It's quite simple, really. Learning is a creative process. Children must be free to explore, to discover, to enjoy their learning as they grow and develop. Once you start measuring their performance and assigning value to the outcomes of learning the natural process is disturbed, hindered.
That's the problem with the business model, the factory mindset. This is why it's best to keep government and corporate leaders as far away from the classroom as possible. They want to measure everything, compare children to one another, compare teachers. Punish and reward.
That messes with teacher's and student's heads and hearts, it takes their minds off what they were reading, exploring, creating and enjoying and starts to get them to think too much about their performance, the "products" of their learning.
Creativity is destroyed, love of learning and curiosity disturbed. Which leads to pretty lousy outcomes in the long run. It's a paradox, really. There's nothing wrong with business and government leaders wanting creative and skillful citizens, but if that's the outcome you desire it's best to support the natural process that leads to it.
Give schools the support and resources they need, encourage teachers and students to be creative, collaborative, engaged and to share a love of learning together. Figure out how to provide equal funding for every school in the nation, how to reduce poverty and unemployment, that would help a lot.
Take a trip to Finland, see how they do things over there. Read some of Maria Montessori's writing, Carol Dweck's research on mindsets, Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences or Csickszentmihalyi's research on flow. Check out James Comer's child development project and educate yourselves on what conditions lead to deep and lasting learning.
Do a bit of reading and research, then go back to your boardroom meetings. Work on improving your own critical thinking skills. Try to figure out how to encourage greater innovation in your companies, to reduce poverty and keep the economy from crashing.
But please, stop trying to test and measure everything so obsessively. It's the adults encouraging destructive business strategies in schools that need to be evaluated and educated, not the children.
~Christopher Chase
The Art of Learning
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Happy Teachers will change the world- Thich Nhat Hanh |
