What if we allowed children to explore rather than to be educated?
Currently, ‘education’ is about passing tests.
These tests were constructed by the system to prepare cogs for the industrialised machine to enable the owners of the machine to know that the cogs are of a certain ‘acceptable’ standard.
Testing roots out the thinkers, the crazies, the creative, the curious and shapes all for a lifetime of compliance. After all, who wants anyone to question anything, certainly not what school is for.
What if we scrapped the tests and allowed children to explore, to be curious, to be ‘crazy’, to find their meaning or purpose and then assist them to do that? Freedom to allow their imagination to roam, to day dream, to just try things and allow the magic to unfold.
Just an idea and surely better than keep producing cogs for somebody else’s machine.
Philip Dodson 