The Impossible walking around as Possible

"The impossible walking around as possible" is a rough translation of a comment made by the writer S. Izhar. This phenomenon - of the impossible masquerading as possible - can be seen everywhere in human existence. Here are a few examples in the field of education:

• Not using kids’ tendency to teach

• Squandering kids tendency to learn

• Being a teacher being considered a low type of work

• Maintaining an education system that serves various interests other than the children and society

• No offense meant to the education system's personnel. It is natural for any organization to be committed to its own continuity and growth

• No offense meant to trade unions. It is natural for people of a trade to form a trade union to look after their interests. The problems begin when the trade union has more success than what's necessary to prevent victimization of the members. When the union is too successful, it just keeps taking care of the members' interests regardless of the damage it does to other interests. An organization can't just stop doing what it is designed to do

• Following what's natural to organizations can lead to impossible realities for individuals and society

• We are still doing early-stage studies about teaching methods

• After hundreds of thousands of years of of being human, and thousands of years of large scale civilization, we still don’t know how to do it

• Some people would object to this statement and say that we do know how to do it. They will have many different and contradicting views of what it is we know. Humanity does know how to grow wheat, and there isn't much controversy about the methods. The fact that we are not close to an agreement about teaching methods that work, shows that there is no unambiguous knowledge in this field

• Teaching kids in homogeneous age groups

• It can only work when there are dozens of kids of the same age in the same geographical area. This can happen only in a city - a of human dwelling type invented only a few thousand years ago. Theoretically thinking, it is highly unlikely that this matches the natural way for learning, designed into our brains for a very long time before cities were invented. Looking at differently aged siblings, or at kids in small communities, it is clear that teaching and learning takes place naturally when those kids who know more teach those who know less - either by example or by explaining

• Trying to teach kids by putting dozens of them in front of a lecturer

• Similar issue as with the homogeneous age groups - it fits massive groups, not natural to the types of smaller groups in which humans developed

• This may sounds like trying to be funny, but it is not the intention: Frontal teaching of a group makes sense for swarms, such as ants and bees; not for tribes

• Most of us got used to this state of affairs