14 things that are obsolete in 21st century schools

Saying that it has e'er been this way, doesn't count as a legitimate justification as to why it should stay that style. Teachers and administrators all over the earth are doing amazing things, but some of the things we are still doing, despite all the new solutions, enquiry and ideas out there are, to put it mildly, incredible.

I'one thousand non saying nosotros should just make the current system ameliorate… nosotros should change information technology into something else.

I take compiled a listing of 14 things that are obsolete in 21st-century schools and it is my promise that this volition inspire lively discussions near the future of didactics.

1. Computer Rooms

The thought of taking a whole class to a figurer room with outdated equipment, once a week to exercise their typewriting skills and sending them back to the classroom 40 minutes later, is obsolete.

Computers or technology shouldn't merely be a specific subject, that's not sufficient anymore but rather it should exist an integral function of all the subjects and congenital into the curriculum.

ii. Isolated classrooms

Classrooms can exist isolated in two ways. 1 where parents, teachers or guests are not welcome because the door and drapes are always shut… which has the words "Don't come up in here" written all over it. The other fashion is being isolated to all the knowledge outside the 4 walls. For example from the internet, videos, blogs, websites, and visits from authors or scientists through Skype, to name a few.

Tony Wagner, the writer of the Global Accomplishment Gap says: "Isolation is the enemy of improvement". The classroom should be open, teachers should be able to walk in and learn from each other, parents should visit frequently, f.10. with and so-called Extra Open up Schooldays (where all parents are encouraged to visit classrooms anytime during the twenty-four hour period). Isolated classrooms are therefore obsolete.

3. Schools that don't accept WiFi

Schools that don't accept a robust WiFi network for staff and students are not only missing a large change for teaching and learning but robbing the students of access to knowledge and also limiting their chances to learn about the net and using engineering in a safe style.

21st-century schools make information technology possible for students and staff to larn anywhere, anytime and schools that don't permit that are obsolete.

4. Banning phones and tablets

Taking phones and tablets from students instead of using them to enhance learning is obsolete. We should celebrate the engineering science students bring and apply them as learning tools.

Phones are no longer just devices to text and make phone calls… when they were, and so banning them was OK. Today there is more processing power in the average cellular phone than NASA had access to when they sent a man to the moon in 1969. Yet most students merely know how to utilize these devices for social media and playing games.

Today you lot can edit a movie, make a radio show, take pictures, make posters, websites, web log, tweet as a character from a book, take course conversations over TodaysMeet and Google about answers on a test with the device in your pocket. Nosotros should show our students the learning possibilities & plough these distractions into learning opportunities that volition achieve far outside the classroom.

5. Tech director with an ambassador access

Having one person responsible for the computer system, working from a windowless office in the school basement, surrounded by old computers, updates the programs and tells the staff what tech tools they can and cannot use… is obsolete.

Today we need technology co-ordinators that know what teachers and students need to be successful and solve problems instead of creating barriers. Someone who helps people to assist themselves by giving them responsibleness and finds ameliorate and cheaper ways to do things.

6. Teachers that don't share what they do

Teachers who work silently, don't tweet, blog and discuss ideas with people around the earth are obsolete. Teachers are no longer working locally but globally and it'due south our task to share what nosotros do and come across what others are doing. If a instructor is no longer learning then he shouldn't be teaching other people.

We should all be tweeting, blogging and sharing what works and doesn't work, get and give advice to and from co-workers effectually the world. Nosotros should constantly be improving our craft because professional evolution isn't a 3-hr workshop one time a month but a lifelong process.

"Nosotros do not learn from experience…we learn from reflecting on experience." -John Dewey

7. Schools that don't take Facebook or Twitter

Schools that think putting a news article on the school website every other week and publish a monthly newsletter is enough to go along parents informed are obsolete.

The school should have a Facebook page, share news and information with parents, take a Twitter account and their own hashtag, run their ain online TV aqueduct where students film, edit and publish things about school events.

If you don't tell your story, someone else will.

8. Unhealthy cafeteria food

School cafeterias that look and operate almost like fast nutrient restaurants where staff and students become a cheap, fast and unhealthy meals are obsolete.

A few schools in Iceland and Sweden accept turned almost completely to organic foods and given thought into the long term benefit of healthy food rather than the short term savings of the unhealthy. For example at Stora Hammar schoolhouse in Sweden, 90% of the food served is organic.

Children should put the food on their own plate, make clean up afterwards themselves and even do the dishes. Not because it saves the school money on the workforce only because it is a part of growing up and learning about responsibility. What 21st-century schools should exist doing as well is growing their own fruits and vegetables where students water them and learn nearly nature. Setting upward a farm to feed students would be optimal, but if that is not an choice (for example in large city schools) and then they tin at terminal ready upwards a window farm in some of the school windows.

The goal of providing students a good for you meal is not only to give them enough nutrition to terminal the school 24-hour interval merely to make healthy nutrient a normal part of their daily life and get them to think about diet which is something that will do good them for the rest of their lives.

9. Starting school at 8 o'clock for teenagers

Research has shown over and over over again that teenagers do amend and feel better in schools that kickoff later. Often parents or administrators get in the way of that modify. Enquiry (f.ten. from theThe Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics and University of Minnesota – video) prove that delaying school start equally little as l minutes and making information technology longer by thirty minutes instead has a positive result both on learning and activities later school. Schools that don't do this are obsolete.

