The first educational myth

The first myth:                When the teacher speaks in an interesting och captivating way all the thirty pupils will learn what the teacher planned them to do in the lesson.

1                                       When the teacher speaks in an interesting och captivating way never all the thirty pupils will learn what the teacher planned them to do in the lesson.

This form of education has been in focus for thousands of years. It all started when all the education was in lectures, or, in the best case, in form of dialogues (with att least two active people). I call it Plato and his disciples, because I don´t know the names of the persons who taught him the method.

When the teacher died, he left behind, at the best, some disciples, who could keep on tell about his ideas and explain, all in their own personal way from the master’s words.

The schools, and the philosophical directions in them, flattered here and there, like the Swedish schools, when the politicians forced them.

After many years, they started to write and read, and even later they printed books, to better control the directions of the thinking.

Education was during ancient Greece only something for the rich and upper classes. Of course, there were a lot of other education in the society, mostly coming with your work or daily life. Knowledge was going from father to son and mother to daughter, and, in some good cases in all directions across.

In the 18^th century the king of Sweden got a great idea. He ordered the church to teach all the poor people to learn to write and read, for better religious understanding. In focus was reading the bible and following of the worships on the Sundays better. 

The priests directly invented the Carrot method. There were no schools and priests didn´t want to spend all the time working with education of the poor.

Instead they put in a reading test into the yearly religious test when the priest visited the farmers house. The priest kept book of all the results in the tests and told all children and adults the situation. To be able to make their religious exam, the confirmation of their belief, they must be able to read the bible. And with signed papers of the confirmation, they later were allowed to marry! Or the other way told, no reading, no marriage!

In a very short time most of the Swedish population were writing and reading on a basic level. And all this without any educational work done through the society at all! It´s easy to imagine all the loving couples working hard on learning writing and reading.

The conclusions of the bright work of the priests are guilty even today.  

All spoken languages, called your mother´s tongue, or, if you learn them later on, called foreign language, are learned och fulfilled through the communication with other people around you. All living persons are from time before birth ready for that task, and it will work all your life, as long you hear and think.

All children, and normally all ex children, are receptive for what they see as important around them and focus on learning it. Sometimes you see even new things coming up and make all people focus on it for short time, like a fad or craze.

Not even the risk of being killed stop children from learning, what they see as important.

It is sad that the human brain still is not prepared enough for learning write and read. We have to tweak and fix with the brain to get it working in the best manners. Add to that, that all our brains are different and that some are learning better in one way and others in another. If now the master uses one method for all his disciples, and to that many too many disciples gather around him, to save money, it´s not working out so good sometimes.

The way the priests turned the educational situation, because they wanted to avoid the situation of spending most of their time sitting and helping the poor people, was ingenious in many ways.

The responsibility was put to them who always ought to be responsible, yourself. The church kept the control. By the controls in the farmer’s houses, they confirmed the good reading and made clear which were ready for confirmation. Most kids were ready for confirmation in very early years, but had to wait for the right age.

The methods the poor people used differed surely. Advices were given by the priests and all others, who already knew how to write and read. But no matter which method they used, the priest method the Carrot method worked out good.

Around 1850 Sweden got the common school for all children, but in the beginning the real educated teachers didn´t reach the results of the church.

Still today much of the education system is based on the method Plato and his disciples. Today it comes with something they call marks. Sometimes as they think it combines Plato and his disciples with the Carrot Method. But it doesn´t work that way. Why is told in others of my text.

Learning material, especially books, are produced for the method of Plato and his disciples. The teacher training schools employ pedagogues and didactics, who all show up good personal efforts with the method and all teachers are trained with the method. It´s not odd that school governments are full of believers and that the politician decide plans based on the method.

Most things have changed since the caves and the first towns. But the educational method survives. Is it optimal? Is it the most effective? Does it go with what we know of how we learn?

