Learn. Unlearn. Relearn.

‘You don’t have to come,’ said Adrian.
‘What? Miss parents’ evening?’ Frowning. How can you have a parents’ “evening” at 3pm?
‘Well, you’re cold and you’re not well.  You don’t have to come. James won’t mind.’
‘I’d mind,’ I replied.  ‘Anyhow, I’ll be warmer in the car than here and, besides, I’m getting better.’

And I was. Mind over matter and a gut-load of weirdness was sorting me out. Sort of.

So he dropped me at the health store so I could stock up on more potions and then we trip-trapped into school, into the auditorium. Now, put me in a theatre seat and I have a nigh-on instant Pavlovian response: my eyelids droop, my head nods (legacy of my theatre reviewing days I suspect).
But then a few words and phrases broke through my dozy reverie and I started paying attention.

‘Everything’s changing,’ said the Director of Studies. ‘And so education has to change too.’ I’m paraphrasing wildly here: she was far more eloquent. But the gist was that it’s no longer enough to learn ‘facts’, to get a firm ‘grip’ on a subject alone.  It’s not about being an encyclopaedia because that is, frankly, impossible as well as useless.  There is simply too much information out there and it’s growing exponentially. Children will need to become navigators, weaving their way. They will need to learn skills of elasticity, of discrimination; they will need to sift, to select, to choose wisely, to figure out what is truth and what is misinformation.  Hmm.

‘Learn. Unlearn. Relearn,’ she said, paraphrasing Alvin Toffler.

Then she said that, at this point in their lives (we’re talking age 12-13) they were, in effect, learning how to learn and learning how to approach life. The major skills the school hoped to impart were those of confidence, independent, discrimination and enquiry.  ‘We want them to become self-reflective,’ she said. ‘Self-critical, to dialogue without judgment.’ She really did say that, I scribbled it down.

Did that mean that a lot of the actual ‘meat’ of their current studies was, frankly, irrelevant?  She shrugged, eloquently. ‘Yes.’  Paused.  ‘But don’t tell them that.’

Interesting.  Learn. Unlearn. Relearn. 

Maybe we all need to be navigators, setting aside dull certainties (which don’t exist) and head into uncharted waters.

Dump ille, illa, illud.  Embrace qui quae quod?  And quomodo?

Be Wise, not Wo(o)den.

But really. What do you think? Does education need to shift? Do we just give children a foundation, a few building blocks? A compass (moral, philosophical?) and then gently push them out to sea, to see?