#wfe5
PROMPTS:
- In an ideal world, how do you think education should be organised?
- What priorities do you think it should reflect? and who should be responsible for ensuring that it is of a good quality?
- Is there anything from the padlet wall that has informed your position?(None)
According to Prof. Stephen Ball, Education has been previously organised according to time and space where learning happens synchronously at a pace dictated by the school and education authorities and this has been around since the Industrial Age. However, now that we have globally transitioned to the Conceptual or Knowledge-Age/ Economy where mobility is far easier, technology is becoming more ubiquitous and cheaper, more jobs are becoming automated, and education has become increasingly commoditised — this past organisation of education will not suit anymore, and has become less and less favoured particularly in developed nations. Unfortunately, this trend continues to be advantageous for such societies. Those nations who are challenged economically and technologically have fallen behind so much that the gap in-between is ever wider than before. This ongoing pandemic has, according to many analysts, exacerbated the problem even further. For developed nations then, organising education should be according to what is most convenient, accessible, and will expand their knowledge base as well as social networks for each person’s benefit. This is actually what is happening now.
The priorities for developing nations, on the other hand, is to set up societal structures — whether political, economic, social, scientific, or educational — that will be agile and responsive to people’s needs, especially the more basic ones (according to Maslowe’s hierarchy — including physiological and safety needs) so that the population can corporately move on to think about how to reach self-actualisation or optimise and become better versions of themselves. Education is actually privileged to help and contribute to all these hierarchy levels — for example some of the safety needs (i.e. education for health & mental well-being, increased opportunities for gainful employment, etc.) and even physiological needs (i.e. provision of food and clean water in schools, cheap uniforms, breaks in schedules for rest, etc). When these more basic needs are satisfied and fulfilled, then governments can start looking at how to catch up technologically with the rest of the developed world. To be realistic though, this has to happen simultaneously as much as possible otherwise, the gap may widen so much that it will be near-impossible to catch up. Technology and ensuing social transformations just advance by leaps and bounds that daily some type of technology is replaced or made obsolete by new ones.
Education especially in developing nations as mine should definitely prioritise access, equity and quality. Sadly, the recession brought by the ongoing pandemic has set back whatever gains has been achieved in the past few years. With regard to quality, parents should be the primary and best guardians to ensure their children get quality education, then again as discussed by Dr. Perryman in one of the course videos, not all parents are concerned for their children’s education. This sends a negative message to their child about the importance of education, which is not beneficial for anyone. As for Education at the national level/ or in public education, the responsibility for quality should really be a collaboration between all stakeholders that stand to profit from presenting quality content and delivery. Therefore, responsibility for this should include not only government but industry, neighbourhoods and communities, and students themselves whose voices must be heard in terms of what they think quality education is and whether they are receiving it.
