Today I’ll be talking about a Boyinaband and you might be thinking “Hey,
Pablo, isn’t it “Boy In A Band”? Why did you write it all together?” Well, that
is because Boyinaband is the name of a YouTube channel which 8 months ago uploaded
a humongous controversial video called “Don’t stay in school”. I’m leaving the
video so you can watch it right away before reading my reaction to it. I don’t
want to influence you, so watch it and let your imagination run wild.
I saw this video a couple of weeks ago, in another YouTube channel
called “REACT” (which I highly recommend you). In that episode, The Fine Bros
(The owners of the channel) made Parents react to this video. I highly suggest
that you also watch it if you are interested. Their reactions give a clear
insight of how a parent sees education in general because they were students
and now they have children studying. The video of the reactions is the
following one:
I have to say that at first I thought “Okay, this dude is totally
right! I agree with every word he said” But when he uttered the final phrase “Don’t
stay in school” I said “Okay, let’s go back and analyse everything”. I
continued watching and what he preaches is that those “useless” subjects shouldn’t
stay in school, not that children should quit studying.
I’ve been in both sides as well, but in a different way; I was a
student (and I still am, we never finish studying, right?) and now I’m the
teacher. As a student, sometimes I
questioned the contents but secretly; I’ve always been a good student and I've never complained about anything (now I complain a lot in the Institute, LOL) but
you have to be a lot older and wiser to start thinking about the usefulness of
the contents we are taught. A recurrent joke between students is “What is the
purpose of learning equations, if we are not going to use equations when we go
to buy vegetables?” and they are totally correct about it; what is the use of
equations in real life? Why is it important to learn facts about our history or
to know the surface of the country? This is a very clear problem we as teachers
(and not only English teachers) have to face: “The meaningfulness of the
content we teach”. The video caused uproar because the message was misunderstood,
but at the same time it raised the question of what teachers are teaching and
how. Why are these contents becoming irrelevant in our society?
I think the answer to these questions lies in our actions. We have to ask
ourselves: “What is the purpose behind learning for example, present simple? The
teacher should give a clear purpose to EVERYTHING he/she teaches. Otherwise students do not know why they are learning that. But I also believe, as the
Boyinaband, that we, as a society, should revise the curriculum of schools.
What are we teaching? How are we teaching it? Why is it relevant? Students, and
speaking about adolescents, are not interested in learning about biology or
history. They are one step from going into this crazy world of social problems,
politics, having to work to feed the family and they don’t know how. They are
not trained to go outside and be citizens in this cruel society that will
probably devour them (not literally). They are not prepared. I wasn’t prepared…
and now I struggle to learn about how society works. I have no idea about
taxes, about economy in general. I have no idea how to shop food for my family.
I don’t know what things I can do in a bank. I don’t know how medical
insurances work. I don’t know anything. And I believe that’s partially the
school’s curriculum fault. I want to finish quoting a teacher that last Friday gave
us a workshop and she told us a very interesting phrase to analyse and
consider. She said that we have a 19th century school curriculum,
with 20th century teachers, and 21st century students. I
think we should seriously reconsider what we are teaching and what we are
learning as soon as possible.
you really picked a controversial issue!!! let's start with saying that i completely see your point of view, although i don't agree (much) with it. in my opinion what we are taught it might not be relevant at that point, but we can see it later in life!! we can find a porpoise for everything in this life!!! This reminds me of a Steve jobs story, you know after quitting university he started going to a calligraphy instruction curse, and by that time there was not a practical use for the curse but later in life he introduced the idea of having different fonts because of that curse that he had taken!! Maybe we study such a different topics in order to know what we like or not, what will help us in life or not. Maybe you don’t see it yet but one day you will look back and be thankful for having to study all those useless topics. “You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards" STEVE JOBS
ReplyDeletePablo, i think the same as Claudia, everything we learn would be relevant, at some point, in the future. I won´t question the contents of school that are thaught because I believe that most of them were useful for me. I know that sometimes, when you are given some maths exercises, you can not see the connection with real life. That happens because teachers do not think about the meaningfulness of it, but it does not mean that those excercises are not useful in real life. For me the change is not about crossing out subjects of the curricula, instead i would train teacher to make the classes more meaningful (than years ago) just to make students involved in the classes. I really admire the way in which we ( as students) are being trained to our classes. We are learning to change the method we were taught, and that is a big step for education.
ReplyDeletePablo, very interesting post! I remember that in the first class I gave in the Practicum III one of the student was not doing the activity I asked him (and to the rest of the students too) to do. I observed him and I said: "Emilio, you are supposed to do the activity" but he looked at me and said "I don´t want to, I don´t like English, it is useless for me because I won´t travel to US"... I was speechless, I did not know what to say. As usual, I had a delayed reaction and some minutes later I wanted to say: Emilio, in school (and in our life) things are not as we usually want. I wanted to explain that English is a very seful subject for him and for his future.
ReplyDeleteWhat is more, I really agree with you with the fact that teachers are the ones who should give the students a purpose to learn. Thus, from that class on, I have put special attention to that student and now, after having tested him, I can proudly say he pass the exam with an 8!
Maybe he cannot see how important English is, but I´m completely sure that in some years he will notice it!
You have come up with an interesting idea, Pablo! I partially agree with you since I think that the curriculum belonging to all the levels of our educational system (primary, secondary and higher) should be reconsidered. Personally, I express this should be carried out not only because of the usefulness some contents learnt may have, but also in terms of practicity and connection between subjects. Let's take the example of circumstances happening in our degree: Why are we taught Linguistics in the fourth year if we take into account that the subject introduces basic notions for us to be able to understand the function of language we have been learning during the first three years? Why are we only taught English and American literature in the first three years since there is an enormous enriching variety of books which have been written in other English-speaking countries?
ReplyDeleteAs regards our position as teachers, I will always remember the words Andrea Arellano mentioned the first class of Grammar I. "When teaching any grammar topic, you always have to tell students the form, the meaning and the use of the structure." I consider this is one of the weapons we can have in the classroom, which can complement the distinct ways of establishing meaningful transitions between activities as we have been taught in Practicums I, II and III.
Finally, as students, we should take charge of asking for the syllabus as soon as the course of a subject starts. I know we are not accustomed to do this, but this would be a fruitful way both for the students and for the teacher to make an agreement on the way in which the course of a subject could be developed.