Personal Blogs

My personal view of education is that it should prepare students for the future and their adult life, while also allowing them to flourish and develop as individuals in the best way possible, to become valuable local citizens but to also appreciate global issues.  I feel that too much emphasis is placed on ensuring that students pass exams and get the best results possible which seems to me to be more about the school and their position in league tables than for the benefit of the students. 

The UK government even publish individual school results on their https://www.compare-school-performance.service.gov.uk website, pitting individual schools against each other on a performance basis, and league tables of results are seen every year in newspapers and websites showing how well or poorly educational establishments function in the currently practised human capital system with the traditional propositional type of education, where teachers pass on facts to the students which they are then expected to commit to memory.  I think that more emphasis should be put on the well-being of students though and a broader education which, not only concentrates on the academic side of education, but also on the vocational side and individual student interests.  This reflects a more empiricist attitude to education aligning itself with Sterling (2001) and Bunting's (2004) self-fulfilment view of schooling. 

The four aims of schooling outlined by Sterling (2001) and Bunting (2004) make a lot of sense to me, socialisation helps students interact with each other and encourages them to work in teams or groups which is good experience for their future employment and community citizenship.  Vocational skills are necessary because the ultimate aim is still to achieve employment at the end of the education period.  Self-fulfilment encourages students to develop as individuals and be the best they can be in the areas that they value the most and Transformative enables equality in education and improving the planet which is of paramount importance to enable successful future generations. 

I feel that I would align myself with the sociocultural approach where knowledge is gained through experiences, both individually and socially.  This, to me, reflects what is required for life in general where people exist naturally in groups of education, employment and community.  Working together to secure a better future for everyone on the planet, learning by experiencing outcomes to decisions made and being totally involved in the direction of their own learning seems, to me, to be a very good way forward for education. 

References

Bunting, A. (2004) ‘Secondary school design for purpose – but which one?’ OECD Conference: Creating 21 Century Learning Environments, London, 28 May [Online], Available at http://www.oecd.org/education/innovation-education/21stcenturylearningenvironments.htm (Accessed 10 December 2018).

Sterling, S. (2001) Sustainable Education: Re-Visioning Learning and Change. Foxhole, Dartington, Green Books.