Education needs a radical rethink

The world has changed dramatically but the classroom hasn’t kept pace and many schools are at risk of being left behind, Greg Whitby warns.

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When I began my teaching career in the late 1970s most households only had one television set. Last year there were more mobile phones in Australia than people, according to SBS News.

Today’s world is a very different one to the era in which I taught. The spread of, and access to, technologies has impacted powerfully on every aspect of our lives.

American author and academic Yong Zhao recently said that if schools want to get to Mars, we need to stop improving the horse and cart and actually build the equivalent of an educational spaceship.

The horse wagon Zhao was referring to is the well-known “industrial” model of schooling. It’s the one most of us experienced — those factory-like structures where you were sorted by age, tested on how well you could memorise facts and figures and moved through the system. At the end of it, you were sent out into the world with a set of functional skills and found a job usually for life.

The world has changed dramatically since the days of the blackboard but the classroom hasn’t kept pace. Picture: Supplied

It always surprises me to hear people talking about going back to the “good old days” of schooling but no one ever talks about returning to the good old days of medicine! Would you get your tonsils removed at a hospital that was built in the 1930s and hasn’t changed since?

What we know about learning and teaching has changed radically since the day of the blackboard and the cane but the classroom hasn’t kept pace.

Many schools today are at risk of being left behind — caught between the structures, processes and thinking from a past era despite the fact that we are living in a new age.

Students in Kindergarten today will finish their schooling in 2029. We can only begin to imagine what the world will be like then.

We are all challenged to think differently and do differently when it comes to learning and teaching in today’s world. The most important thing we can teach students is not to remember information but how to think, learn and relearn.

Schools will need to teach knowledge and skills critical for managing the challenges of a changing world and the changing nature of work. Picture: Supplied

This requires us to radically rethink the nature of schooling and to ask some fundamental questions like what is the new role of teachers; how do young people learn best today (and with what tools) and what should they learn?

Schools will need to teach learners knowledge and skills critical for managing the challenges of a changing world and the changing nature of work.

One of the highest performing regions in education is Singapore. They are moving away from traditional models of learning and looking at the need to nurture entrepreneurs, and creative and critical ­thinkers.

Australia needs to meet this challenge and ensure we have great schools relevant to today’s world and today’s learners.

Greg Whitby is executive director of schools at the Catholic Diocese of Parramatta. Follow him on Twitter @gregwhitby