Discussions

In today's world, I constantly hear from parents of children under the age of 6 who have been told by kindergarden and grade 1 teachers that they suspect their children have learning disorders like ADHD, etc. The parents discuss these their child's diagnosis with concern, and it blows me away that this even happens.  
 
For parents and teachers of the school system that encounter these discussions, I would point you to a TED talk that addresses these issues.  
 
Here are a few short videos that talk about educations culture of standardisation, killing the creativity out of our children, with the hopes of making every child compliant, non-thinkers, and essentially the same. The current education system seems to be structured to define success as one in which all children should become academic, university professors.  
 
How to escape education's death valley:  
 
 
 
Do schools kill creativity:  
 
 
 
Bring on the learning revolution:  
 

 
 
Edited by Kaitlyn1556, 2017-11-28 13:19:39

I would personally love nothing more than to let every individual mind that walks into my classroom have the constant opportunities to let creativity flow. Though. I am no where near the perfect teacher, I do pride myself in trying my best to make sure each individual feels comfortable being creative. I also try my best to make sure students feel insipred to be creative as well. However, it is extremely difficult to do this when there is pressure from administration as well as parents to push creativity to the side and focus solely on academics. This best way for me to describe this push for intelligence is when stats come out to the public everyone gets extremely upset because of lower tests scores in math and English, for example. This kind of influence often forces teachers to throw creativity out the window and replace it with memorizing numbers.  
Just think about it...art and music are among the most creative subjects in school, but almost no one views it as important or essential to a child’s learning. A lot of schools are cutting these things because of the influences of society.  
 
I haven’t watched the videos yet, so I may be a little off subject here. But I thought I might share my thoughts on the subject. Hopefully there can be a change soon, but everyone needs to work together for that to happen (and that i:ncludes, teachers, parents, students, and administration).  
 
Edited by Pinkbutterflies, 2017-11-28 13:59:59

From there, try moving into reading a bit of John Taylor Gatto (and subsequently, maybe a little John Holt). It will both horrify and inspire you at the same time.  
 
"I''ve come to believe that genius is an exceedingly common human quality, probably natural to most of us... I began to wonder, reluctantly, whether it was possible that being in school itself was what was dumbing them down. Was it possible I had been hired not to enlarge children''s power, but to diminish it? That seemed crazy on the face of it, but slowly I began to realize that the bells and the confinement, the crazy sequences, the age-segregation, the lack of privacy, the constant surveillance, and all the rest of national curriculum of schooling were designed exactly as if someone had set out to *prevent* children from learning how to think and act, to coax them into addiction and dependent behavior." - John Taylor Gatto, New York State Teacher of the Year x 2  
 
Edited by Abbysmum, 2017-11-28 14:14:28

Abbysmum said "From there, try moving into reading a bit of John Taylor Gatto (and subsequently, maybe a little John Holt). It will both horrify and inspire you at the same time.     "I''ve come to believe that genius is an exceedingly common human quality, probably natural to most of us... I began to wonder, reluctantly, whether it was possible that being in school itself was what was dumbing them down. Was it possible I had been hired not to enlarge children''s power, but to diminish it? That seemed crazy on the face of it, but slowly I began to realize that the bells and the confinement, the crazy sequences, the age-segregation, the lack of privacy, the constant surveillance, and all the rest of national curriculum of schooling were designed exactly as if someone had set out to *prevent* children from learning how to think and act, to coax them into addiction and dependent behavior." - John Taylor Gatto, New York State Teacher of the Year x 2     Edited by Abbysmum, 2017-11-28 14:14:28"

Thanks for that quote from John Taylor Gatto, Abbysmum.  
 
