I recently went to visit my youngest daughters
nursery school to speak with her Teacher about how she was settling in.
My wife and I were impressed with the warmth and openness of the school
and the availability of inspiring materials and options to stimulate our
daughters young and active mind.
On the way out,
we left through the main hallway of the primary school and on the walls
were pictures of rocket ships each with a written statement in the
children's hand writing declaring goals they each had for the year
ahead. Things like, I want to spell better, I will read ten books by the
end of the term and so on. One, caught my eye, and while I know it
exhibited the child's knowledge of complex and technical writing skills,
it also made me wonder about the statement and the approach to
Teaching, it said: “I want to become a more creative writer by using connectives and conjunctives.”
The problem is, as I see it, using connectives and conjunctives does
not make you a more creative writer, it makes you a more technical
writer. I believe what makes you a more creative writer is imagination
and inspiration, daydreaming and experiencing, and the understanding of
the Universe in which we live. The technical aspect of course, is
important, but I believe that without the other elements what you have
is the technical information on how to change the wheel on a car or how
to install a piece of software.
I looked up ‘Conjunctive’ in the dictionary and there was nothing in the definition which spoke of creative writing.
I
believe that children are full of imagination and creativity and for
the most part, lack the fear of embarrassment later exhibited when we
become adults, to document the world they experience through writing,
painting, acting, sculpting and all of the art forms available to them
which express their ideas of how their world is.
It seems to be a common thread
at the moment which is picking up steam that part of the solution to a
child's education is allowing them space to discover how they learn
best. What is the environment which sparks their interest and inspires
them to want to learn more. There are programmes being put in place
where Practitioners from different disciplines work hand in hand with
Teachers in order to bring the element of experiential learning to the
subject. An example of this would be to employ a person who has been an
Actor to work with a Drama Teacher. While the Actor may not be an
experienced Teacher they will bring with them their real life experience
of working in Theatre for a living and while the Teacher may not have
had that same experience they will know how to bring that to life in the
classroom in order to make it accessible to the Pupils. As a team they
bring a balanced approach to the lessons.
My big fear
is that someone in upper management somewhere, will have the wrong idea
that this kind of learning can be turned into a formula and then taught
in the same way that Maths or English are being at the moment. (Which
is not working for many children I hasten to add). The issue with this
of course is that it then becomes a 'One Size Fits All' and we
are back to where we started, with a system that does not work for many
of it's Pupils. The best thing that can happen to this revolution is we
give it back to the Teachers and Pupils so that they have the ownership.
Trust that they will do what is needed and then give them the room to
grow.
Live Passionately, ask why!
