Every time a teacher retires, we lose a valuable asset in the community.
Southern Okanagan Secondary School just lost Barry Gruntman who taught math there for nearly 20 years.
It was interesting to learn that he stopped checking students’ homework a long time ago. (Wow, why didn’t we have teachers like that?)
Students are old enough to know that if they don’t do their homework, they won’t do well unless they have more brains than brawn.
Homework . . . most people hate it and many are still not convinced it is necessary. Most if not all of this work should be done at school, not at home.
Have you seen some of the stuff the kids are learning these days? Much of the math they are expected to know, they will never use later in life.
Even Gruntman admits that his students weren’t going to use what he taught unless their career path was engineering, real estate or banking.
We look at some of the other subjects that students are expected to learn and we shake our heads. The French revolution will not help them get the best deal in a car lot or a loan at the bank.
We are told that the curriculum is changing but why has it taken so long (years) for the education system to change its focus from memorization to critical thinking and problem solving? When we were going to school everything was memorization of content (for testing purposes). But after the test, most of the content was forgotten and not easily retained. Why didn’t the system recognize this and revise the curriculum much sooner?
We asked Superintendent of Schools Bev Young this, and here is her response:
Much of it stems from the shift in the jobs around the world from routine cognitive tasks to the more creative. That is a direct impact of the digital revolution. Most jobs involving routine cognitive skills have gone to computers in the offices and robots in the manufacturing world.
This change in the work world has taken a while to filter down to the school level. Institutions like education always take a long time to react.
It really takes a generation when you think about re-orienting teachers who were all very successful products of the old system.
The system is also reluctant to embrace new ways so tests and assessments don’t change easily.
The education system has insulated itself for a long time. We are getting very good results; however, we are not necessarily preparing students for the real world if we don’t reflect on what and how we are teaching.
The job of teachers is no longer to transmit the knowledge they have to the students. The job is to help students learn, to help get them excited about learning, to guide the social process of learning, and to teach the skills of thinking, deep learning, working collaboratively, and social responsibility.
Lyonel Doherty, editor
