Second week: The obsolete system

If the school system as we know it nowadays is obsolete, how should the current schools be?

It is really clear that our ways of living have evolved a lot since the schools as we know them appeared, but there has been little change in terms of education, and the way students are taught doesn’t correspond to their needs and demands.

The thing is that we need to start the change inside our classrooms, and the rest will flow. If a teacher, who knows each one of his/her students, is able to recognise their needs and make changes in order to adapt the lessons to each one of them, because the main objective is not to make students memorise the same things, the aim is to teach each one of them all they need to live in a plural society, depending on their differences.

The problem in this case is that, as upper in the pyramid we go, as more difficult is the change.

The idea of top-down innovation is seen as a help in many cases, but it is more an obstacle. The thing is that with a common curriculum, a common system of funds, common resources and common techniques is not enough. Each school has different objectives, different ways of teaching and different necessities and this cannot be seen from the uppest perspective. The thing is that governments are comfortable controlling what is happening under their influence, but they are not seeing that what they really do is to damage the system and make it be even more old fashioned.

Thus, we need to change it and make them see that down-top innovation is the better way to improve the schools and make them match with our daily and future lives and the students ones too. So, the innovation has to start inside the classroom, then, the whole community has to be involved and decide which is the better path to follow and convince, with the rest of the schools the government to change the policies and give more flexibility to develop a system in which the students are the center of everything, no matter what is needed to do it.

Now, the task is ours and we have to work hard if we want to change it and start the long and though process of changing, in our way, the world.