So we are all discussing education and education or school change and even (r)evolution. The debate about private and public schools goes on. The ideas that time to play is essential and that self-directed learning(or at least self-driven) amounts to effective learning are widely accepted. We marvel at schools that have been able to abolish traditional distinctions between subjects and the wonderful educational projects that are going on in the world. Yet every year, and most intensely in the end of the school year, we feel stuck in this heavy reality that falls so short of our most legit expectations, desires, and knowledge. I think it is time that one of the elephants in the room that are hindering the profound changes in school educations which are of the utmost emergency – or perhaps the sacred cow, as it is never truly questioned or taken in hands to be done with – is exams. What is the goal of school education? To have good grades. How? By scoring high in exams. Why do teachers keep up with methods and formats they themselves dislike? Because the curricula are too extensive. Why not abbreviate them a bit? Because of the grades. What grades? The ones students get in their exams. Project and hands-on approaches seem to work very well, why not implement them further? Because this time of learning through matching both the students and society's needs might not fare too well in exams. How fantastic it is, when schools abolish separate subjects and learning follows the flow of interest and adjacent, interconnected concepts. Why don't we do that? You guessed it: because exams are structured and are about discrete subjects! And also, how important it is to encourage people to develop in all their dimensions. There are art and ethics, and languages different from our own; there are nutrition and cooking and learning to communicate; there re self-awareness, self motivation, and self appeasing; there is this need for sun, for music, for laughter, for catching up with the seasons; there are imagination and creativity; there are the tools of our culture and all the potential of IT. So why are all these so marginal? Because... exams! Really? Are teachers stopped from innovating and doing with their students what they consider best because performance in exams is at the end of the line so that no time may be wasted or diverted from that seldom questioned goal? Is students perspective on what learning might be and bring them, how they can shape it and be shaped by it, how they can be relevant and contribute, how they can create their own paths and relate to themselves and to the universe limited to what may or may not serve this paramount achievement of doing very well in exams so that even the way their minds, their bodies and their hearts ought to be made to serve that end? Are family life, leisure time and time with peers or oneself to be regulated, mediated and in many ways designed and subdued to those untouchables... the exams? Really? Please, kill them! Let us have the mobility and the depth our time allows us. Let us have friends, health, and sun. Let us learn in many ways and create from it, let us be relevant and self-providing; let us have a voice, let us do what we truly think is best. Let us break loose from these old chains of exams. There are plenty of good and better ways to know how students are faring than exams. Let's be bold and practical and just use them. There is no inherent difficulty to this that we must all bow before exams and let our lives be ruled by them! Students and teachers by the millions caught in this unjustifiable rituals! Really?! We should be ashamed of ourselves :-) . Really.
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Sandra de GaiaApeteceu-me criar um blog bilingue em que partilhar ideias daquelas que nos surgem de repente e dá vontade de convidar os outros a pararem nelas, considerarem-nas connosco -- sejam frase completas, sem reparos quotidianos. E apetece-me fazer isso também para poder publicá-lo no facebook sem perder os direitos originais de publicação. E daqui partimos! Archives
October 2016
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