School fires and dysfunctional learning approaches and philosophy

Ask any school going child or their parent, what they want to be in future. The common response is that they want to be great lawyers, doctors, pilots, university lecturers, media personalities and any other career that is deemed to make major returns in terms of materials accumulation and prestige. Try to pose to the same people the question, how they want their eulogy to read. You will be amazed by the responses. Most of them would wish people to know that they were such great parents, humble, sincere, caring, a doting parent, a loving spouse, a person of impeccable character and the likes, qualities to do with character. These are the words of one experienced lecturer in a local private university.

If all teachers could stop teaching and facilitate learning in our schools, and focus on transformative education with a lot of self-reflection, then there is likelihood that schools fires and other ills may be a thing of the past. We may even see the death of the mentality that, until one of us in power, we cannot progress economically and socially.  What most people lacks but ideally wish for, is a transformative education, one that transforms an individual holistically, and as a consequence transform the society, and everybody appreciate life and humanity in general. So far we have only managed to acquire an education that explains our society ills by apportioning blame to others. That’s why highly educated politicians and the clergy are blaming a third force behind the schools fires. None is taking time to self-reflect on how by either commission or omission, we could have contributed directly or indirectly to the current anarchy. How often do we blame the police for our reckless driving that result to road carnages?

Our society lacks respect to those holding divergent opinion and those of different profession, in particular the teaching profession, transport service, meteorology, sanitary and cleanliness and the police service.  The society should recognize, respect and appreciate the role of teachers in mentoring the youth and by default shaping the society. The good news is that at least some schools are positive in this. A case in point is what was reported in the media about how a school in ol kalou avoided destruction by summoning parents and together with the students addressed the causes for their children grievances.

Something unique came out of the ol kalou school meeting. The students demanded for more play than study.  It may have surprised most parents but a keen observer will agree that we do not let our kids be kids. Play is essential. Figure the situation that is currently live in most private primary schools where each day, children carry homework (read schoolwork) that they sleeply tackles until late in the night and supervision of a house-help or a tired parent. A few hours of sleep and he wakes up by 4am. The routine is repeated seven days in a week (Saturday tuition and on Sunday to finish weekend homework). This scenario is repeated and maintained until the child finish class 8 in the wild goose chase for 400 points and no learning. Note that, our kids start schooling very early in life, at age 3. Hopefully, to spend the next 19 years of their life in an exam oriented education that promises nothing much but a bleak and hopeless life after school. This is pure torture and very unhealthy, both physically and mentally. When do we expect this child to play and be a child? We should learn from the Finnish education system and relieve our children the burdens of a purist education system.  Any educationist worth his salt is aware that children learn a lot through play, the child develop physically and intellectually through play.

There are a lot of injustices and inequalities in our school system and the society in general. The students are very aware of these injustices and inequalities. Thanks to the learning they get through the much accommodative technology. They are also aware that it is not the right way that gets its way to solving societal issues but the most dramatic, selfish and militant kind of way that gets its way. They have perfected what our politicians and clergy are good at. We advocate for stiff cut throat competitions in national examinations where the entry behavior are diverse while at the same time schools are endowed differently resource wise. No wonder it is not strange that the politicians now want to reintroduce the ranking system. Our students are conscious of the fact that even if they were to score highly in national examinations there is no guarantee that they will pursue courses that may lead to the career of their choice. They are living witness to academically challenged classsmates who join the parallel programs and pursue the course of their choice. They have seen how the government shuns brilliant students who end up in the private sector contradicting the immense investment in their education. Students who struggled academically are the current role models of our children. Since they have ‘exceled ‘in politics, church business, tenderpreneurs name them. I am not undermining the genuine efforts and hard work of academically challenged students but social justice, prudence and integrity should take over. Since this is a contradiction of what tutors preach in our school that, academic excellence for a bright future. 

The other probable cause to the anarchy in schools is our culture, how we have been brought up.  Our current culture determines how we behave and how we approach life’s issues.  Road carnages (these are not accidents), political thuggery disguised as fighting for rights (read self-rights), arsons in schools (read teenage rebelling against unrealistic societal expectations through the education system that rarely address their needs and wants), impunity in the private and public sectors, among others are a manifestation of a culturally confused society.  I will give a simple analogy, a keen observation of a washroom in a public and a private university. It is a clear indication of the differences and inequalities in how children are brought up. The presence of toilet tissues and clean toilets seats in a private universities and the direct opposite in public universities tells all.  There is an atmosphere of respect of properties and persons no matter the ranks. The lack of dialogue and informal interactions between students and tutors is a recipe for disaster. Such informal interactions create a sense of belongings and acceptance by members of that community. There is a sense of ownership and the members are inclined to be each other’s brother’s keeper.  That’s why upon the slightest provocation the students cause much damage to release the pent up anger and frustrations. In public institutions we have a stratified society that propagates segregation and your-problems- are- yours attitude. The best facilitates are for senior administrations going down to students.

The remedy to current fires was to give them a break, and let the raging hormones cool down. Unfortunately this was not done and as a consequence more dorms were lost to arson.  Remember teenage loathe laws. True, these are criminal activities but applying the law and imprisoning the child may not be the best option. They just need guidance and probation.  To prevent future occurrence of such cases plus others that may not capture the media attention is to transform the learning approaches and philosophy in our school system. It is a high time school tutors establish a body or association that focus on professional enrichment, similar to an initiative by local private universities. This can be facilitated by school boards.  Tutors should make it a mandatory habit to regularly update their teaching-learning skills, knowledge and attitudes. We should respect and appreciate our children and let them be. Recognize that a child is a unique being and is capable of making independent and rational thoughts. Reassess the boarding and transport (for day scholars) facilities and all the concepts behind it. A lot of resources are channeled in these facilities and especially transport of children in primary school (but is is pathetic and a disaster waiting to happen).  The boarding facilities should be cognizance of the learners’ primary school background. The feeling that a boarding school is a prison should be no longer the case. The Spartan thinking should cease. Again it is high time schools privatize boarding facilities.

power of personal reflection

what are your experiences with personal reflections? what are the gains from thinking from your feelings? what are the benefits of writing from emotions? If an incident happens in class how do you reflect on it?

why do students hate maths?

