Education is hard.
Creating a learning process where you transfer experience to one person to an other is no trivial task.
If it was, learning would be more like this
But, since it is not, we will have to find other ways to go about it.
Here are some interesting approaches, I have stumbled upon, which are really worth having a look at:
Mike Fairclough - the badass
The guy is headmaster of the West Rise School.
He is a kind of a mix between Davy Crockett and Albus Dumbledore.
He runs a primary school in Eastbourne in the UK.
Over there, kids are learning to skin a rabbit or make a campfire or shot guns.
Better I let you watch :
So obviously, not everybody will want their kids to learn those kind of skills.
(However, I am pretty sure all kids would dream to have these kind of activities at school)
In any case, it is a good demonstration that schools can accommodate other ways to teach.
And a big part of responsibility for the change depends on the good will and the skills of teachers and the leadership of the administration.
Studio school - let’s get real
For everyone who ever complained schools don’t remotely provide an environment to prepare students for work - as in - work in the real world - here is an approach that is exactly trying to do that.
The studio school brings school closer to the reality of a company by organizing the entire school around projects and cross-disciplinary teams.
The effort was initiated by Geoff Mulgan, a couple of years ago, and it is slowly catching up, you can find Studio schools nearly all across the UK and if you have 6 min, I’d rather have you watch the video than me writing about it.
Mike Row - Dirty Jobs
The third guy is living in the US, and the story is a bit different because it is not about what you do in the school but what you do after school and how much is school responsible for that or not.
First, it is important to state that Mike Row is kind of a celebrity in the US, or at least, pretty well known, he has run 8 series of a show on the Discovery channel called Dirty Jobs where he does all kind of blue collar jobs. Now, if like me, you don’t live in the US he is probably not someone you have heard about before.
However, whether you know him or not, doesn’t matter much because the following 40 min is quite an interesting dig into his philosophy on learning, life and education, and not really the kind of thing that is featured on Discovery channel where they have him deal with a lot bullshit (quite literally)
What to take from this
First, I think we can take one thing : it is ok to do things differently you can still do some pretty amazing things.
Second, eating shit and taking risk is a great way to learn. Especially within a safe framework like school where you can ensure no one get hurt for real along the way.
Third, if you are not mainstream, people will love you or hate you but it will take time before they will follow you, it’s just easier for them to simply judge you.
Last point, the crowd doesn’t matter, you do it for the people who benefit from your work and that is what really matter