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Hello, thank you for joining us. We are proud to welcome you to our special series, Quality Education, brought to you by Bro, where we talk about improving our current education systems for the radically changing 21st century global society. I'm your host, Lee Jung Rago. Today we're speaking with Rosemary Sage.
She's a professor in communication sciences and a qualified speech pathologist. And Ricardo Matucci. She's research Italian grammar at Cambridge University and has been a teacher trainer in Ethiopia and the United States. Their book is How World Events Are Changing Education.
It publishes this month. Rosemary and Ricardo, thank you again so much for sitting down with me today. Oh, it's a pleasure. So tell us first about the difference between macro and micro politics and how they influence education.
Yes, well, we started off with an analysis of world situation, politics, education, social and technological issues. And of course, if you're talking about politics, which underpins everything, we have to understand what type of politics we are all involved in. Of course, we all know about macro politics. It's the large scale state power that's used to regulate organisations.
And of course, with regard to education, it sets our curriculum the way we organise our schools, our monitor our educational standards. So that's the macro politics. But by far becoming very influential nowadays with everybody having their big say about everything in the world is micro politics. Because that employs both formal and informal power by individuals and groups to achieve the goals of the state, but also their own particular personal goals.
So that you find with these two types of politics, you've got cooperation, of course, and conflict processes with great differences between politics of education and politics in education. And according to the context where institutions are, the practice may be very different. Now, an example of micro politics is perhaps a group of parents not accepting the rules about school uniform, or the curricula being taught in a school like sex education, because they have a different value system and they feel this discriminates against it. And this of course in our multicultural societies is becoming an issue.
I mean, I've taught in schools where there have been 234 different languages spoken and people coming from many different areas of the world with very different experiences, histories, traditions, ways of thinking and behaving. So at the macro politics level, you know, there is huge debate now about how we try to observe both the state ideas about education, but also help to, well, increase our own ideas, which I think is happening a lot in schools, because there's lots of uprising at the micro level in our schools today. And indeed, even staff have been suspended or even their jobs cut, because they are saying things or teaching things that their clients are not happy about. So I hope I've explained that fairly clearly.
I wonder if you can elaborate, is that a new phenomenon that we're seeing that teachers are being suspended for political reasons, or is that maybe something cyclical that we haven't realized has happened before? I definitely think it's a new phenomenon, but definitely in my experience. I mean, certainly when I went to school, you absolutely respected parents and students respected what was the rules and behavior being perpetrated in the school setting. But now that's not the case.
I mean, people have very different ideas of what their children or students should be taught, don't they? And this is influencing education in a very woke way. That means a lot of ideas are not being supported. Only the idea is that the dominant group want.
And I think this is quite a danger in education, because education was set up to look at all of these views and make your own opinion about it as a learner. But it's being very much pushed in the direction of dominant groups now at the micro-political level. So your book focuses on how world events are changing education. And obviously, no world event has been bigger lately than the pandemic.
So can you just tell me how has the pandemic affected education, especially when it comes to e-learning and the use of virtual reality? I would say that e-learning has accelerated in education in the pandemic, reflecting on more effective use with attention for those not suited to the predominantly auditory vision mode, preferring processing through the heptic sensory channel. Now, there have been many studies, especially during these last two years. And the one done by the OECD says that, for example, UK education is well-supplied with technology.
We can say the same thing for Italian situation. But stuff, unfortunately, are not trained to deliver it effectively. Why? Because everybody had to change the way of teaching overnight.
Nobody was prepared to take technology into their classes, into their teaching process in the proper way. And still now, we don't know technology well. And this is the reason why many teachers are still very reluctant, because they cannot use it in the way it should be done. So now education, I believe that education must rebalance to develop a more holistic world approach for coping with life, fixing on real, not only abstract issues.
Again, the OECD papers by Berkeley 2020 reports that education will never return to former teaching ways following the pandemic. And the 50% of it will be a blended learning. And then there is an urgent need for ongoing professional development that monitors new teaching modes, using, for example, prediction of recording models to record and review evidence with colleagues, other school, other continents. It is said that the 60% of students worldwide do not reach required educational standard.
