In answer to questions posed by our local district education council, I’ll submit a short list:
- Involve the community as suggested by Robert Paterson or as Dave Pollard says, "allow learners to connect and transact directly with front-line teachers, enablers, demonstrators, and real learning environments — on the learners’ terms"
- Add more play to our schools
- Focus on making learning enjoyable
Many of the graduates of our public school system do not have adequate critical thinking, problem solving nor media literacy skills, to name a few. We are preparing them to be passive recipients of a weak curriculum, when no curriculum can prepare them for the future. Why should one Minister of Education and few cloistered staff know more than the other 740,000 people in this Province? The Wisdom of Crowds tells us that as a collective we have the answers that have eluded those in charge, but no one is listening.
I don’t recommend more knee-jerk reactions, but the bottom line is that the school system works for fewer and fewer students. Tweaking the existing system is not good enough. Let’s start to experiment at a local level in some positive ways right now because we have nowhere to go but up.
