Dave McLeod’s challenge to all teachers
5:06 pm on the 24th of January, 2008Dave McLeod, amazing rock climber and fairly prolific blogger writes this today: I hated school:
Before I found a focus, I was in the same situation as many kids. I went to school and sat in classes where teachers spent a big proportion of the time keeping order and not developing interest. I didn’t enjoy it, and even as a kid I could recognise there was much time being wasted.
Once I started climbing, and began skipping school, I was the opposite from a draw on resources. I learned by myself, eagerly.
…
The solution for teachers? Find a way to communicate the power of the ideas, rather than force feed the detail of a world youngsters can’t connect easily to. It is possible, even within the constraints of ‘the system’. If you don’t dig deeper to find a way to achieve it, who will?
He makes it all sound so easy! Real learning becomes happens when there is a meaning to the information you are getting, so if you can find something that you love doing then chances are there are all sorts of things you need to learn about to enable you to do it better. The thing you love becomes the way of creating meaning around discrete pieces dry information. Like Dave says, it stops being a chore and becomes just something that you do, something that you want to keep doing. The challenge for a learner is to find that hook, the challenge for teachers is to find 20/30/60… of those hooks!
Tags: dave-mcleod, deep-learning, i-hated-school, learning
January 25th, 2008 at 11:42 am on the 25th of January, 2008
eeeerrrrr………. what about the huge number of people who have been highly influenced / inspired by a teacher?
He IS hugely challanging but it is down to right people at right times and the right circumstances.
He may not have been ready to learn. The environment may not have been right, Stifling the creativity of the teachers involved. Some of those same teachers WILL have influenced his class mates.
I had an Art teacher who inspired loads of my class mates but his arrogant style left me completely cold and it was only in the early 30’s did I really start to get the Artistic/ creative process.
I also think that its actually a good thing that he ‘discovered’ for myself. How many times, when you were a teenager, have you been told by an adult ‘You’ll really like this’? And how many times has that actually stopped you liking it just becuase you were a teenager?
Trackbacks/Pings
Leave a Reply