LEAD MAGAZINE | 2019
ANNE THAM
TEACH KIDS RIGHT
ministries talk about the Fourth Industrial
Revolution, then, those fighting to provide
equitable education will say what about these
students who are left behind.
Do we stop moving education forward so that
those who don’t have, get to catch up? Are
these 2 issues mutually exclusive? No, they’re
not. Both have to move forward. The fight is
and has to be 2-pronged. Realistically, we have
to understand that their paces will be different.
What teaching kids right mean:
1. Kids and teens thrive in informality.
What does that even mean?
Question is, right in whose eyes?
The government? This includes the Education
Ministries, Human Resource, Industries and
Trade, Science and Innovation. Then there are
the politicians. They all have their different
agendas.
The educators? They’re ‘specialists’ in pre-
school education, primary, secondary, tertiary,
etc. They ‘know best’ what the learners need at
their level of expertise. So, at pre-school and
primary, they teach one skill or topic at a time.
After all, these are kids. They cannot handle
too many things at one time. (Myth or Fact?)
But then at high school and tertiary levels, the
students need multiple skills, cross disciplinary
knowledge and application. Educators at
tertiary levels struggle with this as many
students lack these skills at that point.
Then they come out to the working world
and the industries and employers ask, ‘What
happened?’
The Parents? In so many countries, parents
still believe in an education system that is 200
years old. They’re fighting to get their kids into
the elite universities. That’s the top 1% or 2%
of students in the world. Sir Ken Robinson
jokingly said that the professors in the
universities are training students to become
professors like them.
Two major problems in education
One is that the system is a few hundred years
old and little has been done to move it into the
future. The other is the students who don’t
even have access to basic education or the
opportunities that their richer counterparts
have. Every time the schools and education
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that formal manner, then, the message is “It
is wrong to behave like a child. It is wrong to
behave like a teen.”
ADULTS EXPECT THESE KIDS
TO BE LITTLE ADULTS.
ACTUALLY, THEY MAKE
MISERABLE LITTLE ADULTS.
So, how about thinking of shifting the energy in
a school, being more informal, so that they can
learn and be themselves. They thrive a whole
lot better.
Whenever I tell people to let kids be kids,
and teens be teens, the first reaction I get is:
“WHAT? YOU MEAN THERE’S NO DISCIPLINE!?”
Now, the thing is, I would really like people to
understand the nature of children. First off,
they have a ton of energy. Very high energy.
Secondly, they love to push boundaries.
Wherever they can, they will push them. Third
and finally, they love things that interest and
excite them. 2. Enjoying, being happy and engaged while
learning serious subjects.
So, the issue we are grappling with is what
happens when they’re at school. The kids
and teens are told to sit down, be quiet, stop
running around, stop talking with your friends,
and get back to your seat. In that sort of
learning environment...kids don’t thrive. It’s
an artificial formal environment and they’re
expected to ‘behave’. If you want to grow their
personalities and who they are as individuals...
this won’t work. They thrive in informality. We’re looking at an education system
that is focused on the 21st Century Skills
like engagement, collaboration, meaning,
empathy, fun - while producing excellent
academic results without losing the human
component in the process. Imagine students
doing Add Maths experiments at the water
theme park, playing a game with wizards and
mages for Economics and debriefing six topics
at one go. We have students using Hip Hop
moves to remember Kinetic Particle Theory.
This moves information from short term
memory to long term for exam purposes. East
meets West, holistic learning plus the rigor of
exams. The majority, 80%, must do well, not
the minority at 20%.
Now then, what do we do? So, many adults ask,
“You’re saying to let the kids decide what they
want?” No! We’re not talking about letting them
decide what they want to do, and let them have
free rein and run around if they want. NO! As
teachers, we need to know how to harness
their energy. We also need to find them more
engaging things to do. So, whatever we’re
making them learn, we need to redirect it, and
then make learning more exciting, interesting.
When students work in groups they get to
talk to their friends; they get to socialise.
Unfortunately, people say: “But, they’re talking
about other things too!” Well, when we are
working, as adults, and we go for meetings,
we don’t go “alright guys, we only talk about
this one thing here, and nothing else.” Half
the time, we connect with people, maybe just
socialise a little bit to find out how everyone
else is doing, jokes are told in the meeting.
We build relationships, but we discuss serious
stuff too. So, why can’t children and teenagers
do that as well? We need to know the reality of
what it means to work in groups.
Now, what is actually most important is this:
when you tell kids that they have to behave in
Recently, I had some students from Hong
Kong spend a week or two in our school to
experience a different system of education. On
the last day in our school, a number of them
cried. That evening, one of the girls asked her
Mum, “Is it really possible? To be so happy and
do well in the exams?”
It is possible to have Fun + No stress + Good
results. This moves the majority of students
from ‘average’ students to being extraordinary.
Sir Ken Robinson said at BETT (British Education
Training and Technology) Show in 2017 when
talking about education “The system creates
the problem, change the system and the
problem goes away”
3. Practical education
• News Flash!
7-year old CEO with a tea business.
• 11-year old boy with a bow tie business
which he started at 9.
• 15-year old boy sold an app to Yahoo for
USD 30m.