Loves studying but hates school

"I love studying but hate going to school. It shouldn't be possible but unfortunately it is" - tweeted by an 18 year old girl. School hasn't been able to kill her drive to learn but is obvioulsly not seen as a positive learning environment.

The digital revolution that is taking place in society and slowly also in education as a result of social media and instantaneous communcation has changed what students expect and accept from their teachers and from school.

Photo: Henrika Florén/ sir Ken Robinson

Sir Ken Robinson  claims schools kill creativity. In my world learning is a creative and enjoyable process, not saying that learning does not require work. A system that kills or hinders creativiy in learning is a very bad system. But possibly our greatest hope for change are students and children growing up now. They have access to many channels for learning through the web. Schools will have to follow, but the question is how long will it take for the official education systems to follow the students to where learning is taking place; and how large will the gap become between what is learned outside school and in school, before we see any real change?

After Bett2013 - Sir Ken Robinson

Photo: Henrika Florén

To attend a speech by sir Ken Robinson  was more like going to a consert than listening to a notable person in education.

The audience is pressing against the closed doors. There are elbows and crowding. I'm lucky to be placed in the very front row. I can without problem both see and hear sir Ken Robinson without difficulty. Just like other speakers I've listened to during Bett2013, he talks about change in society and education systems and that we are still educating and training our children as if we have to prepare them for working in an industrial society we have alreday left behind. We know very litte about what jobs they will be working with and what skills they will need.

Sir Ken also talks about education and personal development. Everybody have some unique skill, something they can excel at. Should we then not help students devlop these skills? He brings up the question of whether we as parents, educators and adults should influence young people's choice of subjects to study. We are prone to counsel in ways we believe will provide good jobs and steady incomes, but this becomes a problem when markets and jobs change and develop at an increasing speed.

Listening to sir Ken Robinson is interesting and stimulating. I agree with him in what I feel is the subtext in everything he says. We have to embrase change and meet young people with empathy and provide stimulating learning experiences.

My conclusion is that we need to teach children how to think, how to study, how to pursue knowledge. We should not just feed them information. For any one to be able to do this effectviely there are some skills which need to be mastered such as reading. But we should not confuse the retention of information with the ability to think.

Sir Ken also points out that we are in the middle of a revolution, not something similar to a revolution, or almost a revolution, but an actual revolution in society. The web changes many things and education has to be a part of this.

the English version of 'Livet, internet och allting...'

Welcome all my English readers. This blog will be a parallell, if not completely identical, version of the Swedish blog 'Livet, internet och allting' i skolan.

The topics will be related to education and learning

 

Henrika Florén, M.Ed, M.A.