So it is vital to review policies and practices which were disrupted. We have to speed up introduction of learning highlights communication and language uses. And so the use of language, the proper language is vital for learning, because we know that in our classes are multicultural. And not the matter time is spoken properly.
A clear example is English classes and in Italy too. Now we are facing problems with people who are not learning Italian the proper way. So communication is fundamental for e-learning. If we cannot communicate, then it's going to be difficult to apply any kind of teaching.
Communication matters. And we need to make it more matter than that people struggle less. And this is what I believe is the basis for e-learning in the future in the year to come. Yeah, I just wanted to add on, I think we can't just very full report on e-learning and the pandemic.
I mean, what the pandemic has showed is that teachers do not know how to teach with technology, which is largely visual in order to be with no feedback. So they need to teach in much smaller groups of information and organise it rather differently to be doing a classroom. Because that's only 8% of students across the world. The research shows a found e-learning in the pandemic period, satisfactory.
So it does need a very big re-look at how teachers are trained for different ways of teaching now. We go into quite some detail of that in the book. Yeah, and speaking of changing those systems and changing the way teachers are teaching now in this kind of brave new world, as you could call it, your book posits the question, is school an outdated system. So if that is the case, what other ways of learning are effective?
And I guess this applies not only to certain technologies being outdated, but we're also talking about ways of teaching, like lecturing, for example. Yeah, I'm going to chat on that. Because I remember going to a very interesting conference at Manchester University Business School, it was called It's Good to Talk. And at the conference was a group of Chicago University academics.
And they were presenting very search to show that only 15% of what we learn is in a formal context, like a school, college or university. I found that quite fascinating and also quite illuminating, because we put such a lot of emphasis on formal education in school, and not enough emphasis on the learning experiences that children actually need outside the four walls of the classroom. And it's interesting to note that formal mass education is a very recent phenomenon in the history of humankind. It's only been compulsory in the UK since 1893.
And why? Because the industrial rise in 19th century Europe required employees with a new kind of knowledge and skills. And an expert teacher instructed groups of students, often in quite large groups, in information and advantages for their future work. And it was a very compliant sort of approach to teaching.
We now know, of course, that it is not the best way of teaching to sit in front of a teacher, spouting lots of knowledge at us. Because, yeah, perhaps gain knowledge for a short time to pass an exam, but we don't retain it, because in order to retain knowledge, we need to apply it in a practical situation with other people to share our ideas and experiences with. That's the way we actually learn and understand. And unfortunately, though, a research showing an experts and reports like the OECD reports are continually confirming that our transmissive style of education is still very prevalent, even though we know it is not all that successful for many students, and certainly is not at all what the modern world needs or wants, because now we have robots or intelligent machines that carry out most of the routines now in a lot of people's jobs.
And that's amazing, because up to date, 75% of most jobs were routines. So we can see how the roles of people in the workplace are changing massively. And they're changing in the ways that people need personal and practical abilities, the ability to work and communicate across discipline in teams, which we've seen so well in places like Italy with their education from a robotic programme, which is headed up by engineers, psychologists, therapists, teachers, an interdisciplinary team. We've seen how well it works to provide the particular abilities that the workplace now needs.
And how can we do this? Are there alternative ways of doing it? Well, for some time, people have been dissatisfied with formal education. In England, there was someone called Alexander Sutherland-Neil, and he started a free school called Summerhill in 1921.
And it was a school where lessons were optional. Children could go and learn in front of in the group with other people if they wanted to, but if they wanted to go for a walk or a swim or do something else, that was fine. Because the view was that you only learn if you're interested and you have freedom. Now, in America, Peter Gray, who was a psychology professor at Boston University, of course, a successful outcome of a traditional education, but he had a son called Scott, who at nine years old, was not at all cooperating in the traditional education in school.
And Peter Gray thought, well, I need to do something about this. So what did he do? He set up his own school called the Sudbury Valley School. With children in charge, able to choose exactly what they wanted to do, the idea to provide a very stimulating environment, helping them to find their own interests and giving them an awareness of how they learned in their own way, because we all learned differently.
So there has been for a very long time, you could say, a hundred years now, alternatives to the school formal system. And it's even more necessary today for us to be thinking about how we can learn best. It's very interesting that they're now about, in the UK, a hundred thousand children who are at home schools. And this is every year increasing massively.
