Reimagining education

After many years of teaching on the periphery of the education system – as a teaching artist, a nature educator, an ESL teacher, and in charter schools – I am choosing to pursue a teaching certification because I believe the education system needs to be reimagined. I had been attempting to make changes from the margins by offering alternate models that prioritize creativity, land-based learning, and child-centered practices, but I realized that, more often than not, these experiences were isolated in a sea of systemized schooling. It was no longer sustainable or made sense for me to be emphasizing creativity in my school dance classes when my students went straight back to their classroom, where compliance, and not creativity, was rewarded. And so now, instead of developing an alternate model on the margins, I want to be in the classroom itself and change education from the inside out.

These thoughts crossed my mind today as I watched the film Most Likely to Succeed. I was also reminded of my year teaching English in Japan. Why are we asking educators to teach to standardized tests when we know that 1) students do not retain the content, and 2) the tests don’t mirror anything students will see in their professional lives? I went to Japan because I had been hired by the Japanese government to teach conversational English. However, what the government wanted was different from what universities, and thus parents and students, wanted. My students wanted to pass their university entrance exams to be accepted into English programs. The exams were extremely difficult, and I myself would probably fail them because they were using an archaic form of English that no longer (if ever?) made sense. It was a non-communicable form of English. Why were students being asked to learn something that literally made no sense and was useless? I was never able to answer that question, but what was at the root of it – bigger ponderings like why are we teaching how we’re teaching? Or why are we teaching what we’re teaching, or why are we teaching who we are teaching – continue to ripple through me as I consider teaching for justice, liberation and change.

Some of the obstacles to changing the education system are universities that gatekeep access to knowledge and prestige, and some are parents who would rather play the universities’ game than risk their child’s ability to survive and be self-sufficient. But university degrees no longer guarantee jobs and livelihoods. I think a bigger obstacle is that our systems are driven by capitalism and racism – not everyone can succeed and not everyone can have power. Some of us must be compliant and powerless so that we don’t question the systems.

Ken Robinson, in the TED Talk below, talks about how creativity can counter compliance and help us imagine what is possible – beyond the realities of what we see today. As I reimagine education, I seek to centre creativity, to help my students tone their creativity muscles and to repattern the habits of compliance.

References:

Sir Ken Robinson. (2013). How to escape education’s death valley. In TED. https://www.ted.com/talks/sir_ken_robinson_how_to_escape_education_s_death_valley

Whiteley, G. (Director/Writer/Producer), & Dintersmith, T. (Executive Producer). (2015). Most likely to succeed [Motion picture]. United States: One Potato Productions.