Dialogue: Valuable lessons beyond confines of classroom

By JANE BONE*

Often, when driving past a deserted beach on a wonderful day, I have wondered how we would explain the absence of children to visitors from another planet. The conversation would probably go something like this:

"Yes, it is beautiful, and yes, we do procreate. The smaller humans are all in little prefab boxes over on that piece of concrete. No, they don't choose to be there. That's why we have teachers."

According to Louisa Herd's Dialogue page article, life is to be taken seriously; everyone has to go through this thing called education and it should involve some real nose-to-the-grindstone stuff; children should be on a narrow path and stick to it until they emerge processed in some miraculous way at the other end.

This model of education, which promotes the idea of person as product, does not even sound humane. It is certainly not the way to encourage concepts such as lifelong learning.

The rationale behind the thinking that people should emerge from the education system fit only to fill in job application forms is questionable.

If they choose something different or alternative, are they automatically failures? By whose standards?

Or might they become the next ihug brothers? Having learned their entrepreneurial skills on the street, and not having stayed in the education system longer than was necessary, they haven't done badly.

I do not dispute the tragedy of illiteracy and innumeracy. However, to make a link between these states and having an interesting curriculum seems illogical.

There are many reasons children slip through the net and the long-term consequences of this are serious and well-known. Reasons include health problems, poverty, disrupted schooling, learning in another language and learning in a way which is culturally inappropriate.

Looking at a complex picture and coming to the simplistic conclusion that children need to be permanently at school and learning the three Rs in order to change this picture is not useful.

For some children, the boredom of this solution may mean that learning never becomes a feature of their lives.

For most, being introduced to something new and exciting might be the catalyst to reading or designing or creating with passion.

Recently, a child whose spelling is not the best, said after reading Shakespeare for the first time: "I just can't get some of those lines out of my head."

This child has heard the music. This is the one who may discover the magic of theatre, who may love books, be fascinated by words and have a lifetime of pleasure from these pursuits.

Similarly, the child who goes to plant trees may notice the smell of soil, think about the wonder of nature and begin to understand growth and ecology.

Piaget noted that conventional schooling could encourage abstract thought. Other theorists stress the sociocultural context in which people live and work. Obviously, this is what the social studies curriculum picks up.

We are social beings and knowledge of our world is essential. Knowing facts that are unattached is sometimes impressive but ultimately empty. Some people are amazingly good at quoting and producing statistics but the links seem to be missing.

If the curriculum encourages schools and children to make connections between learning and life, education becomes useful instead of a series of exercises.

Making those connections, after all, is what the developing brain will do naturally if given the experiences.

Most school trips are not, in any case, the product of innovative pedagogical methodologies but often act as the carrot, the reward for researching a project or participating in the theme for the term.

Calls for basic education always sound worthy but fall short. All children should have an education which soars above the basic and which is extraordinary, special and innovative.

* Jane Bone is a senior lecturer in human development at the Auckland University of Technology.