Education from the heart
Professor Tan Sri Dato' Dzulkifli Abdul Razak
Learning Curve: Perspective
New Sunday Times - November 15, 2015
“STUDENTS do not attend schools because of economic competitiveness.” So said author and innovation specialist Charles Leadbeater of the United Kingdom in his presentation on “Learning to Make a Difference” at the recent LeapEd Summit in Kuala Lumpur. He added that we may hit the target but miss the point, especially in matters related to education, if learning is not properly structured and delivered.
A number of “false dichotomies” can derail education strategies including: traditional versus progressive, content versus competency, knowledge versus creativity, test-results versus well-being and incrementalism versus innovation.
This has often caused a dilemma of “either-or” rather than “and” or a “combination” thereof to be appropriately balanced and applied.
The Summit, attended by more than 400 participants from various interested parties, including the Education Ministry, focused attention on the “test-results versus well-being” nexus. To date, the former is dominant as the so-called Key Performance Indicators, overshadowing the latter for a long time.
As a result “education” is skewed towards a narrow mindset, measured against a limited criteria.
Another prominent speaker, UNESCO Chair Charles Hopkins of University of York, Canada, quoted United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon as saying that the aim of education is to prepare students for life, not examinations alone.
This means that the conventional educational “core” of literacy, numeracy, science, social studies and arts is no longer sufficient.
There is an urgent need to direct or re-orientate skills and vocational preparations towards collective rather than individual well-being alone.
Following this is a “sense of coherence” ranging from comprehensibility of life to its manageability that has to be considered, buttressed by “meaningfulness”, “higher purpose” and “serving others” leading to “sustainable well-being”.
Hopkins said that this is in line with the understanding borne out of a conference at Aichi-Nagoya, Japan last November that highlighted the importance of reviewing the purpose that underpins education in interpreting Education for Sustainable Development .
In a nutshell, the aspects of “well-being” with respect to “test-results” must be given due emphasis in the 21st century education that is built upon four pillars: learning to do, learning to know, learning to live together and learning to be.
The conventional “core” of education fulfils the first two pillars, whereas the remaining two must take into account the “sense of coherence”.
In other words, the issue is not about the lack of knowledge per se but rather the lack of wisdom and the overarching understanding for intergenerational well-being when it comes to ascertaining the more meaningful outcomes of education systems.
The sub-theme of the conference, Enriching the Learning Experience, made a visible impact through a TED-talk-like format where Trust School Programme teachers and partners shared their experiences from the heart.
Each presentation provided ample examples of how “well-being” — individual or collective — were enshrined in their work to achieve the desired outcome, without overly concerned with numbers, figures and percentages, as is normally the case.
It is a clear indication that the false dichotomy of “test-results versus well-being” can be justifiably managed without jeopardising the latter. The current belief of “what gets measured gets done” must be revisited and taken off the mental pedestal.
It is instructive to reflect on the experiences of Bhutan when it advanced the idea of National Index of Happiness (NIH) while the world is mentally stuck with economic indices.
Based on the belief that happiness cannot be measured, the NIH was marginalised globally.
The dominant thinking is economic prosperity is deemed a sure way to “buy” happiness.
Now we know that this in indeed a fallacy, where happiness does not necessarily correlate to economic advances. In fact, the reverse is often the case.
The time has come to dwell on the best way to “describe” the meaning and purpose(s) of education, given the global theme on sustainability as a framework for shaping the future we want.
With the launch of Sustainable Development Goals targeted for the next 15 years until 2030, we are expected to re-orientate the existing education systems to ensure greater access, retention and success as fundamental human rights.
The Trust School Programme has begun in earnest in making this a reality as witnessed at the conference.
Kudos to those who took this courageous step forward — beyond economic competitiveness — for the sake of the future generation.