Now I'm not going to lie to you, I found yesterday's training session one of the toughest to deliver in a long time, their attention spans were low and also their behavior wasn't the best (I think being sat around tables like they were in a classroom defaulted them to classroom like behaviour, talking whilst other people were talking, not paying attention etc), certainly not what you would expect from employees, but they are young and new to the world of work so you can forgive them.
Effectively "teaching" them for the day though did make me think about the current state of education. Their ability to discuss abstract concepts and in fact to just discuss what they thought of something was severely limited, however when I gave them what was in effect a worksheet and they had to answer some clearly worded questions they had no issues.
All of these young people had finished at least basic education (GCSE's) although I don't think there is a hard and fast grade requirement to get onto the programme. However hardly any of them seemed to have critical thinking skills, or the ability to articulate their view on a subject and debate it with others. I should have thought that these were basic skills that should come about in education, however their ability to answer questions in written form when they were presented straight to them, I think tells us the problems with this government's approach to education.
For the last decade the solution to continued underperformance of schools and the education system has been to either target schools and pupils more thoroughly, leading to teaching to the test and the key being getting the right answer, or to suggest that young people need to be in formal academic education for longer. Either starting school earlier or finishing it later.
In the type of training I generally deliver the important thing isn't getting the answer, it is talking through with other people, engaging with others to hear their views and debating with them. The realisation moments are what's important, when someone challenges your opinion and you see things with a different set of eyes. When I was at school quite a lot of focus was put on showing your workings, that getting there was just as important as the result. At the time I thought this was stupid, if you got the wrong answer who cared if you got it by the right method, but now I see that this is actually very important.
In a modern world our complex problems can only be solved by complex solutions that involve creativity, and shared development. The issues of tomorrow and indeed today be they related to energy, technology, the internet or human interaction won't be solved by one person working through a work sheet answering clearly defined questions with clearly defined answers. They will be solved by teams collaborating, challenging each other searching for a solution to a problem that is ill defined and indistinct.
Sadly it seems that isn't how our education system prepares people, we read constantly of organisation's complaining that school leavers lack the basics and are not ready for the world of work, our universities complain about the lack of critical thinking in their intake students. In education the current goverenment has become obsessed with the idea that what you can measure is important and anything else is unimportant, they have forgotten or perhaps never heard Esinstein saying "“Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts”.
So what is the solution, education needs to be looked at thoroughly and with a new set of eyes, yes concentration on the basics is important, science, maths, english. These are vital skills fo the economy of tomorrow and not one of those in my training yesterday knew for example why ice floats, but they are not the only thing we need to concentrate on. Schools need to train students to think critically and to be able to debate and discuss ideas, not just come up with answers, and alongside this the obsessions with making everything academic needs to be dropped. Not all careers need to be academic, there is nothing stopping someone following academic study in a subject if they want to, but to make it compulsory for nurses to be degree level qualified or teachers to be educated to a master's level misses the point of education and what it is about.
