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I heard a joke a long time ago. A math teacher meets his former student and asks him: “So, Lesha, did your math skills come in handy in life? You were the best student in your class, weren’t you? He replies: “Yes, of course, Vladimir Petrovich. One day after the rain I was walking down the street. Suddenly a very strong wind came up, and my hat was blown right into a puddle. So what do you think I did? I found a wire, bent it into the shape of an integral and pulled out my hat.
Each of us has wondered why we learned so much in school, if the knowledge gained is forgotten in a couple of months after graduation?
For example, how many people can define “valence” or “logarithm”? Do you remember in what classes you studied Fermat’s theorem? What does the law of electromagnetic induction say? What year was the Battle of the Ice?
About 150 years ago, as a result of mass industrialization, there was an urgent need to train workers, technicians and engineers – professionals of different specialties – for many new enterprises. An active labor force with a certain level of education was required. Throughout the twentieth century, schools adjusted to the needs of industrialization.
But the world has changed, and the model of schooling, as it was in the mid-nineteenth century, remains the same.
The global coronavirus epidemic has suddenly pushed the education system into a long overdue reform. With social distance, learning all over the world has moved from the school to the Internet. In just a few weeks of quarantine, the virtual learning model became familiar. Going back to school already seems like a relic of the past. Today’s kids hate school because they can’t sit in classrooms for long hours. Their perception has changed under the onslaught of gadgets. They are bored. And teachers suffer from the uncontrollability of children, can’t convey knowledge well, and also begin to hate their jobs.
What is the teacher’s role in virtual learning?
Modern online learning platforms no longer require a teacher. Computer programs are capable of both assessing a student’s level of knowledge and providing the necessary lecture material and practical assignments to move to the next level. So is the teaching profession a thing of the past?
The very concept of “school” – in the Greek “schola” – translates as “leisure, recreation, idleness. Teenagers gathered together with their mentors and socialized, mused, learned about the world, played, and created. If we could transport our children by time machine to ancient Greece, it would be much more comfortable and interesting for them to study there. Why not apply this approach to today’s school?
We call great teachers those who were educators and mentors to students, but not transmitters of information and managers of the educational process.
School is a place of free development
An integral world requires radically different approaches to education. A child’s future depends not on the quality of education and the amount of knowledge, but on the ability to find his or her place in society. Hence the new demands on the teaching profession.
He must be a mentor who helps his students perceive the world around them correctly and develop an integral connection within them.
With virtual learning, children will not come to school for the usual lessons, and it will become a place of free creative development, where everyone can realize their abilities and get the skills they need for life. To fantasize, to play, to invent, to communicate together – that’s what school is for.
Children should go on excursions, to museums, to businesses, to hospitals, to learn about nature and society through experience and direct contact. Creating a friendly environment that continually encourages each child to learn about the world around them is an exciting task for life teachers, not individual subjects.
No one would be bored at such a school. Both children and their mentors will begin each new day with joy, knowing that they are really creating the future.
