The Development of a Human Being

Hi there it's nice to be writing again,

Sorry I haven't written for a while a few things have changed for me recently.  For one I have taken a trip to Australia for a few months.  Here I have had the opportunity to meet with some excellent educators.  One subject that has come up a lot  since I have been here has been the development of the students character in school.

Although the development of character in schools is not a new subject it is one that is fraught with difficulties, differences of opinion and problems with measuring success. Overall with character, although it's something that everybody agrees is important, nobody has really devised a system to 'teach' it and achieve a great amount of success from it.

This is perhaps because the acquisition of character similar to acquiring a language cannot be achieved through 'teaching' but it must be discovered by the students themselves, assisted by the masterly facilitation of a skilled teacher or mentor.

With the learning of facts, one may choose to teach by giving the information or facilitate by providing the environment in which it can be learned. With the acquisition of character strengths however, the choice of telling somebody what they should think or feel is not there, it must be discovered.

Of course in talking about 'character strengths' we mustn't forget that what is strong or weak is a matter of perception and our perceptions are defined by the environment we come from (culture, DNA, upbringing etc.) and our own experiences. This being taken into consideration there are still many universal character strengths in which we can base our model of development on. Luckily a lot of work of researching the universal traits of character which are important in living a successful, happy and productive life has already been done.

Chris Peterson the co-author of 'Character Strengths and Virtues' adjusted a fairly long list of character strengths (as mentioned in Paul Tough's book 'How Children Succeed') and listed seven which he thought were particularly likely to predict life satisfaction and achievement. They were:

1. Grit
2. Self-Control
3. Zest
4. Social Intelligence
5. Optimism
6. Curiosity 

These were set out so teachers and curriculum developers in particular could use them as a model to base the competencies on for character development programs. Although they are obviously not the be all to end all they are never the less a good guide and a starting point in our quest to instill our students with strong, well rounded and beneficial character.

For a full list of character traits analysed by a research study of 117,676 adults from 54 nations by the university of Pennsylvania you can find the research report in the July 2006 Journal of Positive Psychology.

So all this leads us to the question, How can we transfer these character traits to our students in school? What the team at Geelong Grammar School has done is made sure to put all the teachers that come into their school through a two week intensive Positive Education course, not only to impart the skills of a facilitator but also to impart the skills of positive psychology onto the teachers themselves. This is because it is of course quite possible to imagine a student positively affected by a positive education program (excuse the pun) if the teacher themselves are living, breathing examples of positive psychology.

Positive Psychology as explained in Wikipedia is a branch of psychology which "...complements, with no intention to replace or ignore, the traditional areas of psychology. By adding an important emphasis to use the scientific method to study and determine positive human development." 

In short it is a branch of psychology immensely important and relevant for the teachers of today. Many say we are currently in a time of character crisis, where the instilled tried and tested values of tradition have been replaced by consumerism and the leadership of desire. Further more many concerned educators in Indonesia  have mentioned, the traditional values of the village have started to disintegrate, as the above influences and the influx of the population from rural areas to the city, have combined to make less and less room for the contemplation and implementation of character strengths.

What many fail to recognize is that in this time more than ever with all the turmoil our children are experiencing, that character strengths are really what are going to pull them through and give them the best chance in life. Studies have shown that it is not so much IQ or one-on-one tuition that determines a student's academic success, but it is character strengths. The same rings true in perhaps all areas of an individuals life.

If education is the preparation for life and we are educating our children for a future that we have no way of predicting, surely one of the greatest things we can help them achieve is strength of character!

I intend to write more articles on Positive Psychology in the coming months as I will be staying at Geelong Grammar School until the end of May. Hopefully I'll be able to participate in the implementation of more positive education programs in Indonesian schools after my return.

Until next time, keep shining sharing and succeeding.

Kindest regards,

-Hugh

Changing Education Paradigms

Recently the education board in Indonesia has been seriously talking about some mammoth changes for the 2013-2014 curriculum.

The changes are said to include removing English from the primary school curriculum. They say this is because they will replace it with a subject to improve attitude.

