Renewing an Old Ideal of Education
In such a condition, formal education loses its raison d'être. In the postmodern world, the status of knowledge is debatable, ethically-driven principles are doubtful, aesthetic evaluations are highly questionable, and even God is dead. But if one cannot rely anymore on any durable conception of “the Good", the "Beautiful" the "True" or the "Divine,” we may question whether education still has something valuable to offer the new generation.
Not surprisingly, the so called “crisis of education" is a widespread phenomenon in the Western world. In an age in which the written word is losing its priority to the image, and every stimulus should be as short, dynamic, colorful and noisy as possible, classroom experiences seem outdated and boring. The price for this anachronism is huge. Schools become more irrelevant than ever to real life and teachers lose their authority and influence on the children's lives.
To fully investigate this question, the individual should be ready to leave the safe shores of his usual habitus and delve into a self-identity quest (Serres, 1997). It is a nomadic process, which can be either physical or virtual, in any imaginable place and time. To be significant, this personal quest should be accompanied by a responsible, professional educator. And such a mission clearly changes the role of the teacher, who becomes a pedagogue in the original sense of the Greek term.
Thus, it is necessary to envisage a very different characterization of the teacher, which will address the real needs of the students in the 21st century. Such a teacher will address the question of "who am I? (Palmer, 1998). This teacher will question the moral basis of the society and suggest that solidarity and communality are no less significant than individuality, privatization and competition. This teacher will not conceive of humans as commodities, and for him, material wealth is not a guarantee of human happiness. He will probe whether equality is no less noteworthy than illusionary individual freedom, whether dialogue and tolerance are no less important than efficiency and material success.
As the former president of Kaye Academic College of Education in Beer-Sheva, I had initiated a teacher education program whose aim is to promote this vision in prospective teachers. ACE [Active-Collaborative-Education] is a teacher education program for post-graduate students conducted in Kaye. ACE's student is requested to wander in an unknown territory. He has no paved roads to follow and no predefined targets to conquer. He becomes a teacher, by understanding the meaning he gives to "teaching", "learning" and "students" (Back & Mansur, 2016).
In 2013, the program had been awarded as the best teacher education program in Israel. The number of candidates wishing to study in the program exceeds the number of available places, and the program's graduates are welcomed in the district's kindergartens and schools. The reason, I believe, is simple: the program deals with the teacher as a human being. And although it goes against the current trend of accountability, tests and measurement, it provides the schools and their pupils with the appropriate teacher for the 21st century.
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Back, S., & Mansur-Schachor, R. (2016). The "third" within ACE. In J. Barak & Gidron A (Eds.), Active Collaborative Education: A journey towards teaching. (pp. 149-67). Rotterdam: Sense.
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