Teaching will fail children ...

[Michael Grove]

until it learns a lesson from the digital revolution

Michael Grove remarked to Kenneth Baker M.P. in 1982 - during

the period of establishing the BBC Computer Literacy Project

 

THAT the archives of the BBC were worth more to the British nation than all

the country's coal deposits. He further remarked that in order to "mine" this

wealth, an appropriate industrial infrastructure and facilities would have

to be established - before the information could be put into IT (Information

Technology) and subsequently distributed in a form which would be useful

to ALL potential users.

UNFORTUNATELY the political powers in charge at the time, having already

decided to let the Grammar School System wither on the vine, so to speak,

ONLY invested our tax-payers money in the capital investment of supplying

schools with the BBC Computer hardware & NOT the training of the teachers

who were to make use of that hardware for the purpose of assisting their pupils

with their Literacy. 

Allister Heath went on to say in his Daily Telegraph article -

Few industries have been left unscathed by the digital revolution.

But there is one glaring exception waiting to be disrupted by technology for   the benefit of its long-suffering consumers, and that is education. It has changed very little since the 19th century – or indeed since the days when Socrates imparted knowledge to his students in ancient Greece.

Teachers still stand up in front of pupils and read out from their own lesson plans; kids still turn up to classrooms, sit behind desks and listen, taking notes; assessments remain based on reports filed by teachers; exams are at set times, once a year. There is no systematic use of the internet, software or gaming technology to aid learning, no proper data analysis to monitor pupils’ progress and to understand better how to convey understanding, no automation, no economies of scale, no productivity gains, and no real progress.

This IS a scandal. Antiquated educational practices are holding back millions of young people and the economy as a whole; a lack of competition and the fact that the sector is dominated by producer interests and a desperately conservative public sector is to blame.

Sure, schools now buy laptops for pupils and teachers use whiteboards or even electronic displays rather than blackboards. Some even communicate with parents by email (yes, really). But compared with the media, consumer electronics, retail, financial services, airlines, manufacturing or just about    any other industry you can think of, innovation has been almost utterly non-existent. In an age of driverless cars, 3D printing and medical breakthroughs, teaching remains largely unmediated by technology, strikingly unscientific, a cottage industry in an increasingly sophisticated world.

This is true even of most private schools.

 

 

 

[Michael Grove]

As a parent, I see the homework they get sent home.  During the olympics, "Research and build a model of a stadium".  My child could not even spell half those words. I ended up making a pretty fine stadium, but that is hardly why I send my child school. 

Basic literacy is appalling, before they do anything else they need to ensure every child is taught to read and write. I actually favour a system where they cannot progress until they pass a test which is designed to ensure they have the basics nailed.

This is why are Children are being failed by the education system.

Telegraph article comment by ayshf_m

As Linnie has just responded when I read this comment to her -

"The educational system ethos IS move them on at any cost"

... and as oldbikergit has also commented -

Most teachers are useless, and are completely oblivious to the real world, as they have always been at school. Therefore it is not strange that they find it hard to adapt and to change what they know best, and any changes that have occurred are more about left leaning ideology, than improvements to take advantage of technology. All teachers should have to spend some time out of the schoolroom and in commerce and industry, unless this happens they will always be inadequate.

... to which Linnie also responded -

"That goes for politicians also, doesn't it !!!???"

[Michael Grove]

Even though Glass is still in its beta testing phase, it hasn’t stopped educators from starting to develop ways to incorporate this new technology inside the classroom.

[Michael Grove]

My futurism is real, while a lot of the stuff out there is fake. A futurism that suggests a total break with the past—a singularity, or an AI taking over—is a fake. A break with the past just means starting over, making ourselves primitive. Indeed, we’ve already shown that we can make ourselves primitive online. Maybe we can make ourselves crude enough that an algorithm seems superintelligent in comparison. The McLuhan ramp proposed at the end of appendix 1 is only one example of a future vision that is at least as colorful as AI supremacy fantasies, but genuinely looks to the future, instead of a retreat to the past. A futurism that pretends we already know science that we don’t know is also fake. When someone pretends we already know everything important about how brains work, that’s being a fake futurist. What’s really being said is that the person is committed to being stuck forever in the ideas of the present. I remain dismayed when someone assumes AI is already on an inevitable course that will lead to it needing only small amounts of data—instead of vast mountains of stealthily stolen data—in the near future.

 Jaron Lanier - Dawn of the New Everything