This video has been doing the rounds of a few educational blogs. Michael Wesch, the interviewee, talks about the concept of “anti-teaching.” The use of this phrase made me sit up and take notice.
Basically, he sees anti-teaching as
seeking too inspire with good questions
rather than just teaching content. Interesting!
Vodpod videos no longer available.I don’t know whether it is because of my primary teaching background, but I was puzzled. To me the art of teaching has always been about asking good questions. Questions that provoke. Questions that invite multiple answers. Questions that have no definite answer, but rather invite further investigation of the topic at hand.
I haven’t listened to the whole interview. No doubt he has some other valuable comments about how people learn, judging by the comments on other blogs.
What it did get me thinking about is perhaps the major difference between the teaching focus in primary education as opposed to secondary or tertiary. Certainly in NSW, the K-6 syllabus has a focus on learning how (to learn), not just learning about (content). That is at the core of what every primary educator does on a daily basis.
Interestingly, this coincided with a report in yesterday’s Sydney Morning Herald, which quoted the head of ACER (Australian Council of Educational Research) as stating that more standardised tests are required of schools to make them accountable with regards to continued government funding. More testing??!! Isn’t NAPLAN enough??!!
Oh please! Let’s not get caught up in that well-worn treadmill!! There’s is already enough narrowing of the curriculum occurring due to the pressure that schools and individual teachers feel in response to the amount of standardised testing that we already have. What about all those attributes and skills that are not so easily measured by a pen and paper test?
Believe me, that old chestnut of
teaching to the test
is well and truely alive in many schools. Sadly, with pressures of multiple testing, who can blame them?!
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