For
the most part of my early school, lessons were unvaried repetition of topics I
had already mastered on my own. With nothing to challenge, engage and direct
the imagination of a little boy, I found amusement and thrill in disrupting the
class, much to the chagrin of my teachers.
The
classroom was stifling. The classroom was about competition. Out in the playing
field we had the liberty to think, solve problems, together. The classroom was
where nothing but unreasoned submission to authority was demanded. In a sense
school, in the narrow context of the classroom experience, was a detention camp.
The
reason I did not drop out of primary school was because school outside the
classroom served a vital social function; provided bountiful space for playful
co-learning and peer-collaboration. In retrospect, I learned the most valuable
virtues – teamwork, kindness, honesty and loyalty – outside the classroom, in
the playing field.
High
school was strange, a kind of mongrel or half-breed of a penitentiary and a
military camp. And I always wondered why anybody would imagine that such
sequestration somehow provided a suitable environment for preparing teenagers
to become responsible and productive citizens. Freedom in high school was
greatly curtailed, far more curtailed than any adult would endure in a
workplace setting. I am not sure that anyone, least of all teachers and
parents, understand that this could cause psychological damage to many
children.
Throughout
high school I was consumed by this naïve and romantic view of university as
some kind of intellectual Canaan. I was enthralled by this crazy expectation
that university was the space for co-creation of knowledge by students and
professors. Throughout high school I fantasized about the university lecture
theatre as the sanctum of robust academic debates, unfettered imagination and
intellectual enterprise. Several years later I entered university and to my
utter dismay, I watched a repeat of primary and high school authoritarianism in
the university lecture theatre. The self-importance and hubris of the
professors was hugely disempowering.
As
parents and as a society we are expending huge proportions of our income and
tax revenue on education. We get gravely concerned, and rightfully so, whenever
we are confronted with the evidence that our children are not learning. We can
comment endlessly on the literacy and numeracy levels of primary school
children and the intellectual capability of our university graduates. The conventional
logic is that we could fix failures in the education system with more money,
better teachers, more testing and, even more radical, curriculum reform.
But
what if the real problem is the institution of the school? I believe, from my
own experience, that by its very logic and design the school has failed our
children and is not serving the needs of our society. Here is what will
surprise you; the basic logic and design of the school, as we know it today has
no basis in scientific evidence about how children learn. We have come to
understand that children learn deeply, meaningfully and with greatest gusto in
conditions that are almost antithetical to those which obtain in the school.
The School as we
know it today is inextricably bound with the mission of colonialism. The idea
was to “educate”, for the colonial administration, native functionaries who
would serve and obey colonial authority without questioning. That the colonists
were unambiguous about this purpose is evident in the school mottos of our
early missionary schools. Here are some examples: “Perseverance shall win
through”; “Strong to serve”; “Serve is to reign”; “Walk in the light”. Clearly,
that schools would be places for forging curiosity, critical thinking, complex
reasoning, creativity and innovation was the last thing on the minds of the
founders of our school system. Moreover, the
authoritarian knowledge transfer, teach-and-test method is highly suited for
transmitting dogma and training subservience. Ironically, children are designed for self-directed
learning. Children have an innate proclivity for learning though, curiosity,
creative playfulness and collaborative sociability.
We must rescue the
child from the authoritarian school system and provide centres of learning that
would optimize curiosity, playfulness, innovation and creativity. Our schools
must allow playful exploration and emancipate learning from the tyranny of the
curriculum. Teachers must not be oracles but facilitators of self-directed
learning. A child’s drive to play, collaborate and discover serves the core mission
of education, not only in hunter-gatherer cave culture but in today’s skyscraper
globalized knowledge economy as well.
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