Why is education stuck in the past?

A friend of mine who works with the media industry made the interesting point recently that traditional journalists are now expected to have some kind of on-line presence, usually using social media and most frequently Twitter. A quick search will find an active community of journalists, covering all areas of journalistic interest, including the famous and the unknown, who share information and ideas rather than insults and the inane. Twitter tends to make the headlines when an ill-considered tweet is coughed up by an overpaid and overhyped footballer, but millions of people use it and other social media forums to extend their knowledge and awareness of areas that matter to them and to collaborate with people they might otherwise have never met.

So I have taken the plunge and joined Twitter (@jez_scott); literally just now. I got quite excited when I noticed that I had one follower almost instantly but rather disappointed to find it was someone called @Q9bbGzMeoNHo02E reminding me that 35% of followers of the average Twitter account are not real people. But I am now there and I’m determined to make use of Twitter, even if that is more about following others rather than making my own grand pronouncements.
Why has it taken me so long to engage in Twitter when I travel about the place promoting the use of social media? I can only think that it is a reflection of the rather peculiar resistance to change that pervades most educational institutions and educators. I am seen as something of a maverick because I write a blog and condone the use of social media in schools. I find this surprising and more than a little disconcerting. Unlike journalism and other competitive industries, schools do not have to worry about losing their customers – however out-of-date or irrelevant your provision might be the children will still turn up at the school gate each morning. This means that schools do not have to keep up with even the seismic changes in technology and society. We can continue to educate young people within the confines of Dickensian institutions with our rigid timetables, school uniforms and didactic teachers – and the most frightening part is that almost everybody thinks that this is just great. Parents and policy-makers remember their schools being like this and so they seek schools which promise to maintain strict discipline or introduce initiatives which show no initiative. Schools are perhaps the worst of all institutions at gripping on to some kind of perverse image of educational utopia.

Transforming schools and educational policy is therefore a difficult task which has frustrated generations of more forward-thinking educators. The answer may be found in the growing communities of like-minded school leaders and teachers who are starting to look at educational provision in different ways which are truly aimed at equipping young people for their futures. These communities cannot be unlocked within local consortium arrangements, academy federations or even national associations. These communities will grow online and Twitter seems as good a place as any to get things rolling.