Looking at education like a painting is a new way to look at educating our children and that is the point of this blog.
First off, let's look at painting a picture. Normally it is a single artist who paints the picture while looking at a "model" or from their "mind" of what they want to end up with. Notice that there is an involved process that has at is purpose to end up with a complete picture. My wife is a good artist and I have watcher her paint complex water colors. When I watched, I noticed that she started off by painting colors, images and backgrounds that had no relationship to her final picture, but in her mind, she knew what she was doing and what she wanted to end up with. Are you following this?
The idea of painting a picture or accomplishing any complex process is to first have a clear "picture" of what you want to end up with, knowing that, the path to that end may have many steps. Is that really any different from teaching a child so that they can function as an adult and have a high quality of life?
Here is where I think our current teaching model goes wrong. First off, as I have pointed out in prior blogs, we don't have a clear final objective for our education process. In the case of a painter, they don't start before they have a clear "picture" in mind of how their "picture" is supposed to end up. Here is how we try to educate out children. We divide it up between several teachers who appear to be working independently to paint the "picture". Start by thinking about each child as the "picture" being painted by several different teacher/painters. Currently, the end product is far from optimal.
Now that you see that each child is an individual like a "painting", let's get serious. Ask yourself, "How can our current education system "paint" a child so that they will meet our objective?" You know that our current systems does not meet our objective. How can a series of teachers who don't even know each other or have an individual plan for the child ever prepare them for adulthood? It can't and I think that most of us realize that.
In the past, I blogged that the old one room school houses did a better job of education than do our modern mega schools. Why do you think that was? I think that is was because most children had the "same" painter teaching them year after year so the "painting" turned out a lot better. What I think we need to do is to see if we can get back some of this long term commitment to the "painting". As a teacher myself, I never got any kind of profile on my students from teachers who had taught them before. How about you? If you go to the doctor, they want to know your health "history". Why don't we have, at least, something like this for our kids? Do you think that this just might be the main reason that home schooled kids do so much better, on average, than those who go to our current public schools?
In a prior blog, I pointed out that the future of education might be with our computers using AI as one of its main drivers. This is because the education process can be tailored for the individual student and take into account 100% and more of the student's prior history. There is no way that our current public schools can do this. They appear to work on the principle of Henry Ford and that is to divide the work so that teachers of the least intellect can teach the class. It might have worked for the simple model T Ford, but not for the needs of the modern world. If you have followed my logic, it is time that you wake up and do something about the situation. The future belongs to our children and it is our main responsibility to see that they are prepared to deal with the ever changing and more complex and dangerous future!
PS--Check this out. The parents of children have an average IQ of 100. Historically the smarter people became teachers so the average IQ of teachers was above 100. Today, smarter people chose professions other than teaching leaving less smart people for teachers. The effect is that teachers today have an average IQ of less than 100. Those facts have been verified! Historically, parents were justified in letting teachers have a larger influence on their children, but today that is not such a good idea. In the one room school, the teachers had more of a "long term" interest in their students than do teachers of today. The affect has been negative for our children.
First off, let's look at painting a picture. Normally it is a single artist who paints the picture while looking at a "model" or from their "mind" of what they want to end up with. Notice that there is an involved process that has at is purpose to end up with a complete picture. My wife is a good artist and I have watcher her paint complex water colors. When I watched, I noticed that she started off by painting colors, images and backgrounds that had no relationship to her final picture, but in her mind, she knew what she was doing and what she wanted to end up with. Are you following this?
The idea of painting a picture or accomplishing any complex process is to first have a clear "picture" of what you want to end up with, knowing that, the path to that end may have many steps. Is that really any different from teaching a child so that they can function as an adult and have a high quality of life?
Here is where I think our current teaching model goes wrong. First off, as I have pointed out in prior blogs, we don't have a clear final objective for our education process. In the case of a painter, they don't start before they have a clear "picture" in mind of how their "picture" is supposed to end up. Here is how we try to educate out children. We divide it up between several teachers who appear to be working independently to paint the "picture". Start by thinking about each child as the "picture" being painted by several different teacher/painters. Currently, the end product is far from optimal.
Now that you see that each child is an individual like a "painting", let's get serious. Ask yourself, "How can our current education system "paint" a child so that they will meet our objective?" You know that our current systems does not meet our objective. How can a series of teachers who don't even know each other or have an individual plan for the child ever prepare them for adulthood? It can't and I think that most of us realize that.
In the past, I blogged that the old one room school houses did a better job of education than do our modern mega schools. Why do you think that was? I think that is was because most children had the "same" painter teaching them year after year so the "painting" turned out a lot better. What I think we need to do is to see if we can get back some of this long term commitment to the "painting". As a teacher myself, I never got any kind of profile on my students from teachers who had taught them before. How about you? If you go to the doctor, they want to know your health "history". Why don't we have, at least, something like this for our kids? Do you think that this just might be the main reason that home schooled kids do so much better, on average, than those who go to our current public schools?
In a prior blog, I pointed out that the future of education might be with our computers using AI as one of its main drivers. This is because the education process can be tailored for the individual student and take into account 100% and more of the student's prior history. There is no way that our current public schools can do this. They appear to work on the principle of Henry Ford and that is to divide the work so that teachers of the least intellect can teach the class. It might have worked for the simple model T Ford, but not for the needs of the modern world. If you have followed my logic, it is time that you wake up and do something about the situation. The future belongs to our children and it is our main responsibility to see that they are prepared to deal with the ever changing and more complex and dangerous future!
PS--Check this out. The parents of children have an average IQ of 100. Historically the smarter people became teachers so the average IQ of teachers was above 100. Today, smarter people chose professions other than teaching leaving less smart people for teachers. The effect is that teachers today have an average IQ of less than 100. Those facts have been verified! Historically, parents were justified in letting teachers have a larger influence on their children, but today that is not such a good idea. In the one room school, the teachers had more of a "long term" interest in their students than do teachers of today. The affect has been negative for our children.
