“Education is not about teaching facts!” The big letters shouted at me across Eistein’s cartoon face. “It is about making people think!” smaller letters added at the bottom. This was a little cartoon added on the school website. I looked at it first with disbelief, then with anger and then with utter confusion. Yes, I get it; it is the twenty first century. Education needs to change to fit the global changes. But since when do we not need facts? Does thinking not go hand in hand with facts? Or vice versa? Who started promoting this idea that facts are completely obsolete and students are fine without them? Ok; I understand the despise for rote learning but why do we always have to make U-turns instead of gentle curves?
I am new to teaching chemistry and it takes a little time for me to prep things and I like to have all the facts in front of me not to make a fool out of myself. This is what, after all, I am being paid for. So, I take my time and plan all the reactions I am going to discuss and analyse. There are plenty of resources now available and many of them come in a form of a short video on utube. What the students do is watch some of them and then answer questions. The problem is I need the answers to check if they have come up with the right ones! Now, the problem is that seldom do the utube resources offer good quality explanations. Some of them are absolutely fabulous but many are less than adequate and offer little less than a cool video of some “magic” happening because of chemical processes. So having watched some of the videos I look for answers in the comments directly there. One person, probably in a similar predicament, asks for equations to go with some funky reactions that are cool to watch and might engage the students in the class. Instead of the equations, that would be a piece of cake for a real chemist, the answer is to go and search it on Google! That to me sums up the whole education now: I show you a cool reaction, tell you that it is really cool and that it looks “beautiful” as you can watch the change of colour but I do not explain things at the more advanced level. Shocking really. You want answers you go and find them on Google. Ask people who know more than you and the guy who shot the video. It turns out that the reaction is rather complex and I don’t want to look like an incompetent fool saying exactly this to my students. I want factual explanations to reactions illustrating concepts that are required by the curriculum. Is this too much to ask? But this needs facts!
Now the problem I have with this whole system is that very recently I myself graduated with a degree in Science, chemistry, but I really do not have the basic foundation to work things out myself. I did not just scrape by on my courses; I was an average student, passing all the assessment at the first attempt fitting in the middle of the bell curve. I have passed all my assessments and I still cannot figure out some of the things I am supposed to be teaching at KS4 level. How is that possible? Well, you do not need facts in your head! Nobody will push you to have the basics in your head. Now the key to success is knowing how to get the information you need! Thinking is all you need in the modern education system. Only how can you think if you do not have the facts? Year 10 students do not know symbols for chemical elements; they constantly ask for the periodic table. I claim that such a lack of basic knowledge is an impediment to critical thinking as it is hugely distracting having to recall foundation definitions when working on a more complex task. Yet the modern stance is that the young minds do not need being cluttered with things like factual knowledge; that’s obsolete!
Another thing I found out last week is that my head of department, a very down to earth and personable woman, tells me she does not believe in homework. I look at her with a slight disbelief (I know, not the first time that day) and ask why they have homework schedule if there is no homework then. It turns out homework is optional. I have worked at schools where the teacher would be told off if homework was not set when it was on the schedule and it was a major pain. Therefore, for my own sake, I could follow this new religion of not believing in homework as it would make my life much easier. She starts saying there is research showing that homework is not crucial for academic achievement. I guess these days there is a research paper to prove anything and everything. Plus in her books, if she needs to give homework that means the class was kind of wasted as not everything was covered. She might have a point but I will need to see it for myself. I am not saying this is a wrong or right approach. I am saying I like this for my own convenience. I am sure the kids love it too! Nothing like being a popular teacher!
I am thinking about the Einstein’s cartoon face and wondering how he would like his cartoon face advocating the new philosophy of teaching. He might have been thrilled after all as he himself is quoted to say that if the facts don’t fit your theory you should change the facts! This is the second time in a week that I see him being advertised for educational purposes (and this is just one school). We had training with a very important speaker about the changes to the curriculum we are going to implement next year. This is all about engaging the students. Einstein’s example was mentioned as one of a very disengaged student who was so disappointed with school that he simply stopped attending it. And what a genius he turned out to be! So, this should teach us that we have to make our classes interesting! But, perversely, maybe if we didn’t constantly worry about entertaining all the students in the class more geniuses would be discovered. They would simply say they were not interested, slammed the door and it would be the last time they set their foot in school and started working on their own? Maybe we, teachers in the classroom following the new guidelines, are keeping them so occupied they cannot find the inner genius within them? Let them just drop out and find out? But we must not forget the “every child matters” campaign… So, Einstein dropped out but his passion for learning apparently did not go away. Would this be a good example to promote schools? To me, it is entirely the opposite. If the official version of Einstein’s genius is to be believed, his example shows that you do not need a school to become a leading scientist! So why keep sending your child to this institution? And why do the schools keep using his image even though there was a mutual hostility?
Oh, because now schools are different and if Einstein was to make a come back he would simply love it there as they make every child there engaged. Every child there is told that they are special and that they can if they believe they can. All that nonsense. Ultimately though, deep down in the heart of hearts, Einstein would probably approve of schools where facts don’t matter any more, so the schools using his face in their adverts maybe hide in plain sight the obvious disservice they do to all the societies.
I take that Freeman Dyson is onto something saying that when science wasn’t taught at schools in England the English won many Nobel awards and then when the teaching of science improved the number of English Nobel prizes went down markedly… Just saying…
Modern education is not about facts, no, it is about being cool, watching cool videos and having cool teachers who do not give homework. That last part I might become a follower of! It might be cool.