Teaching children how to learn helps them identify their interests and preferred learning styles, enabling them to become the best versions of themselves. If education’s goal is transformation, then such considerations are essential.
In education as a whole, strategy plays an unimaginably significant role. This entails strategy not only in teaching but also in the entire process of adjudging the needs, discerning educational topics and materials, in the delivery process, and in the receiving process on the side of learners.
The educational cycle feeds itself and builds on the work done in the preceding cycle. The educational needs are the societal problems, the gaps needing solution; yet to attain these, a certain amount of groundwork is needed as a foundation; hence, we have curricula to guide the whole formal process.
The delivery of knowledge to learners is not the final stage of the process, nor are the grades the learners get. After learning, there is assessment, constructive feedback, reflection, application (in context), and adaptation of the content and the preparation process. Educationists call this the teaching and learning cycle.
Despising an appropriate strategy in any of these sections irreparably affects the productivity of the whole chain, regardless of the quality of work or output in the unaffected sections of the chain. As such, we can say that education is, by its very form, content, and function, ‘a chain reaction’, contingent on the indispensable interdependence of all players in the process.
For most learners, being educated at school is about memorising. Why? Because that is how the system orients them to see education. Most learners view schooling as a reward system and themselves as heroes, depending on how high up the reward ladder they are ranked. One is not considered smart, creative, or intelligent unless the grading system says so! All creativity and innovativeness have to be shrunk to fit into the demands of the spoon-feeding system, which, unfortunately, kills many dreams and talents.
The question is whether learners are taught how to learn. We cannot just presume that people, especially young people, know how to learn academically. Learning goes beyond reading and understanding books.
Learning is a process of integration, like putting together puzzle pieces until the whole picture makes sense. True learning sparks curiosity and stimulates the desire to keep exploring. This is only possible if learners are helped to first discover their areas of interest, not just their areas of performance.
A child may perform better in a subject they have no interest in simply because they like the teacher, but that interest evaporates when the teacher is changed. The most outstanding ground for one’s interest is what they naturally feel curious about. There is no harm in exposing them to many options before making them express freely what they like to engage in, mostly in academics.
A learning process that does not involve the learner’s consent and feelings has a higher chance of achieving little or nothing by either producing uninterested experts who only do their jobs to earn a living, as what they do was never their passion. Teaching children how to learn helps them identify their interests and preferred learning styles, enabling them to become the best versions of themselves. If the goal of education is to make people the best versions of themselves, then these considerations are of paramount importance.
It is equally important to consider that times have changed, even if much of what is taught remains the same. Worth considering is the fact that globally, the education system is handling young people who have a very different exposure, given the facility of technology, demographics, labour market demands and dynamics, and the fast-paced globalisation, among others.
These factors affect the way they view education and its entire process, and even the questions they ask are different compared to questions asked by learners of the same levels 30 years ago. The sooner we come to terms with this fact and are considerate of their worldview, the better chance we have of making education functionally relevant to them.
The education system should be a means of transformation, not just a pipeline where people pass through with changed credentials yet remain untransformed. In Tanzania, where 77 per cent of the population (about 47.5 million people) is under 35, education is the best legacy we can give them and the next generations, especially considering that the majority of the nationals are marginally represented in the national policy-making roundtables.
This group is by far a ‘surviving’ group, with most of them not having life figured out due to unemployment and other systemic shortcomings beyond their control. It is a testimony to poor planning, given that statistics obtained every year could have been used for comprehensive predictions and plans in anticipation of the problems we have now. If this had been done, we would be much further than we are, as we have a surplus of workforce in the young people of this nation. To improve the quality of our education, we need well-articulated strategies which prioritise the role of learners, not just instructors.
Shimbo Pastory is an advocate for positive social transformation and a student of the Loyola School of Theology, Ateneo de Manila University, Philippines. Website: www.shimbopastory.com
