Students, Take Back the Power from your Teachers in the Classroom!

The title of this post may seem provocative and quite scary to most teachers and authoritative figures in the educational system.  In fact it is meant to represent the contrary.  Handing over power and giving student more autonomy in the classroom actually promotes the core virtue that every educational system holds dear – teaching students how to think, not simply what to think.

Professional authority is derived from greater knowledge of a particular field. It is harbored in the hierarchical relationship of expert to teacher to students and is further enforced institutionally through the intrinsic power and obligation to assign grades.  While this is necessary to pass on knowledge from one generation to another, it can sometimes stifle the circle of learning.  Naturally being that the learner is younger, less mature, they can be sensitive to authority.  Rebelling against authority has always been considered one of the most common result for students to tune out from the beginning of their educational careers.

If a teacher piles on the homework and a child has not engaged in the subject, they most likely become apathetic to school.  Within one single failure to achieve in the eyes of the teacher, their ego is bruised and their personal growth is stunted.

It is simple for an advanced teacher, with solid intention to hand over power by encouraging students to realize their own style of learning because only then can they become successful learners.  All too often a child will lose interest in an entire core subject matter at an early age because they do no absorb the style in which the subject is being taught to them.  If a child can\’t learn from their teacher, their troubles are compounded when they go home with a pile of assignments they do not have confidence to complete.

This has dilemma has even led one of UK\’s largest schools to scrap homework completely.  We do not prescribe such a radical course of action, our opinion is that there definitely is a place for extra curricular study and lessons ie homework.  When a parent see\’s their child struggling and frustrated with homework it becomes their duty to rebuild the bridge between the teacher and the child in that subject.  In the same capacity, older students must communicate to their teacher where their successes in education have been in their academic history, so the teacher can better understand their unique patter of learning.

Pop Lock and Learn are purveyors of keeping a child engaged in the sheer joy of learning from an early age by making learning entertaining.  Too many children give up the idea of becoming a scientist or engineer because they have a hard time taking the step of learning the multiplication tables.  We are here to offer a fun alternative to homework with more subjects tackled in the near future.