What are they learning?

As an educator I am regularly challenged by the opinions of my students. As a result, I take time to reflect and I ask myself, what am I teaching them? However, a more relevant question is: what are they learning?

Let's not kid ourselves. Every minute of the school day, students are learning. The watch and they listen. They talk to each other. What do they see and hear and then say to their friends when no one else is listening and when teachers aren't asking them for answers?
From whom are they learning and which parts "stick" and which parts "slide"?

Today, in Australia, there is a strong push to collect data and make decisions about student learning based on this data. The National Assessment Program - Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) test is administered in Grades 3, 5, 7 and 9. Progressive Achievement Tests (PAT) are administered on-demand at regular intervals. Individual schools collect assessment data from their students many times throughout the year. A number of education systems attempt to determine what "At Standard" might mean for each year level and then allocate an assessment scheme that purports to reflect this standard. One would be forgiven for thinking that education has it all "covered" and that the information about students achievements helps to enable teachers to improve 'student learning outcomes'.

In addition, a number of education experts claim to have the answers to our on-going education "woes". Most of them collect data on teachers, students and parents, subsequently crunching these numbers in order to determine what practices have the highest "effect-size" on student learning outcomes. Fantastic!

I often get the impression that our educational leaders and controlling bodies believe that if teachers work harder at being effective, have more meetings to plan for working harder that students will learn better and faster. "More than twelve months' growth in one year" is a common target set by school Learning & Teaching Teams.

I ask again. What are we teaching our children and what are they learning?

In Finland they teach critical thinking and skilful research methods and they pay their teachers high salaries. Teachers and Principals are so valued in Finland that an Education qualification is valued more highly than Medicine and Law. Imagine that in Australia! Then they support their teachers with professional development with money and time. Their schools sit at the top of the Media Literacy Index (European-based) and regularly sit at the top of global education benchmarks.

Let's pre-suppose that a teacher actually knows his or her subject matter well. Then let's assume that the teacher actually likes children and is reasonably passionate about their profession. And finally, let's just take for granted that teachers are prepared to listen to their students so their needs, aspirations, dislikes, passions, fears and hopes can become known. What might happen then?

For me, good education begins and ends with the relationship you create with your students. It deepens when teachers are prepared to have conversations with their students and engage their parents in that conversation at all levels. Eventually you find out that maybe what you are expected to teach (following the Study Design, Course Outline, Unit Progression, Assessment periods) is not what a student wants to learn.

In general, and all other things being equal, the vast majority of schools exist to feed a country's need for employment in order to feed the GDP. This is not some left-wing, Marxist, subversive opinion. If universal education ceased tomorrow, where would the jobs come from? Who would run our businesses, our governments and who would populate our Think Tanks? Who would develop transport plans, energy systems, water supply environments? From where would a solution to the Coronavirus come? These are all serious and relevant questions and education plays a part in the complex interplay between where humanity is heading and what it means to be human.

The great challenge of education is to both prepare children for the possibility of employment (the ability to physically sustain their lives and the integrity of their community) and for the necessity of the human race to evolve past unrelenting growth, past lifetimes of repetition towards the realisation that it's the education of the heart that matters and that our minds must be turned to this.