Schooling

Children are forced to go to schools that are divided into PRIMARY and SECONDARY.  The Scots started this in the 1600s.  There is a clear-cut division between one and the other.

Primary school teachers have to be expert in teaching children how to learn and they do this by using a large number of subjects or key learning areas or whatever one likes to call them.  Each teacher covers a very wide range of key learning areas and is personally responsible for the progress of each child in the same social group all day, every day for a full school year.  It is an enormous responsibility.  To cope, each has to be adept at using a wide variety of teaching strategies that suit the circumstances.

Secondary teachers specialise in areas of interest that somebody or other decides should be learned.  They do this by maintaining the vision that their pupils will exit the school system as potential students, ready to follow particular interests that have a vocational bent.  Most ‘subjects’ are seen or should be seen to contribute to the quality of each citizen’s future in some way or other.  When schooling is finished, tertiary institutions and work experiences take over to provide emerging students with access to sources for further learning.

Futurists now tell us that a person who undertakes a four year tertiary course will find that most of the material learned in the first year will become useless by the third.

How do we know what subjects will be useful for them at school?  It used to be clear when the Universities set the boundaries and vocations were clear-cut

DID YOU KNOW?

[Extracted from …http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL9Wv2kWwSY]

The top ten jobs in highest demand in 2009 did not exist in 2004.

‘We must prepare for jobs that do not exist, using technologies that have yet to be invented.’

US Dept. of Labour predicts that today’s workforce will have 10-14 jobs by the age of 38.

1 in 4 has been in present occupation for less than a year.

1 in 5 has been in present occupation for less than 5 years.

‘We live in exponential times.’

31 billion search for information on Google every month. In 2006, 2.7 billion searched.

Where did they search before Google?

The number of text messages sent and received every day exceeds the total population of the planet.

In 1984 there were 1000 internet devices; 1992 : 1 million; 2008 : 1 billion.

There are approximately 540,000 words in the English language …..5 times more than there were in the time of Shakespeare.

The New York Times distributes more information in a week than was available in a lifetime in the 18th century.

Looks like our pupils will have to learn how to learn….this above all.

By the end of schooling, pupils will want to become keen students with idiosyncratic learning styles.  If they are fortunate, they will be well on the way to mastering LEARNACY
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