A Music Teacher! Is that a proper job?

On the ‘The Apprentice’ on TV3 on the 9th of November a music teacher, Sam Conroy was belittled for teaching “only music!” It was suggested to her that music wasn’t a real subject and “how could anybody teach, only music?” During a staff discussion on the topic the following day a colleague of mine said “That’s typical of what people think. You only have to look at parent-teacher meetings to know people don’t care about music, they never even make the effort to show up!” As a language teacher I was astonished at this. I always have a great turnout to parent-teacher meetings. This highlights the fact that parents place much more importance on languages than they do on the arts, a view that has to be altered, if students are to be true to their natural abilities and talents. Our jobs are the implementation of who we are and “Education is the system that’s supposed to develop our natural abilities and enable us to make our way in the world” (Robinson, K. 2009 p16). However, instead, we are educating people out of creativity, stifling their individual talents and “killing their motivation to learn” (Robinson, K. 2009 p 16).

One Size Doesn't Fit All!

When people use a thinking style that's completely natural to them everything comes more easily. Visual people do not learn from dictation. Tony Buzan invented mind mapping as an educational aid for visual people. It allows you to create a visual representation of a concept or a piece of information. In order to be effective the education system needs to heighten awareness of different learning and thinking styles.

'Mickey Mouse' Degrees

Ed Caesar wrote an article for the Sunday Times Magazine a couple of months ago entitled ‘Nice Little Learners’. In it he posed the question – which subject will get you the best job? A: English Literature or B: Golf Studies. As this blog has already suggested the conventionality of our current education system would lead students to English Literature every time, dismissing the latter as a ‘mickey mouse’ degree. Nevertheless, Caesar goes on to document the careers of some of the recipients of these so called ‘mickey mouse’ degrees.

Lucinda Davies, a 24 year old who graduated with a 2:1 in Golf Management Studies from the University of Birmingham, was poached by a resort in Egypt before she had even completed her studies. She is now back in England working as a coach and club pro. However, her ambitions stretch further. One day she would love to run the PGA tour.

Mhairi Mc Donald graduated from Heriot-Watt University in Edingburgh in 2007 with a first-class Msc in Brewing and Distilling. Not only is every person in her year employed but she has her “dream job” in brand development for Glenglassaugh Distillery in Aberdeenshire. Others qualify from courses such as; Stained-glass Studies, Surfing Studies and Computer-games Programming. Many arrive at college with three As at A-level. Proving that these graduates are not only academically intelligent, but are creatively intelligent too.

In a time when 40,000 young people graduating this year will be out of work students need to think more creatively about what kind of returns they are going to get from their qualifications.

Academic Inflation

 

Who is our current education system for? Who succeeds at it? If we were honest in answering these questions we'd have to admit that the purpose of the current education system is to produce university professors. Is this the pinnacle of all human achievement? Surely it's just a form of life. Ken Robinson tell us that the current education system came into being to meet the needs of industrialism and that the hierarchy of subjects is based on two ideas;

1. The most useful subjects for work are at the top. People are steered away from things at school; things that they like because "You would never get a job doing that!"

2. Academic ability, because universities designed the system in their image.

The consequences are that many highly intelligent, brilliant, creative people think they're not. We have to try to change this. According to UNESCO in the next thirty years more people will be graduating through education than ever before. Suddenly, degrees aren't worth anything. Twenty years ago if you had a degree you had a job. But now many people with degrees are unemployed because a job that used to require a BA now requires an MA and so on. This process of academic inflation is indicative of the fact that the whole process of education is shifting beneath our feet. In my view we need to rethink our idea of intelligence.

Does our current education system work?

We are currently facing great challenges. We need the next generation to be smarter more adaptable and better prepared than any that have gone before. Our only chance is to improve our education systems; to find a way to make the most of our students' talents and a way to help them face the challenges of the modern world. One size no longer fits all. We need to prepare young people for the here and now and the emerging issues of our time.

AN INSIGHTFUL VIDEO ON THE IMPORTANCE OF EDUCATING FOR THE FUTURE

Ken Robinson-Creativity

In education creativity is as important now as literacy. We have to rethink the fundamental way we're educating our children. We should embrace the gift of human imagination and educate for the future.

Intelligence is diverse!

Intelligence is diverse. We think about the world how we experience it; visually, sounds, kinesthetic, abstract terms and movement. Intelligence is also dynamic. Creativity, which is the process of having original thoughts and ideas that have value, more often than not comes about through the interaction of different disciplinary ways of seeings things. We have to rethink the way we're educating our children to attend to their individual intelligences

Hierarchy of school subjects.

Every education system in the world has the same hierarchy of subjects. Maths and languages are at the top, humanities in the middle and at the bottom are the arts. There is even a hierarchy within the arts. Art and music have a higher status than drama and dance. Ken Robinson tells us "there isn't an education system in the world that teaches dance everyday to students the way it teaches them mathematics." Why? Maths is important but so is dance. If your talent lies in dance and not in mathematics then the education system is failing you!