In Search of Education

I have taught, on and off, for many years, so seems obvious I would also teach my own kid. I mean, why would I leave that to other teachers? The granulated curricula, served in handy sachets (add sugar to taste), created by ministries of indoctrination are not exactly inspiring.

And so, here we are, once again, taking responsibility for our own children - astonishing. I have met many parents who think they are paying for a private education precisely to absolve themselves of their own responsibilities as teachers. School is a nanny service with benefits; teachers are doubleplus-nannies.

The best teachers can see the mess and turn desiccated ingredients into a palatable and nutritious meal. Many others don't seem to understand that sucking on dry rice is not a valuable experience. So many new teachers have bought into the propaganda. They pretend to teach "higher order skills" while their kids are drowning in illiteracy and innumeracy. Flapping your arms does not make you fly.

So, let's start with a clean slate. A good definition of a professional - whatever the profession may be - is someone who carries around within them a large network of knowledge and experiences that can be called upon to make some judgment on new situations.

This requires a certain amount of factual knowledge, but more importantly, it requires the skills needed to acquire new knowledge and to process it within the existing framework. This is not rote learning; this is learning how to process.

Rote learning does have its place but it is limited to very basic knowledge. Try reading without knowing the alphabet. A lot of our rote learning took place in our early years that we have forgotten both its value and its limitations. Most of us know how not to fall over when we walk - that took years of practice. Learning to ride a bicycle also took practice. In both cases, that knowledge is not really at the conscious level; we have trained our muscles and nervous system to acquire a kinetic-memory that is hard to unlearn - try falling off a bike on purpose.

So, designing an educational journey requires going back to some very basic knowledge, then building outwards from that. Not all of it is intellectual knowledge - far from it - as so much of it is somatic or kinetic in nature, be it learning to play the violin, kicking a ball or milking a cow. However, all those activities require a real violin, a real ball... and a real cow. None of which I can teleport to you, and virtual reality is a con job; the body knows it is being fooled.

Although I can write about any topic under the sun, just through the medium of language, those physical skills require one to step away from the computer and go do them. I can certainly write about them but that is no substitute for actually doing them.

Where shall we start?

Firstly, I think every growing child requires three languages: English, mathematics and computer code.

Obviously either add your own language or replace the English. The latter will, however, make everything I write hard to understand.

Added to these basic skills are:

learning how to learn;

thinking about how to think;

and, knowing how to know.

These may be better known as memory, logic and science.

The classical Liberal Arts (seemingly eviscerated from so-called Liberal Arts Colleges) were the linguistic trivium of grammar, logic and rhetoric, plus the quadrivium of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music - yes, the mathematics of music! This was the basis of a classical intellectual education; if you wanted to actually do anything you'd probably end up in a trade school or guild and learn your craft there. We haven't move very far from this scheme.

The final ingredient is... fun! I know, I always cringe at the word when it comes out of the mouth of a teacher. But children are learning new things all the time - it is fun for them, so long as everything remains new and interesting. It really makes no difference if one kid is reading Dickens, another kid is learning to code sequences and yet another kid is playing with his snot - I mean, playing the piano. So that "fun" is not so much an ingredient, but rather the joy of eating.

Education is much like cooking; you can follow a recipe, but when you understand what each ingredient does then you can be creative.