is no work available or the speed in which they are able to reach their materialistic goals is much to slow. The effect is a mid-life-crisis at thirty.
If you read this blog you see that the Educational System has to compete with the Mass Communication Industry and this Industry is very wealthy and global.
The Educational System is local and poor and is not using the Marketing tricks of the Mass Communication Industry. It is certainly not able to follow the speed of innovation in this industry. The current Schooling System is completely out of tricks.
To solve their problems we have to restructure the System but this is not possible for the simple reason that Old Systems are resistant to change. The only thing we can do is to wait for is a total collapse.
What can we do to change the Factory Scholing System?
We have to Speed Up the process of dying.
How?
By creating exciting educational games!
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