We don't need no education....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iITFrcNLcA  Pink Floyd "The Wall" 1979. The year I became the head of a primary school at 34.

I had been trained in the 60's. I espoused, Montessori, Piaget, Steiner. I believer in child centred education & learning by doing, not by rote. Since then the world has changed immensely. So have I.

I still believe the child should be the centre of what is taught. They should have a really broad based education & learn by experiencing. No one learns to drive a car from a book or how to play football from a video. But we have AI. We have sophisticated technology. We have interactive whiteboards & computers. The rate of change is exponential.

Even more importantly than that the world is simply not the same place it was in the 70's. We have mass consumerism, but many of the old industies & jobs have gone. We have limited natural resources & need to find different ways of doing things. Family structure & parenting has changed out of all recognition. Populations are more mobile. In many ways we are more fortunate, but we have also lost reliability & structure. The needs of individuals & society are worlds away from the 70's.

But although education has changed I really don't think it has been given the time to really think about the needs of modern children, the state, the world & the system. What's more, I think we desperately need to do that or our children won't be prepared for an uncertain & changing world.

Education is both individual & societal. Both need to benefit. If we don't equip our children with the skills to be happy, balanced & productive individuals at whatever level, our society will not flourish. Most educational change is imposed from the top. From politicians. The world & it's wife thinks that they know what education should be because they went to school. But by definition their education is out of date. 

We need people with real experience & expertise to look at educational trends around the world & select the really good tested methods. We also need an open public discussion about what we as a society want education to be. We are in the 21st century, but education isn't. It's all about testing, examinations, administration & box ticking, putting huge pressure on the teaching force who are leaving in droves. No one wants to be a head now. 

A good education depends on good teachers who are well trained, creative & dedicated. It's a caring profession. It runs on goodwill. That has been eroded away by bureaucracy & overwork. 

But the most important thing is that our children need to enjoy school & feel that it is relevant to their lives now & in the future. I seriously doubt that it is.