learners and changes
This statement, appeared on the VLN recently.
"The rate of change in education is too slow for our priority learners - Māori, Pasifika, students with special educational needs? Do you agree or disagree?"
If you removed the phrase "education" out of this statement, would it make anymore sense?
"The rate of change in society is too slow for our priority learners - Māori, Pasifika, students with special societal needs?"
"The rate of change in parents is too slow for our priority learners - Māori, Pasifika, students with special parental needs?"
We can do all the whizz-bang work in education and make ourselves sound futurific with flipped classrooms, QR codes, Google glasses and all - but if you look around at society - it's still pretty similar to what we've always had.
We have layered up expectation and entitlement onto education - as if it's the magic bullet that will solve society's woes - while ignoring the fact that most of our political structures and power structures are the same as they've ever been.
Sure, let's shake up education, urgently, to address the needs of "priority learners" - which is the most passive aggressive self-inflicted dissing of our own profession in a long while - but let's shake up the very political system that provides our education system. You know, the one that's currently using the recursive policies from the 1980's to lead us into the brave new future.
Public education does not exist in a political or societal vacuum, let us realise that first, before we all inflict ceaseless change in a totally self-serving and unsustainable fashion.
The worlds of these "priority learners" are fast and furious and freaking terrifying, and to put it bluntly, often really, really shit.
Part of schools place is to be the place where they're safe, and not freaked out, and respected and cared for.
What comes out of that sense of place will last them their lives.
What comes out of the cloud-based LMS that they dutifully recorded their Learning Outcomes in, while using their tablet device, not so much.
That should be the priority.
