With the increased rate of high school best brained dropouts, we at Life Pyramids Orientation Centre felt there is a need for urgent solution-action in whatever capacity within the reach of any educational minded person in the world to prevent the following:
- School system from losing its respect completely;
- Cultural values and morality from being lost;
- Children and youths from becoming 'too carefree' in their ways, and
- The world from becoming un-organised when being controlled by unconstitutionalised minds (who are the school children of the present generation.
We know that school system deserves more respect from the member of society than it's getting in at present for its profound impact in history; we can also see the little slackness in inculcating our cultural values and morality into the incoming generations in form of disrespect to individual, established authority and institutions and societal laws - and that is probably one of the explicit implications of being 'too carefree' and which its longtime effect being an un-organised society. (It is not everyone that has Steve Jobs' carefree mind that still kept society organised and institutionalised by his own product of carefreeness.
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By observation and research we discovered that the major cause of dropping out of school
is a result of ignorance:
- Of connection between school and education;
- Of contributions of school system to becoming important effective personality in life;
- Of what they really need from school;
- Of how to use school system to their advantage, and
- Of how to score themselves high when school system scores them low.
In a simple way, student mostly drop out of school, (if not as a result of unseriousness or lack of fund), not because he/she is not brilliant or not knowledgeable; they are knowledgeable, only that in another mental activities which have no connection with those of school's evaluated activities. And not that they don't want to go to school, but that some of are being frustrated by school's general way of doing things (how it impacts knowledge, the contents of knowledge it impact and relevance of the knowledge as well as its way of measuring intelligence and mastery) which do not really clear to them.
In these five series posts, we will, by God's grace, make clear each of the areas of student's ignorance listed above starting with 'connection between school and education/knowledge.
SCHOOL AND EDUCATION
In the real sense, school is not the only visible abode of education; education (which also means knowledge) dwells everywhere, presents everywhere, manifests everywhere and can be acquire everywhere at anytime and as much as chances permits. There are some who have never been to school as it is known, but are well informed in knowledge than those who have been to school. Nevertheless, the influence of school in education cannot be underestimated.
Education is an awareness of information (knowledge) with a correspondent action which testifies to the veracity of such an awareness. This simply implies that one is only educated not by virtue of WHERE he/she has been, but by virtue of WHAT he/she has become aware of.
While 'school' as it is known is an "organised environment' that gives room for easy and quick awareness of information - particularly secondary information (secondhand information) which in turn could lead one to awareness of primary information (first hand information).
By the above definition of school, it means school can be anywhere or anything that exposes one to knowledge which includes books, Internet, formal or informal gathering and any atmosphere of learning. For instance, TED is a school.
Nevertheless, the kind of school I am most concerned with in this post is the well organised school system that has a firm and fixed structure of operations; that have contributed to my mental and psychological growth before I became aware of what I know today. Not only to my life, but also to the lives of those who now stand in judgement of the system.
Here is the view of Sir Ken Robinson, an amazing American educator,
"Sugata has shown through his work that not just kids, but people in general, are perfectly capable of organizing their own learning, that people are natural learners. Left to their own devices, it's extraordinary what even very young kids will figure out. There are three terms which are often used interchangeably: learning, education and school.
Learning is a very natural process. We've demonstrated as human beings that we have a tremendous appetite for learning. Very young children are born with a rapacious appetite to discover the world around them. Learning is a process of acquiring new skills, knowledge, and understanding. We don't need schools for people to do that. We learn in all sorts of ways on our own and in collaboration with other people. Although learning is natural, much of what we do learn is cultural, and it's a very social process for the most part. Even when we're learning on our own, we're learning from the people around us.
One way of defining education is that it's an organized program of learning; and, of course, people can organize their own programs of learning. It's what self-education means. But we have developed systems over a long time ─ national systems of education ─ on the belief that there are some things that, collectively, we want successive generations to learn, things that are important to us culturally or economically. And part of my case has been that the systems that we have now were developed in other times for other purposes. In many ways, the systems themselves, in their structures and ways of working, are anachronistic. They are also obstructive to the realization of the talents and abilities that many people have, and to the competencies they need to acquire now.
School, in a more narrow but important sense, is a community of learners, because we do learn with and from each other. That's what a school is. It's a community of people who come together to learn with and from each other. I do think that schools are important in that sense ─ the school as a community of learners who come together to learn with and from each other. The thing is, we've come to associate schools with particular types of institutions which have developed over the past couple of hundred years. The school is a place where there are separate classes; different age groups; bells and whistles; schedules and time tables; and exams and tests. None of those things are necessary to the conception of a school and there are multiple examples in alternative school movements, in democratic school movements.
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It is true that structural school is not actually doing well in some cogent areas, but let's ask ourselves these questions: Where did I learn to write this well? Where did I learn to speak thus logically? What I know today, what first give room for it? If we must be truthful with ourselves, we will see that they are the manifestation of routine and organised ways structural school system. Arguing against school system is like arguing against the very structure that tought you to argue.
THE CONNECTION BETWEEN SCHOOL AND EDUCATION
My dear friend, you don't have to drop out of 'school' because there is one voice somewhere telling you there are better ways to acquire knowledge; I do not argue that there are no better ways, but if those who are saying school is an embargo on being creative or being educationally sound or acquiring knowledge would be opened up to you, then you would know that acquiring knowledge or education in those other ways are not as easier as it is in structural schools as they are being often presented. Structural school system is an avenue that gives for an organised learning and helps you acquire wider knowledge without necessarily stop you from doing things in your own way within an institutionalised environment. Unless you don't know how. (We will write about that in our next posts).
Here are the connection between structural school and education:
- School is an environment basically for education/knowledge acquisitions.
- School gives room for education/knowledge connection.
- School is a better place you can mostly develop the fundamental skills such as: speaking, writing, relating, synthesising (connecting knowledge of different fields), etc
- School is the best place to acquire specialised knowledge.
- School lays a better foundation for whatever you will be aware of later in life, either in positive response or negative.
- School gives you a lot of courses to think and reason about which might eventually lead you to your own course in life.
- And of course, with school you have a better testifier (certificate) to your awareness.
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Friend, quitting schooling is not the best option. Steve Jobs quitted and yet stayed around to acquire the knowledge/education that has changed the history of the whole world. You can have it all in school.
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