It puts my original post into complete perspective. I find it interesting from Pinkbutterflies that if many teachers felt they had the freedom to challenge the status quo (administrators) in that if children were taught in a way that opened them up to real creative learning, and with an ability to explore their creativity and childhood ideas, then we would really be opening things up to building a better society. It amazes me that the current institutionalised system that incorrectly dictates importance of skillsets to that of an academic, places obstacles in place that go against what it means to be a child. It's not wonder we have so many problems with learning and dropout, when we have institutionalised our school system in a way that dumbs them down into all being the exact same, often lacking critical thinking skills as adults that are needed to build a better society. I think it is important to recognise that teaching kids to be creative and active is just as important as it is to teach them other skills of math and science. Obesity among our children due to lack of physical exercise is becoming a real epidemic, and so what kind of quality life are we setting our kids up for when all they want to do is play on their tablets and video games.  
 
This reminds me of a talk I once heard from a lady by the name of Sherry Turkle, who speaks of what it means to live in a society obsessed with digital technologies, and an increasing lack of social connections. In an era with social media being the dominant force within society, it is time people took back control of their (digital) lives from the addictive nature of these devices:  
 

There are many topics addressed here. I have been an adult ESL teacher for ten years so I can't speak to the ADHD issue, but I am now training to be a high school teacher so I have seen all the studies on creativity etc. this has influenced my philosophy as I take my education courses, but the pattern of learn-regurgitate-forget seems to get the results administration wants. Since they are in charge, no change will happen. Perhaps a bit pessimistic but that is how the world works.

To my way of thinking, change never comes from the top-down. If you look at history, REAL change has always been a movement that originates from the grassroots, and is a change from the bottom-up.  
 
I would encourage all teachers to advocate for a new way of teaching, one that does away with "industrial" farming of our kids in education. If real change does not come from our teachers, then what is there left to teach our children?

you have had a few things to say about education recently, from this item on schools and creativity, to your earlier post wanting schools to indoctrinate kids on your view of world finance.  
 
You are correct when you say that real change comes from the bottom up.  
 
I encourage you to get your undergraduate degree, then your Bachelor of Education and then compete for a teaching job. Since you have all the answers I am sure parents and students will find you to be inspirational.  
 
Edited by standard standard h8r, 2017-11-29 12:43:48

I'm not making any claims that I am a teacher, or that I know what it means to be a teacher in today's society. I do have my degrees, but my professional interest is not in education. But what I do know is that I did grow up under this same system, and as an adult I don't believe it served most of its students very well.  
 
I don't understand what can be so threatening as to dismiss this conversation as something that is not worthy of exploration. There has been much discussion in the news the past few weeks that talk about education (coming mostly from Canadian university institutions) and the idea that we have created a world where many people are in need of "safe spaces". What I mean by this is that we shouldn't feel we need not discuss IDEAS about how to improve things, without everybody feeling that they are being offended or trampled upon.  
 
I just wanted to open up a discussion about education, and maybe if enough teachers speak up, then the administrators that are doing the hiring will see that many teachers, parents, and students alike simply do not support the status quo.  
 
In one of the talks, there was a comment made about the world having 3 types of people: (1) people who watch from the sidelines, (2) people who are open to listening and entertaining new ideas and may or may not want to get involved, and (3) people who engage conversations and try to make changes to the world (ie. people who try to build a movement to make changes for the better in this world).  
 
Which one of these people are you?  
 
I don't see what's wrong with engaging conversation, so that if you decide to participate that you can decide which side of the dialogue you want to be on.  
 
Change is never easy, but sometimes keeping the status quo is (in the long run) much harder.  
 
PS: I never claimed to have all the answers, but if you are one of these teachers, maybe you can explain the "pigeon hole" place you seem to think to find yourself in (I state this because I get the impression that finding full time work as a teacher in today's world is not an easy thing to do, and I will agree - that's fair).

standard standard h8r said "you have had a few things to say about education recently, from this item on schools and creativity, to your earlier post wanting schools to indoctrinate kids on your view of world finance.     You are correct when you say that real change comes from the bottom up.     I encourage you to get your undergraduate degree, then your Bachelor of Education and then compete for a teaching job. Since you have all the answers I am sure parents and students will find you to be inspirational.     Edited by standard standard h8r, 2017-11-29 12:43:48"

Oh please, get over yourself.  
 
