Present-day education systems were crafted in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Schools of the day focused on teaching facts and basic skills. Only the top of the class was prepared for university and other higher-level futures. Today, more and more jobs require that people be able to reason, think creatively, make decisions, solve problems and, above all, learn to work together. Workers need advanced skills and the capacity for complex thinking. High-tech staff must have the training needed to learn new skills and master new knowledge constantly and rapidly.

Most school systems have not grown at anywhere near the same pace as the rest of society and world technology. While solutions differ, everyone agrees that we urgently need to improve the current educational system. Our schools need to be far better aligned with the realities of today’s world, and to make adjustments to better prepare students for the future. For example, the single most pressing reality is going to be learning to live without oil. No one is seriously researching and teaching this as yet!

Teaching, at its worst, used to follow this pattern “the teacher, source of knowledge, teaches and the students like empty glasses receive gratefully and preferably passively, and gradually fill their glass with whatever wisdom the powers that be had decided was good for them”. Thank goodness there have always been excellent gurus, who helped their followers move from darkness into the light, on the basis that any new wisdom can only be really acquired by self-discovery.

Modern pedagogy has made huge strides forward, in particular with pedagogies like “the discovery method of learning science”, “group-work and team learning”, “learning by doing” (the opposite of the passive mode of the “good” student of old). No doubt copying Covey’s Seven Habits of Effective People, a group of professors has come up with a list which embodies many of the best practices as identified by research, modified by this author to reflect Mauritian reality. Teachers at both secondary and tertiary level might wish to consider this list of Seven Good Practices in Education.

Good Education is that which:

• Respects diverse intelligences, talents, aspirations, values and ways of learning

• Encourages “democratic” contact between students and staff

• Develops reciprocity and cooperation among students

• Encourages active learning and “learning-by-doing”

• Gives prompt feedback on performance, followed by remedy

• Emphasizes time, cost and effort-effectiveness on tasks

• Communicates high expectations, practicality of outcomes and excellence.

Teachers or lecturers dictating notes from dusty files, students made to kneel in class as punishment for indiscipline, or, as was common in some systems, pupils made to wear “un bonnet d’âne” if they could not recite the lesson by heart, students’ concerns being dismissed with the excuse that it is “outside the syllabus”, unprepared and unaccountable “bla-bla” from cheaters (oops! I mean teachers!) may all belong to a distant past. The past has, unfortunately, the bad habit of lingering on! However, summarising at the end of a paper, lecture or address is fortunately a good habit that remains alive. Here then are these Seven Good Practices again, but in short-hand:

1. Diversity

2 Collaboration

3 Co-operation

4 Doing

5 Testing

6. Achieving

7. Excellence

<B>Dr. Michael ATCHIA

[email protected]</B>