Our mission is to develop the joys of learning, teaching and social participation, every day.
What does it mean, if anything? Here is what it means to me:
Learning is natural and fun for humans. They are born curious. We identify curiosity in cats, only because we ourselves are curious. This tendency can either be preserved and developed, or it can be squashed. Our mission is to preserve it and to develop it. When a teacher enters a class - or lets the students into the class - does the teacher think "How am I going to make sure the kids are going to enjoy this lesson?" I had very few teachers that I suspect had that even as a passing thought. "Fun? Why?" Because that's the mission. Because if it is not fun today, it is not likely to become miraculously fun tomorrow or next year. If learning is a drudgery in school, learning slowly becomes a drudgery in itself. Sending a graduate to the 21st century wilderness with a negative attitude towards learning new things, is like sending a pearl-hunter to sea, with a negative attitude towards getting wet.
"Will giving the class homework today improve their joy of learning?" In first grade, a little homework, maybe. Maybe if homework is very carefully designed to match the individual pupil's interests. Maybe if the teacher is tremendously charismatic... Probably not. Probably, giving homework will make a strong mental connection between learning and having no control over one's time. This thought doesn't mean that homework must be abolished, but at the very least, homework should be used very carefully.
If we are to keep good teachers, the teachers should enjoy their work, and know that they are developing themselves while teaching at school. The teachers, too can enjoy learning. Standing in front of a class of students of any age, and discussing any subject, a teacher encounters new situations: A student may have a new question; a student may have a new misconception; a student may have a new difficulty; a student may have a new insight. The teacher may learn new facts (knowledge), or how to explain or demonstrate in a new way (skills), or even be reminded of the need to teach in a graduated manner (habits). Most of all, the teacher is likely to just understand their subject matter better and better - teaching teaches the teachers.
Letting the teachers learn doesn't need to be just a passive opportunistic inaction. A major part of the system's mission is to provide the teachers with learning opportunities, and in order for that to be enjoyable, the subjects for learning should be what is interesting to the teacher. If a math teacher wants to learn more about physics, the system should encourage it. It is more important that the teacher will remember how much fun learning is, than for the teacher to have more knowledge in a particular subject matter. Teachers who enjoy learning convey that attitude to everybody around them, including their students.
Enough for now about the learning aspect of what goes on in school. There is teaching, too. Teaching also comes naturally to humans. Unlike curiosity and learning, which can be observed in many mammals, birds and possibly lower forms of life, teaching is a less prevalent behavior. Some primates deliberately teach each other. Humans do it all the time. Humans have a whole professional class of people whose social purpose is to teach - teachers, professors and such. Teaching professionally should be at least as enjoyable as teaching informally. The system should make sure that is the case, by providing the framework. First and foremost, the teachers must have authority to teach. The teacher should have a lot of influence on the subjects to be taught, more influence on the direction to take in teaching the subject, and complete control over what to do in a particular lesson. Also, the administration provided by the education system should supply the teacher with all their non-professional needs, so the teacher doesn't need to worry about photocopying budget, formal paperwork, vacation rules, discipline issues like violence, academic materials, Internet access, etc. None of it is easy, but as soon as we agree that teaching should be enjoyable, it becomes a basic requirement, and basic requirements tend to be met - unlike "nice to have" characteristics.
But even with professional teachers, a lot all of learning and teaching occurs less formally, by amateurs. Parents teach all the time, and the system should support them: bidirectional contact between parents and school will enable mutual support. Since the mission is to make learning and teaching enjoyable, parents are not a problem to the education establishment, and need not be "kept at bay". Parents are natural allies of the system. Yes, I know this is utopic thinking, but thinking is a good start towards making things happen.
A critical aspect of teaching as a natural and enjoyable activity is that of teaching by children. Teaching comes naturally to children; possibly as naturally as learning. My 3 year-old son asked about the hard things in my upper torso (my ribs), and I explained that they protect the internal organs. The details were a bit much for him, but he took the first opportunity to explain to the next grown-up he saw, that the ribs "protect the soft." That adult already knew that (she happens to be a physiotherapist), but that's besides the point. The point is that the little child felt an urge to teach someone. By doing so, he had the chance to paraphrase the knowledge, make it his own, and get some feedback from adults to make sure he got it right. He probably got some ego gratification from displaying his knowledge. Just like all of us. All we need is to preserve and develop that love of teaching, and we will get a very large workforce for teaching. Give the children at any age the chance to teach other children, provide them with informal and formal feedback for their teaching. Some advantages: We will get a much better teacher/student ratio. The students will develop their teaching and general communication skills. The students will be able to empathize with the professional teachers, and may - just may - be inclined to make the teachers' life easier, and make teaching more enjoyable for the teachers.
All this sounds too good to be true, but it has something going for it: The core mission as presented here, is based on natural human behavior, unlike current schooling practices. Bringing schools closer to what comes naturally to humans may make such a project much easier than creating an arbitrary social change.
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