Born to learn is a fun, thought-provoking series of animations that illustrate ground-breaking new discoveries about how humans learn.
Born to learn is a fun, thought-provoking series of animations that illustrate ground-breaking new discoveries about how humans learn.
Over the last two months we have been looking at how we can develop our websites so that they are more accessible and so that our friends and supporters can more easily interact with us and each other.
Our aim is to simplify the Born to Learn website and to make our 21st Century Learning Initiative site a lot more accessible. We are very proud of our archive that spans more than 30 years’ work and we want it to be as useful as possible to anyone who wants to understand more about the human process of learning and how we can best help our children develop and grow.
We have also looked at ways in which we can better support our community and have some new developments we are looking forward to sharing with you.
We are aiming to share these developments towards the end of November. In the meantime, thankyou all for your continued support.
Is education a public service or is it for an individual’s private gain? This question has been asked for at least the last two thousand years. There are two fundamental issues in education. One, is education primarily for the indivdual’s gain or two, is education for society’s benefit?
In looking at these issues we discover three tensions.
1 Public good versus private gain
Are we educating people to make a better society or are we educating people so that each person can make as much money as possible? This is an absolute tension and that tension has been there for thousands of years.
2 Process versus content
Is education more about learning how to do something or is it about amassing a vast amount of material in your brain of stuff that you know. In technical terms, is education about process or is it about content?
And that leads to the inevitable tension around examination results. Good results make us believe that a student can think well. But that is not necessarily the case, as Roger Aschsam, private tutor to Queen Elizabeth I, pointed out in 1563 the distinction between what he called ‘quick wits’ and ‘hard wits’.
It is relatively easy for skilled teachers to provide students with just enough of what they need to memorise and know to get a good result from an exam. But that is not the same as giving students the skills to be able to work things out for themselves.
3 Inheritance versus experience
In the last 25 years a third issue has arisen: is intelligence something that is genetically inherited or is it something that is gained by the individual through their life experience?
Both Plato and Confuscius talked about this but they didn’t know what was technically going on inside the brain.
Now neurobiology – which is able to look at the way the brain is working – mixed with cognitive science and a whole lot of other sciences have provided us with a very good understanding that it is actually neither just inheritance or culture, it is these two elements coming together.
And now we understand why the early years are so very, very important. If a child is in a stimulating environment and has a lot of opportunity to play before the age of seven, he or she will develop a brain totally different – far more energetic, far more open to possibilities – than the child who is just sat down and told what to do without that inspiration.
Research bears this out. A study carried out in Wisconsin in the US asked a wide-ranging question about the biggest predictors of success at the age of 18. The biggest predictor of success, which was four times more significant than any other factor, was the quantity and quality of dialogue in the child’s home before the fifth birthday.
So it wasn’t the child being talked at or the child being left to talk by itself it was dialogue, exploring an idea, that mattered most. This goes right to the heart of what primary education is about.
When a child asks a really good question don’t immediately give them the answer because if that child asks a really good question it means they are very nearly ready to solve it. So don’t give the child your answer – prompt another question to enable the child to work out the answer for themselves. The child who says I have worked it out will remember it forever.
These three tensions are constantly coming together. In the context of 2012 at a global, political level we have fallen into a trap in which our happiness is dependent on how much money we have, which is dependent on how well we sell things and which is in turn dependent on how long we work for.
The result? We are under enormous pressure to find short cuts to enable every child to function in present society – not to their own satisfaction, but to the satisfaction of the economy and by doing so we are constantly at risk of taking dangerous short cuts.
To round off our recent series on 10 steps towards a better education we list all 10 steps and link off to the related blog post.
The 10 steps first appeared as a part of our briefing paper for British parliamentarians, which is why they talk about ‘parliament’. We hope you find these steps useful . . .
10 steps towards a better education
#1 Understand Learning
#2 Reassert Intelligence
#3 Affirm the Family
#4 Strengthen Community
#5 Unpack the Curriculum
#6 Preparing the Teachers
#7 Empower Local Communities
#8 Reverse an Upside Down System
#9 The case for the all-through school
#10 A Matter of Trust
Thankyou to Yolande for sharing these thoughts on her education so far. Read other reactions to our animations here.
