I know this essay has no methodology and no reference to anyone else’s work, which shows you it’s coming from my brain. I hope to one day look further into my ideas academically, but still keep my ideas here for when that day comes….
In the age of technology, why do we send children to school to be educated?
With large numbers of jobs now being able to be carried out at home, why is the home not being seen as the more important place to be?
I’m not saying entirely transfer to home working, but offering people the choice. School can be a choice. Parents who work full time in key worker positions, being given priority at first, but then reduced down as wages increase to allow a parent to stay at home. Society really needs to see that someone needs to stay at home and educate their children, so much of the curriculum is health and wellbeing, it’s no surprise teachers are struggling. Who can control the health and wellbeing of a child the most? Parents! And if they can’t? The children should be taken away from them and they shouldn’t be allowed more.
End of the day, if you don’t work and you have a child, you should be educating your child at home. Learning hubs around the country could support this. The actual expected level children are currently ideally able to achieve could be done by parents at home without the need for a child working 9-3 every day. Day care centres for parents that work, can offer simple math and literacy support alongside all the other wonderful creative fun they would be having if it was the norm instead of school. In fact, day care would be more like school. Somewhere people would send their kids if they were too lazy to educate themselves. But the schools wouldn’t be held responsible for the child’s education. It would be understood that they were getting a reduced education due to the adult to child ratios and the different needs of children. Parents would still be expected to educate their children properly or explain any issues during their yearly check in with a teacher.
And going back to the education side, for such parents in particular. As the curriculum (particularly in Scotland) lays more and more value to health and wellbeing and more and more time and money and effort into behaviour management, surely the benefits are much greater than the drawbacks? Your child learns how to be a human from you and who you expose them to, not from 6 different teachers across their childhood who you may not like. If you don’t like that, should you be having children?
Teaching strategies are now the same as many things, they can be written down into easier to access documents. An increasingly educated and technological society is more capable of accessing them on the internet and understanding what they mean. Learning hubs around the country could support parents who are struggling.
Child development would be a free course offered to anyone who decides to have a child. The children who have had phonics and dyslexia friendly education for the last 2 decades, are having children now. Their reading ability is more likely to be higher than a parent of a similar social group 20 years ago. They will be more likely to be able to access these courses online when they have children. And if not, staffed courses and drop in centres could be available at local universities who already have the staff and the facilities to provide it.
Once a year perhaps, parents could be required to enter a learning hub for an assessment, but the assessment will be half their teaching/parenting methods and ideas and half the children showing what skills they have learned. It could be a whole afternoon with activities to try and personal time to go through a next year plan, with a teacher. This would keep teachers in a job for sure. And work closely with child protection combining two currently separate government entities.
There are so many ways to learn these days, for some things, the classroom just isn’t the place. Museums around the country already have great learning centres. The government could subsidise entry fees for children. This would put more specialist teachers in the place they are better able to do their job! Historians to artists to engineers! This would mean children are being taught by people who KNOW. How many times has a teacher been given a topic and had to do a crash course on Wikipedia and a mind palace search to know what to teach? Any well meaning parent could do that. Children would Probably get a much better breadth of education as each teacher they come across will be a specialist. And for those who don’t drive, travel vouchers can be offered to help children get about.
Yes, children enjoy learning together, and in learning centres and science centres around the country, they will! We are already geared up to ensure children don’t fall behind.
If parents choose not to do this or any of these options, then they will be left alone provided they satisfy a teacher once a year that their child can read and write and isnt on the Child protection officer’s list. But if they choose not to do these things and problems arise, they could be required to send their children to learning hubs or learning centres and have attendance required by law within a given time. That way all the parent has to do is take them to places the government know they will get opportunity to learn and be sociable at, and it fulfills it’s requirement to get it right for every child, no?
Schools already have pathways and planning in place to give to parents. They don’t need to be added to, there are so many websites offering tutoring and ideas. So many teaching websites offering cheap subscriptions. Parents can get as much or as little help as they need. Teachers and daycare staff need only step in if yearly check ins see a child is not making progress it needs or showing skills they expect.
The only gap I think left there, is parents who aren’t academically able to educate their child to the expectations of second level or ks2 in math and literacy. Learning and teaching courses for basic math and lit could be free to access. The adults learn too. Yes they might not be the best writers or mathematician otherwise they wouldn’t need the course. But they could support up to a 10 year olds understanding, with some hard work and dilegence and leave the rest to the high school teachers. And if they choose not to? Shouldn’t have had kids then and shouldn’t be allowed to have any more.
Im not saying there will be draconion laws in place. The same stance as we currently have, will continue, educators will be encouraged to build good relationships with parents. Many of them want to! We would remove Ofsted. They wouldn’t be needed. Child protection working with teaching and social workers in learning centres would save money and time. Parents would be helped if there were problems, not punished. Learning opportunities already available just need to be free and the money saved from closing half the schools and managing child behaviour better would pay for that.
Teachers would still have jobs, just different ones. With a large element down to teaching adults how to teach. Those who just want to teach children can go to private schools, which undoubtedly would swell at first until parents see university places handed to home schooled kids over private school kids. Or they could go to day care centres and have fun. Daycare wouldn’t be free full time, though. Everyone would be entitled to 12 hours childcare a week to allow parents time off. If they wanted more, they could pay more.
Come on, this is a chance for changes like this to be reality. Covid19 has already upset the applecart..
FaerieFalls 