About Efficiency in Education

There’s no denying that an enormous portion of everything that is wrong with formal education, is the consequence of greed. Of individuals, corporations and/or governments who knowingly or out of ignorance made a marketplace out of one of our basic human rights.

Perhaps more subtly, but with equally disastrous impact, another aspect of the rules of economy penetrated education with tragic consequences: the search for efficiency and scaling.

The most substantial aspects of education were never about getting from A to B using the minimum resources possible, for crying out loud!

Schools have a singular array of stakeholders (parents, children, teachers), imposed regulations, restricted budgets. It is beyond obvious that educational institutions need to be managed efficiently. A retired school principal would consider the challenges of running a small company a side job.

Efficiency, though, was never the objective of teaching and learning. It is precisely in the inevitable detours in the journey from A to B that the opportunity for learning is maximised. It it is the zigzags and the obstacles that reveal to us the juiciest information, if we care to learn. About ourselves, and others, and who we are together,  and the world.

Consider the 21-century skills: a set of abilities that, together with traditional skills like literacy or math, will ensure our kids' success in the 21-century: Communication, Collaboration, Creativity and Critical Thinking.

How on earth are we to model, nourish and foster those skills in our students? We invented a system to "distribute" education better, and it seems now we must serve the system before we serve the true purpose of education  and our students themselves.

Human skills cook slow. They are taught human-to-human, they take time and they are not easy to scale or benchmark. We can make lesson plans, but a part of the plan is to leave room for our students' voices to be heard and developed, and for reflection and goal setting. Home and school environment are crucial to healthy human development, we know.

Schools must reconnect with their essential purpose of equipping their students with the tools necessary for them to realise their life purpose. Teachers must reconnect with the dreams that brought them to the profession so that they can try to create in their classrooms, the world they aspire to build. Home and school must stop the competition and blame-laying,  and work in collaboration towards raising grounded children and building strong communities.

All of the above is a shortcut -if not the only path- to sustainability, and an increase of individual and collective wellbeing. The only starting point possible is individual effort, and the scaling will happen when enough members of my generation venture out of their comfort zones.

If all of us raised up to the challenge of being deliberate role models for our young ones and decided to live up to our ideals and dreams, we might be able to cause a true education revolution without even a hint of school reform.

Wouldn't that be efficient?