Of course, there are 8.9 million children in schools or students in schools and colleges in the UK. But there's a significant amount that are homeschooled because they like the freedom to learn. So there's quite a lengthy chapter in the book which talks about this and shows a number of different ways that learning can be promoted best. So we were quite excited about having the opportunity to do that.
So when we talk about innovative ways of educating, that's a good time to talk about Maker Fair, which you described in one of your last chapters. Can you tell us what is Maker Fair and what does it mean for students? Well, Maker Fair is a very fascinating event, I would say. And is a gathering of fascinating curious people who enjoy learning and love sharing what they can do together in order to acquire knowledge and skills from each other and improve their designs.
From engineers to artists, scientists to crafters, Maker Fair is a venue for those creators to present their hobbies, experiment and project. I would say that it was a shame that during Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, Maker Fair was not there because this is the idea of taking people out from their garage, from their attic, where they have been working following their desire, their dreams, and then use them for the community, for the rest of the world. And this is what Maker Fair does. Maker Fair practically is considered.
The great that show and tell on earth a family friendly showcase of invention, creativity, and resourcefulness to involve and attract people, they make their community say, glimpse the future and get inspired. So this has been going on in San Mateo, California since 2006. And practically since the first year, it has been a cult and it has been spread out everywhere in the world. Obviously, the pandemic stopped.
And then last year they had it only via internet. This year in Europe, there was the Maker Fair in Rome. And Rome was the first in the unique exhibition for Europe. And it's lasted three days and it was a great success because it had practically 226 exhibitors and in six different areas, from art to earth to community.
And then all the people who have worked or have inspiration for the community, for the world, they get there and they communicate among them. And this is very important, communication and sharing ideas and improving their knowledge to other knowledge to other people. And what is extremely important of this year is that a lot of projects were done by girls, which means in fact in the chapter I call it, make a fairies turn in pink. Because since the beginning, which was exclusively for men, now the exhibition of this year was, I would say the 40% done by women.
And this is a big improvement, which means that women got into the area of science much more than before. And they were very much appreciated. So I put some picture of girls 10, 11, 12 years old trying to make some scooter, some object from recycled things of recycled object, they had at home under the surveillance of their parents, but they were using drills and all these things which we normally see in the hands of voice. That was very fascinating.
And that was a big achievement for women for the, for the make a fair itself, because it gave another point of view of seeing the utility of certain invention. So I would say that make a fair is the opportunity for the world to improve because you don't learn only from books, but from your own experience, from what you're able to do, from what you have learned, maybe from your grandparents or your parents to assemble something which is useful for the community. And this is make fair, the price for the invention, creativity and collaboration. I was very privileged to have a look at some of the educational robotic projects that were happening in school.
And Ricarda took me to a school she knows well in Re80, which is in the mountains outside Rome, a very lovely town, which originally the Pope used to live in. Was that not right Ricarda? But anyway, in the school there, the idea of a lot of these make a fair type projects is that they look to see what are the issues that need and the problems that need solving in the community. So this group of students, girls and boys, had gone to the town council and said, well, what is it that we can help you with in a problem in Re80?
And one of them was to know how many people use the park in the middle of the town. So they developed a robot that counted the people going in and out of the park. But the crucial thing was it had to exclude dogs. It couldn't count dogs.
So we found that very amusing. But as a result of that, and the numbers of people that they were able to look at using the park, they were able to develop a plan for facilities needed for the different types of population. And I thought this was a really excellent project. And everybody was really enthusiastic about it.
That's what I like. The students loved it, the teachers loved it, and the community loved it. And this is what I think present education should be about making us good citizens that can solve our own problems. Well, hopefully as life, I guess hopefully it gets back to normal, we get to see more of those maker fairs in person.
It sounds like there's a lot of fascinating and innovative things happening there. Rosemary's Age and Ricarda Metucci, their book is How World Events Are Changing Education. It publishes this January. Thank you to you both.
Well, thank you. It was a pleasure. You are listening to the Humanities Matter podcast. You can find more podcast episodes on the Apple podcast, Spotify, and Google podcast.