We started today’s session with the students’ reflecting on the TED talk by Ken Robinson, which we had watched the previous day. For homework they’d had to think about five points which the speaker makes in his talk about the future of education. See the task below.
- Robinson says “If you think of it, children starting school this year will be retiring in 2065. Nobody has a clue – despite all the expertise that’s been on the parade for the past four years´ time. And yet we´re meant to be educating them for it. “ How can education prepare children for the future?
- Robinson says “My contention is that creativity now is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status.” Do you agree? Why? Why not?
- Robinson argues that “if you´re not prepared to be wrong, you´ll never come up with anything original”. Can you illustrate Robinson´s opinion with an example?
- According to Robinson “the whole purpose of public education throughout the world is to produce university professors.” Do you agree? What should the purpose of public education be?
- Robinson says that “Suddenly, degrees aren´t worth anything. Isn´t that true? When I was a student, if you had a degree, you had a job. If you didn´t had a job it´s because you didn´t want one…… But now kids with degrees are often heading home to carry on playing video games, because you need an MA where the previous job required a BA and now you need a PhD for the other.” Do you think university degrees will be as important as they were in the past? Why?
For the second part of the morning the students from each country presented their research on the education system of their assigned partner. For example, the Bulgarian students did research on the reforms in Poland, the Polish students presented the key elements of Swedish education; the Catalans talked about the Bulgarian education system while the Swedish presented a comparative analysis of Catalan and Swedish schools. Each presentation was followed by a Q&A session. This was a good opportunity for students to practise their presentation skills in English and gain confidence with public speaking as well. They certainly gained an insight into their strengths and weaknesses through the lens of their partners because each team had its unique abilities and each student was able to learn from the others.
The afternoon was spent doing a workshop in the Museum of Soap where the lively guide led the students on a journey of how perceptions of hygiene and cleanliness changed over time and how the emergence of soap revolutionized our idea of what it takes to be clean and healthy. Here are pictures of this interactive workshop.
FuturEYEzing 