What kind of future do you want to nurture? The role of the school

Today’s Department of Education in England is attempting to set up the future rollout of teaching automatons.

Their vision of an educator is akin to a robot who clicks a button to generate a generic lesson plan to be followed blindly. Let’s complete a little 5 why’s activity to ascertain the reasoning behind this intention.

Why are they doing this? They are trying to make it easier to teach.

Why? There are fewer teachers accessible to them and of those that are, over a third leave teaching within five years of entering the profession. (epi.org.uk/publications-and-research/the-pandemic-and-teacher-attrition-an-exodus-waiting-to-happen/)

Why? I hope that they are attempting to tackle features of the job that are not appealing to prospective teachers (ie workload and the huge expectations for a modest salary in relation to other jobs or even the same job in other nations). I fear that the role of a teacher is not very highly regarded and that there is a held opinion that anybody could do it.

Why do they think that? There is a phrase about teaching here in the UK, “Those who can’t teach”. It exists because in the past more people contributed to the research, published their findings and were keen to share their learnings with others. Today, more graduates from our top universities become lawyers or bankers rather than researchers.

Why? The western world is gripped by consumerism. The constant negative comparison, the ‘I want what others have’ mentality costs money. Many judge their success according to the salary they earn. Therefore more and more graduates follow the money. David Graeber, an anthropologist at the London School of Economics published this view in his paper, On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs. His analysis for this paper also suggested that so many people today consider their job to be pointless.

It is a pity that successive governments in the UK have sought to raise the floor of the teaching profession rather than the ceiling. The vast majority of teachers hold strong principles and chose this amazing vocation. How often are we asked for our vision of teaching and learning? When was the last time anybody asked you what is the purpose of the school within a community?

Rutger Bregman in his engaging book Utopia for Realists outlines my vision of education better than I could articulate myself. He states that,

“If there were ever a place where the quest for a better world ought to start, it’s in the classroom…Yet that’s barely happening. All the big debates in education are about format. About delivery. About didcatics.” (p.170)

He continues,

“The focus, invariably, is on competencies, not values. On didactics, not ideals. On “problem-solving ability,” but not which problems need solving. Invariably, it all revolves around the question: Which knowledge and skills do today’s students need to get hired in tomorrow’s job market — the market of 2030? Which is precisely the wrong question…Instead, we should be posing a different question altogether: Which knowledge and skills do we want our children to have in 2030? Then, instead of anticipating and adapting, we’d be focusing on steering and creating.”

How can we as teachers say we are preparing our learners for their world tomorrow when we have no idea what that world will even look like? One thing I know is that computers and machines will feature more in their world. Yet some of the teachers I have met (who believe that they are indeed preparing them for their world) actively avoid using any sort of tech, ever. Hypocrisy?

If we blindly follow our national curriculum in its current and perceivable future guise, we will be treating our learners with their highly complex and sophisticated brains as data processors. Their opportunity to show off their data processing talents? The standardised tests they are required to complete. We would be condemning them before they have even started.

The web browser is highly effective at processing data and gets more effective after every update, every month. A cheap device invariably made in China can harness its power. Are we saying that our learners are of equal worth to a plastic device that costs around £60 to make? If we are, then it would not be long before the computer renders them useless to society.

There are features of the human mind and spirit that a computer will never be able to replicate. Features such as: empathy, compassion, emotional intelligence, interpersonal communication skills and diversity and cultural intelligence. These are the features that we must focus on nurturing. It will be these features that we will be used, desired and needed as more and more data processing tasks will be assigned to machines.

The rise of machines is not a bad thing. It has not led and will not lead to future mass unemployment, as the Luddites feared in the early nineteenth century. It will instead make us focus on and utilise the features that make humans, human.

Isn’t this a good thing? Will not more future employees feel more fulfilled knowing that their work will utilise our unique characteristics and that their human work will be of benefit to fellow humans?

We, as educators, as practitioners skilled at nurturing minds and helping others fulfill their true potential, need to now more than ever fully understand what we stand for. We need to be able to very clearly explain the type of society we want to help shape.

I want to shape a society that knows each other. A society that is full of self-sufficient communities. A society that spends less time moaning about what their central government lacks. A society that either trusts their central government more as they have a better understanding of its make-up or a society that feels less reliant upon it. We need to be more aware of who or what we are voting for. We need to better understand what that decision or choice was founded on. I want to shape a society that listens more, understands more, empathises more so that their perspectives are well-rounded. We need to mobilise and feel safe and confident to voice our disagreements in a considered way.

I feel partizanship in today’s society. It is easy for citizens to moan about decisions and choices. It is harder to act and do something to avoid, mitigate or reduce the negative impact that they may have on our community. I, as an educator, want to help create a society that feels it is easier (maybe even second nature) to do the latter.