In kindergarten, teachers, now usually referred to as “Auntie” rather than the “Miss,” their heads of state were brought up on: "Teach children to co-operate with each other."
That usually means to help each other, to work together to build a structure or, in the current philosophy underlying pedagogy, to co-operate as a team.
People are now hard at work to change our teaching methods to produce young people who are problem-solving technocrats and creative arts-centred producing citizens, rather than “memorise and repeat back” dogmatic little robots who will allow themselves to be programmed to obey.
There are even whole corporations set up to programme children not to think, but to pass exams by memorising answers to questions on past papers.
In the higher levels of academia and child psychology, however, the experts have pointed out: “We have seen many changes in the way school lessons and training programmes have been effectively conducted in the past few years, with on-line and AI processes driving both minor and major advances. The pedagogical methods used to help students and teachers learn new concepts and ideas have also changed to keep up with the ever-evolving processes that newer generations are experiencing.”
I am not convinced the need for those changes has been either acknowledged or implemented in our government-directed education system.
As we experience a real rejection of school and the standards they purport to teach in TT, by students prone to ignoring the old lessons being repeated with teaching methods from generations past, and the resultant violence, bullying and indiscipline on the part of those being taught reported almost daily in the press, it is not difficult to accept that – just as every adult working in any industry has had to learn over the past two years – change in teaching methods is essential.
Not only essential but urgent.
Not just children, but young people and those in tertiary education need new ways to be immersed in learning experiences, as they are now and for the past years have been brought up with different technological learning methods from previous generations – the ones our leaders and most of ourselves as adults grew up on.
If our education system doesn’t deliver learnings in the way these new generations compute information, we are not just stifling Trinis’ creative flow, and not engaging their learning brains, we are ensuring the technical and managerial future of commerce, entertainment, sport and industry – which includes the public service we must depend on – will be obsolete before it has a chance to implement the digital transformation the Honourable Prime Minister repeatedly states he is aiming at.
[caption id="attachment_987244" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Primary school textbooks that parents bought at the start of the school term in September. At the time, the Education Ministry said e-books would be reintroduced in the 2022/2023 academic year. - ROGER JACOB[/caption]
World experts have done the work for us, and state unequiv
