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Teachers must inspire children to be curious, creative: Experts
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Pencil and paper at the ready: An illustration of in-class teaching (Shutterstock/Sensay)
E
ducation should follow developments in the world and teachers, as the catalyst of change in the education system, must follow their passion, in turn inspiring students to be curious and creative in navigating the future, education experts have said.
This could also help children engage with lessons, even in a remote learning environment during the pandemic, they added.
They were speaking in the annual forum hosted by Highscope Indonesia Institute – a part of the Highscope Indonesia school network -- last week, during which, teachers and school workers discussed and shared their experiences.
“As educators, it is our responsibility to support a self-made generation who uses their hearts and minds to solve the world’s problems,” founder and Highscope Indonesia CEO Antarina SF Amir said in her opening speech, as quoted from a press release. “It is our responsibility to teach our children, our students, to take action to contribute to the world community.”
Speakers in the forum included globally recognized experts like education specialist Tony Wagner, who said that traditional methods of schooling and the ways teachers taught students to be creative problem solvers often contradicted one another.
Schools, he said, tended to nurture the culture of compliance and focus on the mistakes the students had made. This, he said, caused fear of making mistakes, while innovation demands people to take initiative, question authority, take risks and make mistakes.
“The whole idea is to measure a student's progress towards mastery over time. If they were not yet at a standard that I have defined, their work was incomplete. They have not failed,” Wagner said.
Yong Zhao, American educator and the author of World Class Learners, said on the second day of the conference that there was too much teaching but not enough learning nowadays.
“For example, you may force children to remember a math function, a formula, or a historical fact, but the more you force children to remember that, the more they hate the subject, the more they get disengaged from school,” he said.
“Why do you want to do that? You want to keep children engaged, you want to keep children curious, you want to keep children creative.”
More than 500 Highscope teachers and school workers from different provinces and international guests joined the conference this year, the second time the conference has been held virtually during the pandemic. (ipa)