I worry about the current education system in England (where I live). I am sixteen, going on seventeen, have finished all of my GCSEs and am now working through A-levels. I find that now I’m in sixth form, I’m meeting more interesting people and learning about things that actually matter to me, but sixteen is FAR TOO LATE! We should allow our children to be passionate from day one! Don’t push them into roles so young; they’ve got adulthood for that. It’s easy to learn how to fit in, it’s harder to think outside the box.
Born to Learn is delighted to be able to share this piece written in Learn magazine, a magazine produced by the British Columbia Ministry of Education. Learn asked students from Gulf Islands Secondary School to write a column sharing their thoughts on the importance of student engagement in BC’s education system. This is their contribution, written from their own perspectives. They want the reader to know that they do not intend to speak for all students. Our thanks to Farley, Madee, and Lauren for their thoughtful and frank student perspective.
Engaging Students: What Works
By Farley Cannon, Maddee Nash, and Lauren Utter
Student engagement is an essential component of education. When students are engaged, they are inspired to be creative and collaborative, to develop goals and passions, and to become interested and invested in their own education. Engagement becomes the core of learning as students are not only physically present in their studies, but mentally absorbed a well. This requires the involvement of two sides: student and teacher. The foundation of the school system as it has existed in the past and, in many cases, still exists today, is based upon lecture-style teaching, which in its nature is one-sided, and thus does not have the capacity to fully engage students.
How learning is assessed and graded is also important. The present grading system often does not emphasize the importance of students being engaged during the process; rather, evaluation often focuses solely on the final product – the grade. Within this system of evaluation, students can easily become disengaged when they are not invited in to the process as equal participants in their own assessment and success. Too often students are not even aware of how or why they received the grades they did. If students are not involved in the process of their own learning, the grades will have no meaning.
What works better for students? Assessing learning processes and competencies, and the ability to think critically, for example (rather than factual learning outcomes), will promote and encourage students to engage and focus on their education. All the learning that goes on before a grade is assigned cannot be reduced to a single letter of the alphabet. Even students who receive “good” grades are often no longer challenged by what they are learning; instead their challenge lies in continuing to prioritize school above all of their interests. Students in this situation often have to forgo valuable learning opportunities, whether in or out of school, due to the abundance of redundant school work. In these cases, school is taking away from possible educational experiences instead of providing them.
Some students have let go of their school work for this reason in order to pursue activities and passions that are not widely perceived as educational. These students are then regarded as disengaged when really they are just not engaged in what is available to learn at school. Why is “school learning” considered to be more valuable than something extracurricular that is, in fact, engaging for a particular student?
As it stands, students who are “disengaged,” and even some who appear to be “engaged,” are unable to reach their full potential, whether it is because they are not being challenged in valuable ways or because they are not interested in what school has to offer. Making education an engaging and enjoyable process will result in students learning worthwhile life capacities, such as critical thinking, collaboration, creativity, inquisitiveness and innovation. Acquiring these skills, not just the ability to score well on tests, should be the goals of a good education.
In our tenth and final step on developing better education for our children, we look at why governments need to have faith in their people and communities and to support education for the welfare and development of democracy.
These 10 steps first appeared as a part of a briefing paper for British parliamentarians. They could equally apply to many governments around the world.
#10 A Matter of Trust
Parliament must understand that a decline in electoral turnout is not a problem in its own right but reflects a far wider decline in its perceived legitimacy and authority.
Parliament has to remind itself that for a democracy to be fully functional, the state cannot simply be defined in terms of a government that makes and administers the laws within which individuals are then left free to do their own thing.
Most day-to-day activity has nothing to do with the law; it is about getting on with our neighbours and creating a quality of life that depends on access to people we trust and admire. Just to live within the law means very little; but to live within the law and have a sense of civil society is to create a great place in which to live.
