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Have
the Chickens come home to Roast? |
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TIME magazine Asia recently included an article with a very sobering assessment of schools in the region. According to the article, high drop out rates, strikes, stress, suicides – along with a lack of creativity, initiative, motivation and focus in students – are a current reality. After decades of focusing on high academic achievement, there are now obvious negative side effects that cannot be ignored. Why has this happened? Is it because knowledge and facts have become valued above wisdom and a love for learning? Educationalist Illich says that many school systems have been designed on the assumption that there is a secret to everything in life, that the quality of life depends on knowing those secrets (or facts), that secrets can only be known in an orderly fashion, and that “adult experts” called teachers have all the answers. He believes that learning has gone through a dramatic transition from an “activity” generated in real situations and where learning was “about” the world, to a “commodity” where learning was taken “from” the world. Illich says that schools are unbalanced social institutions that share much in common with the military, penitentiaries and convents by offering a “sugar coated pill of compulsion and conforming”, ultimately alienating people from learning. Have
the chickens come home to roost – or, more appropriately, roast?
Have we seen the full implication of these sorts of failures in
education systems around this region? I doubt it. When children graduate
from these dysfunctional systems, they will not only be struck by the
real life expectations of the modern working world, but they will have
to forge a way through the varying cultural approaches that characterize
corporate life. We shouldn’t be surprised that many adults who have
come from these systems are finding it so hard to cope. Why should corporate multinationals get involved?For many
years the corporate focus has been on the bottom line of profit.
Education and training have been forced into the “low priority”
basket, and are the first areas to be cut when times are tough. But now
even “bottom line” companies will need to take note. The TIME
magazine article gives the warning that “with their rote-based
curricula and examcentric systems, Asians are finding that even children
who attend the very best public schools lack the creative skills to
compete in a new, challenging information economy”. "The
existing education system has produced reliable managers for predictable
times," says Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Singapore's Senior Minister of
State for Education, "but it now needs to produce a new breed of
leaders who have a certain ruggedness, an ability to respond quickly to
situations." It is critical thinking skills, not simple abilities
in regurgitating facts, which are urgently needed. Do
we need to change priorities?
A
friend of mine, the director of a well known financial institution, told
me that he couldn’t believe that his salary was ten times higher than his
wife, who – as a teacher – was responsible for educating the next
generation, those who will shape the world that he will retire into.
“I merely trade in gold, a useless commodity, and she changes
lives,” he admitted. I
believe that teachers are the most underpaid and undervalued of all
professionals, and that reflects the priority we place on personal
growth and development throughout life. Most organizations ignore the
need individuals have for ongoing development, and fail to realize that
by not providing ongoing education they are in fact undermining the
value of individuals within the organization and the organization
itself. What can organizations do? Training is not always educationSmart
companies will start taking some responsibility for education, and not
just simple skills training. They must start to understand, firstly,
that training is not always education. Training is about developing a
specific skill set, imparting knowledge and facts in the hope that
workers can reproduce this information when called upon. Education is
about developing skills for ongoing learning and enquiry. Aristotle
was one of the first to introduce the difference when he talked about
“Moral Training” v “Moral Education”. Moral training, he
believed, was the process of teaching people right or wrong, without a
discussion of why these distinctions were being made. “Moral
Education”, believed Aristotle, implied that the learner had developed
an understanding of moral principles and acts deliberately on the basis
of these and had become committed to them. What good leaders must have
is the ability to make decisions based on understanding of principles
that they have become committed to. Developmental
psychologist James Fowler says that education needs to move people out
of a synthetic-conventional type of belief system – where something
might be believed because it is the perceived norm – into one that
involves questioning, enquiry and tolerance with ambiguity. This is the
richness that is missing from so many “education systems”. This is
why there is so little creativity and now also little motivation.
Perhaps we should call the current system by its real name –
“knowledge banking” (according to Friere) – and start to think
about how we might really incorporate learning processes into our
organizations instead. How can organizations make learning relevant?Too
many trainers are out there just thinking that they can impart facts
that will solve everything. But it’s not the knowledge that we lack.
What is lacking is the method of passing that knowledge on so it has an
impact and is relevant in people’s lives. This is an art and a
science, and it needs to be seriously studied in our region. There
should be a continuing dialogue about the philosophy of education. The
challenge of teaching is to keep the experience of the student relevant.
Dewey believes that the core subject matter of education consists
primarily of the meanings that supply content to existing social life.