Most students do not like maths. They find themselves in a maths class since it is a compulsory subject or a common unit that the institution requires you to pursue for you to graduate. The fact that majority of students, especially those pursuing arts and humanities based courses, do not see the relevance of maths in the future career should be a great concern to facilitators of learning. Is the knowledge, skills and attitudes that can be acquired through learning mathematics relevant to the future life of a person? Is learning new knowledge, acquiring new skills or attitudes really important to a lawyer, a psychologist, a theologian etc? That is one of the questions the students of such programs plus their lecturers, always ask. The negative attitude towards maths from early ages in the learning institutions may be a reason for such arguments, not forgetting the level of ignorance.

The lack of shortcut to solutions of maths problems may be a major discouragement to such students and lecturers. If say it is a linear system, it either have a unique solution, many solutions or no solution, but you have to prove beyond doubt that it is either of the three. This is unlike in some scenarios in the humanities or arts where a problem may have many solutions, depending on whoever is talking. A person may put forward a case and always assume to be right as per his own justification. Alternatively differing camps may arrive at a consensus even if the problem is still unsolved. This can be attested by the way politicians agree on certain political issues. The problem is never solved, but if they were to think mathematically or scientifically then there is a high likelihood that the problem wont reoccur. Unfortunately most of these politicians lack a strong mathematics (scientific) reasoning.

Hence a student will sit in a maths class so as to get the right grades and finish his degree and thereafter supposedly go out in the world and make money. That thinking is normally captured by newspaper articles on how a billionaire  makes a lot of money and yet he dropped out of the education system. They wrongly assume that the only ultimate goal of school learning is the ability to make money. Hence if a learning experience is seen to be an obstacle to finalize my education journey to that goal, then it is not important. Maths is often a victim since you cannot break its laws and appreciating the working of these laws require patience. This thinking kills the essence and the beauty of learning and moreso learning maths: the logics in maths.

Some fundamental problems that afflict our society can easily be sorted out if people understand simple laws of (maths) nature. For example, water follows its course, it always find its own level. Even in traditional African societies we had sayings that echos this simple but complicated law. Most of our roads are in pathetic condition simply because the 'engineers' did not really comprehend the implication of gravitational forces, laws  governing fluid flows, vector laws among others while constructing roads. A murram road can withstand harsh wet conditions for a long time if it is engineered well. An engineer who can forego shortcuts and stick to the laid rules can leap big in the long run than the shortcuts of corruption. What joy will you get if you leave in luxury but not in peace since you fear your poor neighbour will mug you? Good well constructed and maintained earth/murram roads that are far cheaper than tarmac roads can change the lives of many poor people as they wait for tarmac roads.

These are laws that directly or indirectly can be captured by those who like maths, and by a keen facilitator of maths learning. A system that requires a unique solution has no shortcuts. For a system to be balance, it needs the right inputs/variables. To avoid conflict of whatever nature, all the systems must be in tandem with each other. Learning of whatever kind must be seen to add value to the learner. There is no learning that is useless, otherwise it is not learning. Such values should be capture very early in the cycle of learning. The mentality of waiting to 'use' knowledge after graduating, almost 16 - 20 years of education is disservice to oneself and humanity in general. It is paramount to teach history such that an individual can appreciate the impact of knowledge, skills and attitudes throughout man's history of growth and development. As a student, one should strive to diligently inquire the relevance of such knowledge and skills without bias in-spite of his weakness of the same. Anything that is, is important, the fact that you do not see its importance not withstanding.

Individualized Education Programme IEP

Learning is not a hard science. There is no single formula that can be applied to all learners to achieve the desired learning outcome.Furthermore, each learner is unique and so is the facilitator of the learning process and as a consequence the learning process should be unique to an individual learner. That complicates the learning process in a school setup where the availability of qualified and passionate facilitators of learning are scarce, to allow a 1:1 ratio. Hence an individualized education programme will then be tailored made for the so called special cases only. Unfortunately this contradicts the assumption that we are all unique and we all need individualized education. In most cases we target the marginalized minority on the negative side i.e. those who have poor handwritings, get all sums wrong, the easily agitated, those who have many spelling errors etc. What about those who are excellent as per our standards? How do we ensure they exploit their potential to the fullest? What about the normal student? are they just normal or conformist, or have they mastered  what the society want and follow what the society advocates to be the right standards? Despite the fact we all complain of a poor education system that cannot address the societal challenges, not forgetting we are part of the system.

Reflection on what kind of learners i have and what kind of teacher i am, can have great benefits. Analysing critical incidences in and out of our classrooms can help discover the uniqueness in each one of us. Of course reflection per se can be hard and bias. The assumption is, if you are highly exposed to the right knowledge, skills and attitudes, you can be in a better position to utilize these abilities - reflecting and CIA, to their fullest.

This post welcomes replies on what potential you discovered, what insights you had, when you reflected on your IEP and took whatever steps you undertook. Sharing of experiences can be beneficial to any reflective individual.