MoodleCentral Vision Statement Preamble
For most of my life I have been involved in business even though I became qualified as a secondary teacher in 1981 in the State of New South Wales Australia. Unlike most of my teaching colleagues my life has not been entirely based on education. This provides some perspective.
I began to use my teaching credentials in 2001 and it became obvious to me soon after that education is far more about the administration of education than it is about teaching and learning. The education system is a massive delivery system with subject matter the content being delivered. What a student learns is almost a secondary consideration.
I have long held the view that if a student finished secondary school with a good education its because that student went out and got one not necessarily because it was delivered.
Back in my early days of teaching fresh from the business world I would ask colleagues “What is the function of this school?” The most frequent response was that we teach students. This is still the most frequent response if I ask that same question today. Back then as now I would say that teaching is a process within the function of the school and that schools have one function and that is To prepare Students for Life Beyond School and then I would ask if you keep that in mind is what you’re doing in class fulfilling that function? The answer to that I will leave to you as it is something you can ask yourself .
If you subscribe to my perspective then you would appreciate that a student arriving at the end of their secondary school career without a clue as to what is next is a huge problem. This is most common in my experience and demonstrates that the current system is not enough.
What if we could engage students by making their time at school relevant to their future career path without fundamentally changing what already happens at school?
Keith Morton