A new form of Education

Clearly, as I’ve stated in earlier posts, these months in South Africa have involved a lot of thinking about where I want my life to go, and what I want to do. Graduation is fast approaching, and I know once I’m back in classes those four months will fly by. I have never worked for a nonprofit before, never been part of any sort of development work, and so this is definitely a learning experience for me – and certainly a lesson in patience because this is the type of work that happens slowly over time, jumping over many hurdles that are placed in the way, particularly in a country such as South Africa. At times in the past month or so I’ve thought, maybe I should go back to working in editing, I still love books and literature as much as I did before, but I know that I probably could not be satisfied with a life like that, not after all I have seen and experienced.

And especially not after I read an article such as this: http://www.wired.com/business/2013/10/free-thinkers/all/. Now this article is long, I will warn you. And might be boring to those of you who have no interest in education, or progressive forms of education, so I’ll summarize quickly. It tells the story of a teacher in a small town in Mexico just across the border from Texas who started trying a new way of teaching with his students. He would put a problem on the board and leave them to come up with the solution themselves, by talking in small groups and teaching one another. He began using this concept in all aspects of his class, letting the students decide where the lessons would go. To teach them democracy, he had them elect student representatives who would be in change of the class and even make decisions about disciplinary action. After a year of doing this, his students took a standardized test that the whole country must take, and their test scores had improved remarkably in all subjects, to some of the highest in the country. The article also mentions a man in India who set up a computer in one of the slums and observed from a distance what children did with it. They ended up learning how it worked all on their own. He downloaded information on molecular biology on it, and after 150 days they were answering over 50% of questions on a test correctly. It is this new idea of letting children teach themselves, or at least choose which direction their learning will go.

For a girl who has never been terribly good with children, and was adamant that her English degree would not turn into a teaching job, this article surprisingly inspires me so much. I’ve seen so much recently how much power and potential children have if given the right resources and lead in the right direction. Children are our future, and if given the chance can help us change the world. I can see this technique used in schools in developing nations across the world. If given some technology, and loose guidance by a teacher who knows when to step back, this could make a huge difference in how the next generation is educated. I wonder what my life might be like if I were to have been taught in this way. I think that there is so much about our education system that trains us to stay in a certain box, and I can see the impacts of that even now, how it sometimes can be hard to think out – a skill that is so incredibly valued in the work place at the moment. It’s almost like we have to retrain ourselves. Clearly this could have an impact in US education as well, though I think it’d be a little harder to implement what with all of the bureaucracy and red tape in our country. But reading this article and thinking about this concept really has me thinking about how this could be used. It makes me want to get my masters and join the Peace Corps if only to be able to test the theory in a real-life classroom. Something like International Development with a focus in Education…

It is definitely something to think and research more about as I decide where my life will lead me post-graduation.