Now although I do not really know too much about the changes yet to comment on them here, the whole issue did get me thinking about a speech I heard from Sir Ken Robinson about Changing Education Paradigms. I feel the point of his speech can be summed up in a few words - we need to seriously question what we know about education itself, rather than making small changes to curriculum, standards and management we should be making big changes to our perceptions and pushing to make education what it truly should be. Those are my words, not his but a summary none the less.

His words are "we need to change the culture of our institutions, the habits of our institutions and the habitats they occupy".

So what should education be? I don't think we can fully answer that question before we take our first steps on our new journey, and to make a new journey in a better and more effective direction we need to first remove ourselves from our current path. But hasn't the path been working fine up until  now? I think we can all agree on the answer to that. This conversation about reforming education will never stop untill we first reform and refine our thinking on the matter.

Below is a RSAnimate video of the talk he gave in 2003 on Changing Education Paradigms. It is very easy to follow thanks to the illustrations even for a non-native English speaker.

It is well worth a watch! I've transcribed my notes below the video for those who prefer to read and for those who want to see my feelings on each issue. Enjoy! ^_^

Changing Education Paradigms

-A commentary of the speech made by Sir Ken Robinson

Any of my own feelings or opinions will be written in italic like this. The summary of the speech below is not quoted word by word but rephrased/written for easy reading. 

Around the world today there is a lot of talk about reforming education. According to Sir Robinson there are 2 reasons for this.

1. Economic: How do we educate our children to take part in the economies of the 21st century? Given that we can't anticipate what the economy will look like next week? As demonstrated by the recent economic turmoil.

2. Cultural: How do we give our children a sense of cultural identity while still teaching them how to thrive in the global village?

The problem is, schools and school boards are trying to meet the future by doing what they have done in the past and in the process they alienate millions of students.

In the past we were sold the notion that if we studied hard, did well and went to college we would get a good job. Our children don't believe that anymore and they are right not to. A college degree is good, but not a guarantee on a job anymore, especially if the route to it marginalizes most of the things you think are important.

Our education system now is still based on an enlightenment view on education and caters to the needs of the industrialization era.  This creates a certain perspective of education that although very useful in the past and a great step forward then, our perspectives need to be seriously revamped to keep up with the current era.

The prophet Muhammad SAW was said to of said "Teach people according to their era!"

There is an increase in Attention Deficit Problems with teens, mainly because of a lack of adaptability in the way we educate.

The arts are a victim of this mentality as they give an aesthetic experience. An aesthetic experience is when your senses are operating at their peak. When you are fully alive.

What we are prescribing for our children is an anesthetic experience. To hold their attention we are asking them to shut their senses off. What we should be doing is waking them up to what they have inside themselves.

We have a model of education based on the interests of industrialization and in the image of it (like a factory). Think about it!

• Schools still run with ringing bells
• Subjects are separated into different places and times
• We still educate children in batches, separating them into age groups (like the most important thing about them was their year of manufacture).

 There are many different children of the same age that learn in different ways. Some learn better in groups, some on their own, some in the morning, some in the afternoon.

It's all about 'conformity' and you can see this in the constant increase in standardized testing.

The above line is especially relevant in Indonesia!

Sir Ken Robinson suggests that we should go in the exact opposite direction. That's what he's talking about when he says ' a change in paradigms'.

Divergent Thinking

Divergent thinking is an essential capacity for creative thinking. Divergent thinking gets less with age and this surprisingly coincides with 'becoming more educated'.

This may be because amongst other things in school we are taught:

1. There is one right answer
2. It's in the back
3. Don't look or copy because that would be cheating (where outside school that's called collaboration) 

We have to think differently about human capacity. See that many of the concepts we have of education are myths (like the separation of academic and non-academic individuals). Realise that great learning happens in groups, collaboration is the stuff of growth.

If we atomize students and judge them separately we form a disjunction between them and their natural learning environment.

"We need to change the culture of our institutions, the habits of our institutions and the habitats they occupy."

To discuss this article and Sir Ken Robinson's ideas together please visit the CLT Facebook Page or leave a comment bellow!

Until next time, keep shining sharing and succeeding!

-Hugh