If a Child can't learn the way we teach maybe we should teach the way they learn.

It is claimed that after two weeks  an ordinary person tends to remember:

10% of what they read

20% of what they hear

30% of what they see

50% of what they see and hear

70% of what they say

90% of what they say and do.

In 1974 Piaget wrote ‘The Future of Education’ in which he advises that ‘Instead of evaluating only from the angle of future scholastic success, in the sense of being a step in the ladder toward only one goal-the university-the school is responsible for discovering and developing the most diverse individual talents.’

The recommendation was that the traditional ways of teaching where students were passive recipients of information should cease.

In ‘Mindstorms’(1980) Seymour Papert, the father of educational computing , writes ‘Many children are held back in their learning because they have a model of learning in which you have either ‘got it’ or ‘got it wrong.’ But when you program a computer you almost never get it right the first time. Learning to be a master programmer is learning to become highly skilled at isolating and correcting bugs ... The question to ask about the program is not whether it is right or wrong, but if it is fixable. If this way of looking at intellectual products were generalized to how the larger culture thinks about knowledge and its acquisition we might all be less intimidated by our fears of ‘being wrong.’

Around the world today educational leaders, such as Graham Donaldson, champion the need for education to stimulate minds and consciences, whilst developing personalities.

At the beginning of the 21st Century in order to bring education into line with the needs of society, it has been necessary for  many countries to undertake  a complete revision of the methods and aims of education systems. It is exciting to read of the recommendations that all students will be more actively involved in their own learning and that constructivist teachers will replace the more traditional and conservative teachers.

In 1974 Piaget recommended a reorganization of education including specialized training and professional development of teachers in order to bring about changes in Education to meet with the recommendations of article 26 in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This seems, at first glance, no different from Donaldson’s recommendations in ‘Successful Futures’(2015).

One can only hope that each of us will be able to look back to the beginning of the 21st Century as the time when educational change was no longer just written about but it actually happened.

Postscript

And what of those students who are not ordinary?

After two weeks what do they remember?

If a child can’t learn the way we teach, maybe we should teach the way they learn.