Estate Living Digital Publication Issue 11 November 2015 | Page 47

Some educators claim we need to go beyond set curricula, and
inculcate an alfresco classroom culture that fosters habits and
attitudes that will help learners to face difficulty and uncertainty
calmly, confidently and creatively in any situation.

Similarly, author and educator Sir Ken Robinson
begins his TED talk, which has been viewed by
more than 13 million people, by suggesting that
educating our children cannot be done using the
current teaching methodology with its roots in the
17th century as the story we’ve been told about
education, of going to school, working hard, going
to college and getting a decent job does not relate
to thinking alfresco.
This story is based on the idea that only those with
academic abilities could succeed however, this is
no longer true. We do not know what kind of jobs,
let alone which will be decent, that await children
entering school this year whom will matriculate in
2026 and graduate in 2030.
Robinson believes that education should be geared
around divergent thinking – an essential capacity for
‘thinking outside the box’. Tony Wagner, a Harvard
professor who has devoted the past 15 years trying
to determine the survival skills needed to thrive in
the 21st century, explains that ‘the world no longer
cares about what our children know; the world

only cares about what they can do with what they
know’. In South Africa, we need to ask whether or
not thinking outside the classroom is relevant. Our
exam-driven education system, talks a lot about
‘our unique African market place’, however, the jobs
of the future are not yet defined and the market
will be a global rather than local one. The emphasis
of learning is shifting from curricula content to the
aims and processes of learning.
Education cannot ignore what is happening in the
classroom, which is described by one teacher as ‘the
place that really makes a difference’. It remains the
centre for imparting knowledge and habits needed
to master a subject. Yet our classrooms often spoonfeed and gives in to the stale demands of formal
assessment and examinations - in fact, Claxton
suggests ‘spoon-feeding on an educational level is a
modern form of child abuse’.
There is no quick fix and stakeholders, including
parents, need to be involved. Curro has started the
conversation in South Africa around education inside
and outside our schools which will help learners
to go into the world tenacious and resourceful,
imaginative and self-disciplined, collaborate and
critical thinkers who make a positive contribution
and who can cope alfresco.
www.curro.co.za

47

Curriculum

cognitive psychology in Britain, said, “To thrive
in the twenty-first century, it is not enough
to leave school with a clutch of examination
certificates. You must come away with greater
confidence, competence and curiosity to face the
uncertainties that life will surely throw at [you].”