For the laws to be respected the people have to trust the lawmakers with doing for others what they would expect to have done to themselves –authority based on their personal example. It was in April 2009 that the Chairman of the House of Commons Select Committee on Education pleaded with Members to stop thinking of education as a commodity, but rather as a preparation for a democratic society “because community schools can only be made better when all the community support them”.
Education is not just about individuals, it is about how those individuals pull together for the common good. The more people who see themselves as strong enough to grab one of the few life jackets and swim to shore, the fewer are the oarsmen left to bring the others to safety.
If Members fail to understand this, and have so little faith in what they might administer on behalf of the country, where is their personal commitment to undertake that fundamental change that has eluded English education for so long?
In the final analysis, who would trust a doctor who was not prepared to administer the same treatment to his or her own children that he or she had administered to other people’s children?
10 steps towards a better education
#1 Understand Learning
#2 Reassert Intelligence
#3 Affirm the Family
#4 Strengthen Community
#5 Unpack the Curriculum
#6 Preparing the Teachers
#7 Empower Local Communities
#8 Reverse an Upside Down System
#9 The Case for the All-through School
In the ninth of our 10 steps on developing better education for our children, we look at the case for the all-through school.
These 10 steps first appeared as a part of our briefing paper for British parliamentarians, which is why they talk about ‘parliament’. They could equally apply to many governments around the world . . .
#9 The Case for the All-through School
Applying the first eight of our actions (see below), the case would quickly emerge for the all-through school, from the age of 5 to 15 or 16. Such schools should be based on an extension of present primary schools which, given their much closer identity with their communities, could begin to restore the balance between school, home and community.
These schools need have no more than 700 pupils and would normally be within walking or cycling distance of a child’s home – with all the social and ecological benefits that this could bring.
Current secondary schools could evolve into junior colleges (as they have already in some places) with probably no more than half their current number of pupils, thus enabling the pedagogy to demonstrate that this is the point at which adolescents should capitalise on ten years of learning how to take responsibility for their own affairs.
10 steps towards a better education
#8 Reverse an Upside Down System
The opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympics on Saturday Friday night provided a spectacular romp through British history and achievement – from Shakespeare and the workers of rural England to the engineering brilliance of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the political nerve and persistence of the Suffragettes and the musical talents of the likes of Dizzee Rascal.
The ceremony was a showcase for British ingenuity, toil and creativity and it has been very well received. Reflecting on the show, it really is a wonder what humankind has managed to achieve (especially from such a small island). But what for the future? If we were to run a similar show in 200 years’ time what achievements would we be reflecting on?
What we saw on Saturday night was a set of achievements that have come from a society which has nurtured its young in many ways – through family, community and schooling, for example.
Now we find ourselves in a period of rapid change that is impacting greatly on our economies, political systems, communities, families and schools. Through all this change we need to ensure our young are equipped to think, challenge and create, to be the responsible subversives that will shape future generations.
As summer – traditionally a time for catching up on reading – is upon us, we thought we would share our top 10 most read blog posts of the year. Enjoy!
In the eighth of our 10 steps on developing better education for our children, we look at the need to put resources into primary education.
These 10 steps first appeared as a part of our briefing paper for British parliamentarians, which is why they talk about ‘parliament’. They could equally apply to many governments around the world . . .
#8 Reverse an Upside Down System
The grain of the brain is now sufficiently well understood to make it obvious that the present system of schooling, by ascribing greater resources and status to secondary schools over primary schools is, quite literally, upside down.
If those resources were reallocated and an appropriate pedagogy developed this would enable formal schooling to start a dynamic process whereby students would be progressively weaned from their dependence on teachers. By ‘front- loading’ the system this would ensure that as children grow older they would have such good foundations on which to build that formal schooling would extend their own informal learning in ways which excited, rather than bored, them.
Such a ‘whole-system’ solution will require Parliament to instigate a radical, bold and far-reaching overhaul of the respective responsibilities of school, family and community. It is not more money that is needed to transform English education, rather it is to reallocate those funds that are being spent now in ways that should go with the natural grain of the brain so as to radically enhance the quality of education, the life of children and national well-being.
10 steps towards a better education
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