Almost every profession that pays well requires higher education in obtaining degrees or specialized training. Police officers, firefighters, doctors, nurses, veterinaries, and even entrepreneurial farmers, all can claim how competitive it is to gain a permanent position in a geographical area they wish to work or have to deal with other industry barriers. Some of which require more educational investment than some teachers. Teachers can't claim exclusivity on these issues.  
 
If you are a teacher, and not interested in looking at other views to education, maybe take a sabbatical and recharge.  
 
I am soooo tired of teachers dismissing people who critique the profession/industry as not worthy of bringing other ideas/concepts to the table. Just because you're a teacher, doesn't make you a expert in everything, including the profession itself. Just like you can have bad nurses, policemen, firefighters, etc. or anyone in any profession. So maybe be a little more open minded.

I don’t think it’s the schools per say or the teachers, honestly I think it’s the system dictated to them. The department puts a lot of content into the curriculum, which makes it challenging to i:nclude a lot of time for creative and individual type projects to be done. Definitely there are some that do a better job then others at inspiring and encouraging creativity, but I feel that many have made a shift away from traditional teaching practices to much more engaging and autonomous work then I ever had when I was in school!

The comment I can most relate to is an institutionalize school system that standardizes all of its students into the same narrow line of valued disciplines, expecting all of its students to be content spending the entire day performing low grade clerical work, and then identifying many of those individuals that struggle with this day in and day out, as having some form of ADHD.

School curriculums are laid out to produce labourers, not thinkers. There are other speakers that present this as well, and everyone of them that I have seen are in agreement that schools need to throw the current methods out the window and restructure it so kids actually come away learning how to be productive thinkers in our society instead of robots memorizing information for a day.

School becomes something most kids hate. The kids are being indoctrinated by a Cult of people who want nothing more than to exploit a child's imagination that his or her or "it" has no business to think outside the box engrained into their mind and with enough reinforcement from the teacher those former inspirations become believed to be bad and the kid also doesn't want to be seen as different so he or she or "it" goes along with everybody else.  
 
Look at the social psychology experiment by Solomon Asch on group influence.

I did a wonderful job bringing out creativity, compassion and empathy, and the ability to "think outside the box" in my 7 years as a Gr. 12 teacher. However, I had the opportunity because I was with the same kids all day every day.  
Let's be realistic, in our current system it's pretty difficult to bring out creativity in what amounts to about 45 mins per day with 20-25 kids!  
Don't blame the teachers-many are amazing at what they do within the constraints!

What I don't understand is why teachers cannot teach different ways to achieve the same outcome. A lot seems to be text book teaching. When I went to school and even my daughter it was all regurgitated material out of a text book. That to me isn't teaching. My buddy in Alberta, all assignments are online with teaching references online to help students/parents to understand the work. Now this kind of teaching may work for a lot of students it didn't work for me or my daughter. I am hands on visual learning. Even taking my college classes the theory part I barely passed. But give me the hands on work and I was at the top of the class. With all the PD days for teachers to learn you would think it would be a no brainer to adapt teaching skills to achieve the same outcome. But if one is more creative in their learning such as I was, meds should not be pushed but instead a different way of teaching should be modified.

So I suppose the point of this conversation is to challenge the current model, and to have discussions about how to bring about meaningful change to this broken system.  
 
I would love to hear Brandon City School Division Trustees pipe up and put some of their input into this conversation. Is this not what the voters of Brandon hired them to do? How about some school principles? Why is it so difficult to engage in public conversation when it comes to change? Why does there seem to be a threat that is felt when people speak up and voice concerns about change when it comes to the status quo? We have been hearing some of it with teachers, but silence from the rest.