Education for Today’s World

All parents, along with their school-going children, should watch one of the most inspiring TED talks ever heard.

It is a talk by George Land, called ’The Failure of Success.’ It is about the incredible success of human life on earth, and how we are now strangling ourselves in our old thinking habits where we created schools as production facilities for human workers. 

Today we do not need humanised robots, we need conscious people who can learn by themselves, think for themselves, and stand out in the crowd. We need creativity more than ever.

George Land speaks about how we go from 98% creative genius at 5 years old to 2% creative genius among adults. That is a big difference, and he does not stop there. He explains that we learn to do divergent and convergent thinking at the same time, and this chokes the creative process, it literally makes our brain cells fight themselves.

If there is anyone more thing, one can perhaps add to it, is …

The whole thing about blocking ideas while they are flowing is something that we see around us every day. This takes away energy from everybody in the room, and we wonder how and when we are going to change that in our educational system. And in our communication, of course, because that is a big part of the problem.

We observe nearly every day how we tend to prevent ourselves from moving forward, because we have learned to criticize, judge, to analyze.

Schools, as we know them, have long passed their ‘sell-by date’, even done ONLINE, where the old schooling system and old thinking habits continue to thrive. Virtually nothing will change doing it the same old way!

The Syllabis Independent Home-school Curriculum has been developed to enable learners to learn by themselves and think for themselves, and the sooner they do so the better.

Independent learning creates independent learners Most of us have been raised in a traditional school system, where our learning was mainly from textbooks, workbooks, and the blackboard. We were bored and unmotivated most of the time, we wished we didn’t have to be stuck in the classroom listening to one person tell us about subjects chosen for us by educators in an era gone by. Most of us have lived full, successful lives without needing to know much of the information that we were forced to memorize and regurgitate in school.

We are beginning to realize that there are more fun, effective, and creative ways for children to learn. Researchers are still studying how children learn best and about the problems, they encounter in the school system but teaching children in traditional schools, is like learning about polar bears in a zoo…there is no room to navigate one’s preferred style of learning. After all, a child standing at the check-out counter with a ten Rand note in her hand will be far more motivated to do the math calculation than one sitting at a desk with a workbook, and this applies to many other skills taught in school.

Not only do children become independent thinkers and self-managed students but the environment of homeschooling promotes family bonding and improves learning outcomes. Attending school, in general, weakens the relationship between parents and children, as family groups are not together for most of the day and parents are always struggling to keep up to date and be involved in what their children are learning. Each child is unique, and each child has different talents, abilities, and emotional needs at different ages and stages, this would suggest that any form of education that is designed for the masses cannot be in a particular child’s best interests.

Since every child is one-of-a-kind, you need to understand their history, their physical, emotional, and mental health, their developmental milestones, their talents, interests, and potential as well as other intimate family information. This personal information should be used to tailor-make the child’s education to suit him or her, education needs to be flexible. The school system can never provide this kind of customised education. Home education can!

The school system fails learners in many ways – by focusing on policies, procedures, administrators, teachers, and controlling large groups of children, the needs of the individual child are overridden by the needs of the system.

One of the goals of home education is to raise humans who will become self-disciplined and take responsibility for their own education and their own lives. Students can take ownership of their education and do what they need to do for their own reasons, not to conform to the requirements of a teacher or a school system. Home education means parents and their children can choose which learning materials they wish to use. They can study topics that interest them and use materials that are not in conflict with their values and beliefs. This allows for greater freedom and diversity, rather than a one-size-fits-all ideology.

 The school system forces children into age-segregated classrooms to facilitate mass-delivery of the learning material. Classroom interactions are limited to one age group, which is a false environment in which to learn social skills. As adults, we live in a multi-age community so while learning at home siblings of varying ages can enjoy building relationships and sharing their learning experiences.

And what do some of the most successful entrepreneurs on earth have to say about education in today’s world?”    You do not need a college degree to be talented”