Moving in the wrong direction

Sir Ken Robinson tweeted this link today and it resonates completely with my own thinking about students and school. In Norway, those how are working, tend to be getting a lenient deal from their employers with the possibility of working from home and flexible hours. In school, the tendency is going the opposite direction. More and more teachers and politicians are engaged in counting how many hours the students are in school, regardless of what they do there or if they might even know the subjects well. As a school leader, I’m not allowed to ask a future teacher about how many days they were sick in their previous position. For students sometimes that seems to be all that counts.  I have quoted some of the paragraphs I liked the most. For the complete article see here:

An Apology from a teacher, Lizanne Foster

I’m sorry that you are forced to sit for six hours each school-day despite research thatreveals the detrimental cognitive and health effects of excessive sitting. I’m sorry that you are age-batched, forced to move through the school system with people your own age as though chronological age had anything to do with intellect, maturity, skills or ability. I’m sorry that many of you who struggle to cope in school do not get any learning support because prevailing economic policy does not prioritize funding your needs. I’m sorry that you have to study subjects that you are not interested in at a time when the sum total of human knowledge is doubling every 12 months. I’m sorry that you are made to believe that there is a scarcity of A grades for which you have to compete, when all human progress has been the result of collaboration, often considered “cheating” in schools. I’m sorry that you have textbooks with outdated information and classroom technology that is not maintained and practically obsolete. I’m sorry that what is being called personalized learning is not actually personal at all. Truly personal learning costs too much, you understand?

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