Why Teaching Isn’t Effective

Why teaching isn’t effective, but learning is.

Almost anything I or you or anyone needs or wants to know is available in seconds using any one of three or four devices that are never far from my reach. Any technique or method that I learn today will likely change in the next few months or years. There are very few exceptions. In reality there are very few core things that we really need to learn. In most areas of modern life I don’t need to remember anything, but I do need to think. The problem with most of the modern education system is that it revolves around teaching and learning and not around thinking. Success is measured by exams and the one thing you must never do in an exam is to be original or heaven forbid wrong (even for the right reasons). Exams require you to reproduce what you have been taught, life requires you to think, experiment, fail and move on. All things that exams and hence teaching discourages.

Take mathematics. You don’t even really need to know how to do the vast majority of maths including addition, subtraction, multiplication and division what you need to know is how to apply the techniques. I hear a cry of pain from my audience, and it goes something like this:

The kids these days can’t even do basic mathematics without a calculator. I was taught the basics at school and it’s stood me in good stead.

If you genuinely believe this, then here’s a question. What is 254 divided by 78? Unless you are a numbers genius I will bet you any money that you fall into one of the following categories:

Was taught how to do long division at school but can’t remember how to do it.

Was taught long division at school but can’t do it without a pen and paper (environmentally unfriendly, inefficient, error prone and ineffective).

Was taught long division at school, can sort of remember how to do it but haven’t since the day you left as you know a calculator is always by your side, quicker, error proof and lets you get on with whatever it was that required you to need to know what 254 divided by 78 is. Effective.

Then the last argument. Yes, but what if all the power fails, your calculator and phone doesn’t work, what then huh? Well my answer is that in the face of a global apocalypse there are many skills that I will need to be able to do to survive and even in my wildest dreams long division is not one of them!! The ability to think is definitely a good one though.

It’s time to change from teaching to education.

If you are reading this Secretary Of State For Education then here is my suggested new national curriculum:

1. Reading – we can judge the success of the current system by noting that according to the National Literacy Trust Trust 16.4% of adults in England have “very poor literacy skills”. To put that into perspective that’s 7.1 million people that the current system has failed at the most basic level. We need to stop messing around and get this right. If you can’t read well then you will find it’s very, very difficult to educate yourself.
2. Quest For Learning – find where the interest lies and develop it to encourage a quest for learning. If a child has an interest in dinosaurs develop that to encourage them to read about dinosaurs, count the number of dinosaurs and investigate more. This will lead on to more things – maybe biology, physics even mathematics but develop the interest and instil a quest for learning. Find the trigger and move forward.
3. Encourage Imagination – we need people who think for themselves not those who follow the standard ways. In a very short time, we will have robots and AI that can achieve almost everything that the current education system demands of a human, only it will be able to do it better. The one thing that is a long way away for AI and may never happen is original thought and imagination. People who have those two skills will thrive, those who merely repeat what they have been taught are just inefficient robots with feelings.
4. Reward Effort Not Outcomes – tests only reward outcomes. They favour the child / person who tows the line and does the minimum to attain an artificial standard that does not require them to think for themselves. In the modern environment we want people who try, fail, get up again and try again until they succeed. We need original thinkers. The climate crisis will not be solved by doing what we do now better and more efficiently. Our only hope is in original thinkers.
5. Make All Exams Practical – all exams should require thought, imagination and originality. Anyone just repeating a technically correct answer without showing how they can apply it should be marked down. Application over repetition.

Employers you can help. Make your interviews practical. Get candidates to do imaginative work and hire the ones who can think. Then give them jobs where they are allowed to think. Too many employers are guilty of imaginative recruitment procedures and then wonder why they have problems when they put thinking people in jobs where they are expected to toe the line and where failure, even for the right reasons is not allowed. Employment should follow the same “curriculum” as education.

So that’s why teaching isn’t effective but learning is.

Just a thought.

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