“Ideally, what should be said to every child, repeatedly, throughout his or her school life is something like this: ‘You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do. What you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture. The slightest look at history will show how impermanent these must be. You are being taught by people who have been able to accommodate themselves to a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors. It is a self-perpetuating system. Those of you who are more robust and individual than others will be encouraged to leave and find ways of educating yourself — educating your own judgements. Those that stay must remember, always, and all the time, that they are being moulded and patterned to fit into the narrow and particular needs of this particular society.”
- Dori Lessing, The Golden Notebook
The most compelling reason I can give for why everyone should be paying attention to the changes taking place in the world is that it will have some very real world implications for how we raise the next generation. It’s up to us to prepare them to thrive in the world that they inherit from us. If we don’t even understand what’s happening we simply won’t be able to help the next generation along.
Change is sorely needed in the classroom. It is time to realize that the one size fits all approach to education that we have taken in the past will not work going forward. It is foolish to continue shoving kids into packed classrooms and expecting all of them to learn the same thing at the same pace.
How do we educate a kid to live in a world filled with so much uncertainty? There are no easy answers here but we must start thinking about them.
For more on what this might look like check out….
And even more disruptive……