Starting later on is easy and teachers could use the extra fourth dimension in the morning to prepare class… it's a win-win situation.

ten. Buying affiche-, website- and pamphlet design for the school

When your schoolhouse needs a affiche, pamphlet or a new website they shouldn't buy the service from somewhere else (although that can sometimes be the case) and accept students exercise it instead. In the best schools of the future, they volition be the ones doing it equally a existent project that has meaning and every bit a collaborative projection in language and art….using technology.

11. Traditional libraries

Libraries that only contain books and chess tables are obsolete.

A 21st-century library should be at the heart of the schoolhouse and a identify where both students and staff can come in to relax, read, get advice, admission powerful devices, edit videos, music, print in 3D and learn how to code to proper name a few. This 21st-century learning infinite should give people an equal take a chance to employ these devices and admission information. Otherwise, these libraries volition turn into museums where people become to wait at all the things we used to use.

12. All students get the same

Putting kids in the same class because they are born in the same year is obsolete. School systems were originally set up upward to meet the needs of industrialism. Dorsum then we needed people to work in factories, conformity was good and nobody was meant to excel or be unlike in that surround. That doesn't fit our needs today, permit lone the future only many schools are nevertheless ready upwardly like the factories they were meant to serve 100 years ago.

We should increment pick, give children support to flourish in what interests them and not only give them extra attending to the things they're bad at. In most schools, if you are good at art but bad in german you go high german lessons to become to par with the other students instead of excelling at art… All even, all the aforementioned!

Education should be individualized, students should work in groups regardless of age and their didactics should be built around their needs.

xiii. I-Professional development-workshop-fits-all

A schoolhouse that just sends the entire staff to a workshop once a calendar month where everyone gets the same is obsolete. Professional person development is commonly pinnacle-downwards instead of the basis up where everyone gets what they want and need. This is because giving anybody (including students) what they need and want takes time & money.

With things like Twitter, Pinterest, articles online, books, videos, co-operation & conversations employees can personalize their professional development. (Read virtually my article on Personalized Professional Development here)

fourteen. Standardized tests to measure the quality of education

Looking at standardized tests to evaluate whether or not children are educated or not is the dumbest thing we can do and gives us a shallow view of learning.

The outcomes, although moderately important, measure out just a pocket-sized part of what we want our kids to larn and by focusing on these exams we are narrowing the curriculum. Alfie Kohn fifty-fifty pointed out a statistically meaning correlation between loftier grades on standardized tests and a shallow arroyo to learning.

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The world today and the needs of society are completely different from what they used to exist. We are not only training people to work locally but globally. With standardized tests, like PISA, we are narrowing the curriculum, and all the OECD countries are instruction the same thing. Considering of that, we all produce the same kind of workers, outdated workers, to work in factories. People who tin comply, behave and exist similar everybody else.

In the global world today information technology is easy to outsource jobs to someone who is willing to do the same job, just every bit fast for less money. Therefore we need creative people that tin do something else and think differently.

Andreas Schleicher (2010) said:

"Schools accept to prepare students for jobs that have not yet been created, technologies that accept not yet been invented and problems that nosotros don't know will ascend."

Standardized education might have been the answer once but saying that it's obsolete is putting it mildly and is only a way to try to repair the broken organisation. The results of those tests are, according to Daniel Pink (A Whole New Mind, 2005) in direct contradiction to the skills nosotros need today. Those skills are for instance design, story, symphony, empathy, play, and meaning.

We should be solving existent problems, asking questions that matter instead of remembering and repeating facts. Adults' accomplishments are linked far more strongly to their creativity than IQ (source) and nosotros should be celebrating diverse knowledge and interest instead of trying to standardize knowledge and skills.

I wonder if schools would finally change their direction if we designed a new standardize examination that wouldn't measure numeracy, science, and literacy simply empathy, creative thinking and communication skills… Mayhap that is all nosotros need.

Final thoughts

All the education systems on the planet are being reformed, but I don't think reform is what we need. Nosotros demand a revolution and modify the education system into something else. It isn't an easy task, only as South.E. Phillips once said:

Anything worth having is worth fighting for.

Doing something new and getting poor results on the erstwhile test shouldn't surprise anyone. What is the point of doing something new and different if nosotros become the same results on standardized tests… then nosotros might as well just do mill schooling, conform and comply.

"If I had asked the people what they wanted, they would accept said faster horses"

– Henry Ford

That is exactly what we are doing today. We are asking our students to remember more, write meliorate and echo faster than before… simply similar nosotros wanted the faster horse when really we should be asking for the machine. Sure the car wasn't better than the equus caballus in the beginning and our didactics arrangement won't be perfect either. It volition never be perfect, it should be constantly evolving and we should strive to make it better every twenty-four hours.

I don't know what a perfect education system looks similar, and don't think it even exists. Merely I believe that if we talk, try something dissimilar, fail frontward, investigate and share what we exercise, not but locally but globally, we can become a lot closer.

If you desire to see a modify in instruction, yous should start in your own classroom.

"Education can be encouraged from the superlative-down but can merely be improved from the ground up"

– Sir Ken Robinson

Ingvi Hrannar Ómarsson

Icelandic Educator. Creator. Designer.

Stanford Graduate School of Didactics Alumn

Follow @IngviOmarsson

Creator | Educator | Designer | Everything I produce is work in progress | Stanford Alumni in Learning, Design & Engineering science Twitter: @IngviOmarsson / @IngviHrannar