Why schooling frustrates me...

By Beverley Paine

It makes me cross that after two centuries of schooling schools haven't worked out what's best for children, how they really learn, how to help that process along. Or have they - and are they deliberately ignoring it or making it so impossible to implement because it would actually make them redundant? If that is the case their fears are groundless... I don't think schools will become redundant any time soon because they are handy and relatively inexpensive child care centres .

I am frequently frustrated by the emphasis on functional literacy and numeracy in education. Schools idea of functionality isn't holistic. Maybe that comes from the obsession of breaking everything into little chunks before it can examined and used, taught or learned...

What irks me the most is the assumption schools have that when children arrive in their classrooms at age five they must be taught how to learn! So they set up preschools to 'prime' children. Sure some kids don't have the opportunities at home before the age of five that other children have, and one or two in a class of twenty or thirty may really struggle, but the rest catch on pretty quick, if the expectation and trust that they will and can learn is there. But with every passing generation we are forgetting that learning is as natural as breathing...

Sometimes I feel like I'm in a bubble of sanity, able to see and understand things that most people don't, because we - as a family, and in my group of friends - have dared to step outside our comfort zone and see things from a different perspective, one that honours, respects and trust children as capable, curious and enthusiastic learners wanting to make sense of their world. Instead of ramming outdated educational methods and content into their brains and programming to continue to repeat the mistakes of previous generations!