Maybe the right school is the wrong one?

Ek sien die Nasionale Onderwys Departement is met ’n veldtog besig waarin hulle ouers aanmoedig om hulle kinders betyds vir volgende jaar by skole in te skryf. As die ouers dit dan nie voor ’n gegewe datum doen nie, behou die departement hul die reg voor om die kind by ’n skool van hulle keuse te plaas.

Hierdie einste kampanje het my laat wonder of ons ooit regtig weet wat die regte skool vir ons kind is?

Wat laat ‘n ouer besluit dat so-en-so die regte skool vir sy kosbaarste besitting is? Waarop berus hierdie uiters belangrike keuse?

Is dit die netjies geklede leerders op straat?  Die goeie sportspanne? Die uitstekende uitslae aan die einde van die jaar?  Is dit die naaste skool aan die huis?  Of kan dit dalk die image van die skool wees?

Wat baie mense egter nie besef nie, is dat die regte skool dalk die verkeerde skool vir jou kind kan wees! Miskien moet ek sê, vir óns kinders kan wees.  Vir die kinders van Suid-Afrika kan wees.  Vir die kinders wat hierdie land in die toekoms moet lei.

Seth Godin vra in een van sy artikels, Back to (the wrong) school, ’n klompie ongemaklike vrae rondom ons verstaan van wat onderwys en onderig is en moet wees.  Hy verwys na die Amerikaanse onderwysstelsel, maar ek glo dié diskoers is ook op ons van toepassing.

 Large-scale education was never about teaching kids or creating scholars. It was invented to churn out adults who worked well within the system.

Of course it worked. Several generations of productive, fully employed workers followed. But now?

Nobel-prize winning economist Michael Spence makes this really clear: there are tradable jobs (making things that could be made somewhere else, like building cars, designing chairs and answering the phone) and non-tradable jobs (like mowing the lawn or cooking burgers). Is there any question that the first kind of job is worth keeping in our economy?

If you do a job where someone tells you exactly what to do, they will find someone cheaper than you to do it. And yet our schools are churning out kids who are stuck looking for jobs where the boss tells them exactly what to do.

Do you see the disconnect here? Every year, we churn out millions of workers who are trained to do 1925 labour.

The bargain (take kids out of work so we can teach them to become better factory workers) has sent us on a race to the bottom. Some argue we ought to become the cheaper, easier country for sourcing cheap, complaint workers who do what they’re told. We will lose that race whether we win it or not. The bottom is not a good place to be, even if you’re capable of getting there.

As we get ready for the 93^rd year of universal public education, here’s the question every parent and taxpayer needs to wrestle with: Are we going to applaud, push or even permit our schools (including most of the private ones) to continue the safe but ultimately doomed strategy of churning out predictable, testable and mediocre factory-workers?

As long as we embrace (or even accept) standardized testing, fear of science, little attempt at teaching leadership and most of all, the bureaucratic imperative to turn education into a factory itself, we’re in big trouble.

The post-industrial revolution is here. Do you care enough to teach your kids to take advantage of it?

Die feit dat ons kinders almal in skole ‘n sitplek moet kry, is baie belangrik.  Maar vir my is dit baie belangriker dat dít wat ons kinders op daardie sitplek dóén, aandag kry.

Dringende aandag …

In the Western tradition, we have focused on teaching as a skill and forgotten what Socrates knew: teaching is a gift, learning is a skill. – Peter Drucker

A man can learn a lot if he listens, and if I didn’t learn anything else I was learning how much I didn’t know. – Louis L’Amour

As our society gets more complex and our people get more complacent, the role of the jester is more vital than ever before. Please stop sitting around. We need you to make a ruckus. – Seth Godin (Linchpin)

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