There is no more button to push
„I refuse to accept that my role as a teacher is to take the knowledge in my head and put it in someone else’s. That would make for a pretty limited world :). Why then do we teach? Are we passing on social mores? I want my students to know more than me at the end of my course. I want them to make connections I would never make. I want them to be prepared to change. I think having a set curriculum of things people are supposed to know encourages passivity. I don’t want that. We should not be preparing people for factories. I teach to try and organize people’s learning journeys… to create a context for them to learn in.”– Dave’s Educational Blog
I resonate with the quote mentioned above by Dave Cormier. The 21st-century teachers are not just guardians of knowledge anymore. I also agree that the schools shouldn’t be preparing students as if the world was a factory where things are being done in a linear, straightforward way, and instead of strong deciders, training obedient “button pushers.”
The obsolete school system could have taught the students in this way before because people thinking that way were needed. However, these jobs will be possibly substituted by artificial intelligence. What’s more, we live in a century where several global issues (i.e., war in Europe, climate change, pandemic, rising housing prices, etc.) take place at once, and neither of them has one simple solution. That’s why the educational system should help the students work on their problem solving, critical thinking, and creative skills. Only then can they be better prepared for finding the solutions to wicked problems like that.
A bad example can be the frequent school game, where the teacher asks the student a question on which they already had the one correct answer in their head. That’s what is needed to be changed. Instead of asking such questions, it would be better if they focused their attention on developing the listed key competencies. For example, just reformulating the purpose of the questions asked in class could be a nice start.
