Most young children are naturally curious and highly imaginative… after children have attended school for a while, they become more cautious and less innovative….Unfortunately it is necessary to conclude from the investigations of many scholars that our schools are the major culprits. Teachers, peers, and the educational system as a whole all diminish children’s urge to express their creative possibilities.

~Dacey & Lennon, 1998

It seems from the quote above, schools dull the minds of our children. To be sure, the demand for control is necessary in schools. Teachers cannot teach if the class is out of control. But then again I believe it is a problem only if we define control as conformity and obedience, which unfortunately, is all too often what is demanded in the classrooms.

Today, we prefer to call it “classroom management” or “class management”. It is not impossible to manage a class in a way that allows for students to show independence. I think one underutilized tool is to use reasoning. All too often that conformity and obedience is seen by students as just a disciplinary issue. Making an effort to reason with the students and coming to a common understanding with the students helps students to take responsibility for what happens in the class.

Taking responsibility implies a choice of options.  It involves decision-making practice. When students are given time and opportunities to make good decisions about their environment, there is less of a that feeling of having to always conform and be obedient to a higher authority, no matter how irrational the latter may seem to be. Besides getting them to discuss and come to a mutually agreeable decision, especially in a non-threatening environment, almost surely will bring about better compliance to whatever that has been agreed upon.

Teachers must be willing to engage their students in a dialog. A dialog would involve questions and answers. Such engagement will encourage students to speak and ask questions. It will not stifle their natural curiosity to question, probe, even test boundaries.

Another important reason why schools dull the minds of the young is the manner that teaching and learning is done. We know of studies which show that most of the questions asked in the classroom is asked by the teachers themselves. The teachers also answer most of their questions. This too depends on whether the teachers give students enough time to think about asking questions. The demands of high stakes testing or examinations usually mean that the “coverage” of the syllabus is foremost on the teachers minds.This usually mean traditional teacher talk (and question).

Furthermore, in such systems the only things that are worth teaching are what will be asked in the tests or examinations. How intellectually exciting and stimulating can this be? How do we fire up the neurons in the students brains so that they go whizzing at high speed if all they ever learn is what will appear in the examinations. Nothing explodes in their head. No “Aha! moment” except maybe “so that’s how you answer this question”. Exploration, experimenting, going off track are not encouraged. There is simply no time for all that. No time for meaningful questions. They are not measured anyway as required KPIs of schools. If they are not measured, then they are also deemed unimportant. Therefore, a move away from examinations or test oriented teaching will go a long way towards removing the clouds of dullness from the classrooms. Let curiosity be an important reason for learning again.

During the Vietnam War, the Americans used body counts, that is casualty figures for the enemy as an indicator of the success of their war against the North Vietnamese. Numbers are a convenient way to indicate success or failure of almost anything.

The problem is when those people who use such simple indicators begin to believe in that such numbers actually reflect reality. It is made worse when such indicators like body counts, is not used by your enemy as the indicator of a successful war. Ho Chi Minh once said of the French whom he had fought before the Americans, “You can kill ten of our men for every one we kill of yours. But even at those odds, you will lose and we will win.” Clearly Ho Chi Minh had a better idea of what is real. Body counts were never his measure of success.

Education today is facing its own Vietnam. Policy makers, school administrators and teachers have become obsessed with key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the success of educational programs. Instead of body counts, we have test scores as our KPIs. The figures from such KPIs have a life of their own. Once adopted, it becomes an article of faith in terms of its accuracy. It becomes hard to let go of such measures because they become dogma. It becomes hard to let go also because the faithful cannot see any other alternative. Right or wrong it is held on to with the fervent of the converted.

So test scores, drop out rates and international surveys becomes part of the liturgy of education today. Never mind if intelligence cannot be reduced to a test score. Never mind too if many pass through these KPIs undetected. What is important is that we think have a measure. Sadly as the Americans found out with the Tet Offensive, body counts don’t count. Will we have to experience our own Tet Offensive in education before we realise this?

At the core of true differentiated instruction is the creation of multiple paths to learning for students so that they all have equal and, more important, appropriate access to the course curriculum. Educators can develop these multiple paths by varying classroom instruction through content, processes, and product (King-Shaver & Hunter, 2003). ~ Quoted from “What Differentiated Instruction Is, and What It Most Certainly Is Not”, by Sarah Sacco, ASCD Express

Just sharing a video from ASCD on differentiated instruction. Click here to enjoy.