Imagine the horrible situation that pupils lie on the floor and the teacher is all the time hard walking over their backs, all the time repeating his mantras like “Thought is spelled T H O U G H T, thought is spelled T H O U G H T, …” and after a month a test shows that actually 17,2 % of the pupils know how to spell the word thought. Is this education or just illegal assault?

The bad conformity between what is happening in a classroom and how learning really goes on has been known for so long time. The first protests were written already in the 18^th century. As a young teacher in the beginning of 1970, I already had read about most of the facts I base my texts on. In Sweden, magazines like KRUT, and even analyses from the governments controls, showed the need for change.

Rather often the teachers themselves were target for criticism of bad methods. But those forming the critics, very often proposed bad solutions, because they lacked knowledge about how learning really is done in detail. Later years research of the brain make the way everything works clear. But still inadequate claims do much harm in the schools.

One important thing that is missing is an effective evaluation and an analysis of the learning from the pupils. The inside evaluation is important for development. We mostly evaluate from the outside. Also, we need good systems for rapid distribution of all the inside evaluations we get, so that they gain other schools and students. Today the evaluation process is mostly vertical, from the teachers to the governments, and maybe back.

Of course, it matters how the performance work out when a speech is coming to us. Persons like Hans Rosling can catch our interest for much longer time with their developed technic and convincing performance. And we learn more thereby.

Still it´s a useful form in connection with other more active parts. But very rarely the person in front of you is as good prepared as Hans Rosling, and they don´t have his many co-workers to produce the performance, not his advanced computer programs och the advanced film technic.

In many way’s these lectures are educational mistakes. For how long do we keep up our attention? Are we talking listening live, this is the most important question. A lecture over the net or in a downloaded video or streamed video, can always be stopped or repeated, when needed.

In the future, the governments and the parliaments will understand that lectures of very high class, like those around Hans Rosling, even if the costs are very high for production, are extremely cheap. It´s always to a higher cost you buy something that doesn´t work.

But here you can share the costs and produce together all over the world. You only need to change the voice of Hans Rosling and others to any language you need and maybe change some used text. The same program can be used a million times every day and still be used after a very long period.

Lectures are not dead, but Plato is. To base learning only on lectures is stone age.

How long do we manage to focus on what we hear? It differs from person to person, the actual situation and many other things. But normally something between two and at the most ten minutes. How long are the lectures? Well, you know some for sure. Watch the lectures on YouTube and TED lectures. They are payed for some time and they deliver!

Much of the problem with education is about to decide what we are supposed to learn. Some people still think, that it is important to know a lot of hymns by heart. I agree, as long you often visit ceremonies. Else it doesn´t matter.

Most pupils in Swedish schools learn too little practical things in most subjects and many of them leave the school believing that they are no good. The most important thing for the school is to show the pupils and the students, that they are doing good and that they are going to manage everything!

At last, how do we really learn? Well, it depends on what we are supposed to learn. It differs with the subject. Some things we learn without education, just being a part of the surrounding. Like to master standing and walking. Others we never learn, because we never got the chance or didn´t take it. Many things need a lot of practice, like cycling, driving a car or flying a plane.

We learn in different ways, though most times some ways are more effective. Let pupils and teachers together shape more effective forms! Borrow the evaluation from LEAN.

Sometimes no real learning is done at all in the school. Much of the learning of foreign languages is of that kind. See other of my texts!

Always when pupils didn´t reach the results we expected and wanted from them, this was not a result of lacking possibilities by the pupils. By giving them different declared letters, we´re supposed to believe the problem is in their brains or their behaviour. But real life shows us something else. Normally the problems are to find in wrong or bad fulfilled methods and support, or simply mistreatment of them. Children deserves love and support for lifetime.

Speaking about lectures, I would never go with a driver, who by watching cars in the traffic and visiting a lecture about driving, is presented with a driver’s license.

Goa the 1st of February 2017         Lennart Warenius