I loved reading this suggestion from Seth Godin:
Big football at colleges in the US costs more than $5 billion a year. And none of these programs has a student acting as a coach.
The same analysis, at a much smaller scale, applies to school theater directors and producers, conductors of the jazz band or orchestra and even the coach of the chess team.
We learn by doing, not by winning.
What happens if we embrace this and make education about learning? What would happen if the head of the football program simply taught students how to be coaches? Or the head of the music program challenged kids to conduct?
My most important learning experiences in organized schooling came from the random moments when I actually got to organize instead of being organized.
When I was a student at Mt. Albert Grammar, student coaches were often matched to junior teams. Maybe there weren't enough staff to take them, I'm not sure, but I loved having someone from the first XI coaching us.
Of course, the quality varied but I had a couple of great student mentors in those teams before I joined the first XI myself for three memorable years in the mid-seventies.
No comments:
Post a Comment