Sales experts say that the biggest problem with an experienced sales
person is that they know “so well” why their product benefits their
customer, that they forget that the job is to help the customer make
this connection, not themselves. Many will, teach the subject matter as
if it is fact, ignoring that their goal is for the buyer to develop the
skills to discover the facts for themselves. What organizations need to
be developing instead is what management guru Peter Senge refers to as
“knowledge workers”. Challenging the cynicsNo
wonder the TIME article reported, “the biggest problem with Asia's
schools today is that children themselves no longer link substantive
learning with schooling. Students don't see any interest in what they're
being taught.” The article goes on to report that, “Surveys show
that while East Asian pupils top worldwide academic tests, they retain
the information for the least amount of time, believing, not
surprisingly, there is little utility in what they learn in the
classroom...” It
is a mistake to assume that the participants in corporate training
programs want to learn and want to hear what the facilitator has to say.
Adult cynics can provide the greatest resistance to learning. Their bad
experiences with education often leave them with little desire to learn
more, and consequently they cannot cope with change or new ideas. When
these people end up in management positions, the friction they can
create between their understanding of way the world is and the way they
see the world can have far reaching effects – can even grind a company
to halt. Have we missed the point?What
people want or are interested in is, to a large extent, a product of the
value system they have acquired. Most people have acquired this value
system through their school and culture. The
job of the educator is not just to build on existing wants, but to
present what is worth wanting in a way that it creates new wants and
stimulates new interests. If educators don’t do this others will.
Advertising companies, politicians, and religious fundamentalists will
all happily tell the population what they should and shouldn’t want or
value. But the consequences of greed and power and a desire for constant
material growth (rather than sharing, responsible development and
sustainability), values that were encouraged through the 80s and 90s,
are now surfacing. Although
it is sad to hear about the state of school systems, it doesn’t come a
surprise. They say that if you put a frog in hot water it jumps out
immediately, but if you put it in cold water and heat it up slowly it
will eventually die. Can we not see that the methods we have used to
“educate” (or “bank knowledge”) have been responsible for the
way our societies now operate? What are the results of a bottom line focus?One
of the most sobering revelations from The Economist about the Anderson
failure with Enron was the connection of the outcome with the value
system that had been adopted. A recent article from The Economist
identified the implications, pointing out that, “When undue attention
is focused on a single figure (bottom line profit), undue effort is
devoted to manipulating it.” And
the results of such a misguided focus? The report confirms that 257
public companies with $258 billion in assets declared bankruptcy in
2001, shattering the previous year's record of 176 companies and $95
billion assets delared in bankruptcy. It is commitment to principles,
not skills, which will save future companies from this fate. As the old
saying goes, “When you train a devil you don’t get an angel but a
clever devil.” Did
you know that along with putting people into outer space and building
nuclear weapons, we now have the means to wipe out poverty and eradicate
many diseases? The budget for world military spending alone is enough to
provide every person in the world with basic water, health and
education. Next time someone you know dies of a disease remember that
that there are approximately five times as many scientists (and
therefore five times more brainpower) currently dedicated to developing
weapons of mass destruction, than there are researching diseases and the
environment. A great quote I once saw at a school fete highlights the
issue: “It will be a great day when the education gets all the money
it needs, and the military has to hold fetes to raise funds!” Roasting
the roosting chickens
Not
only are the chickens coming home to roost, but as a generation of
poorly educated children reaches management positions, companies
unprepared will be in for a real roasting. Let us start to seriously
value education. We must realize that we can no longer get away with
“knowledge banking” through training skills, and ignoring underlying
values and principles. It’s time companies started to invest in the
organisation’s future through developing individuals on an ongoing
basis. There can only be positive change through a dedicated focus on
individual and organizational growth. read more Andrew Grant This article is also available at www.tirian.com/writing/corporate/educate1.htm
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by Andrew Grant (C) |
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"the current system now needs to produce a new breed of leaders who have a certain ruggedness, an ability to respond quickly to situations." It is critical thinking skills, not simple abilities in regurgitating facts, which are urgently needed ----- What good leaders must have is the ability to make decisions based on understanding of principles that they have become committed to. --- What is lacking is the method of passing that knowledge on so it has an impact and is relevant in people’s lives. --- , “Surveys show that while East Asian pupils top worldwide academic tests, they retain the information for the least amount of time, believing, not surprisingly, there is little utility in what they learn in the classroom...” --- 257 public companies with $258 billion in assets declared bankruptcy in 2001, shattering the previous year's record of 176 companies and $95 billion
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