The current generation of teachers grew up with the idea that school means: Sit in class, listen, and go home to study until you know the material well enough to write a test or exam.

In the past and even now, teachers are trained to do the same thing. Their lesson preparations focus on strategies to transfer their knowledge on to children in structured, passive learning environments, where learners are expected to repeat and memorize until they’re ready to write exams.

While we were busy preparing children for tests and exams, technology quietly slipped in through the back door, changing the entire education landscape. Where children used to shuffle between classes, they now sit glued to computers from a young age, discovering, creating, and thinking for themselves. Much to teachers’ frustration, they must now admit that children enjoy being actively involved much more. Children have stopped just listening, because with one internet search, they can gather more information than is expected to be "absorbed" in a single period—and they actually enjoy it!

Where teachers once believed most children’s brains were slow to understand, we now realize the brain processes information at the speed of light, sparking curiosity for even more information. Where students used to count down the minutes until the bell rang, they now sit engrossed at the fountain of internet information, and enjoying conversations about it with their friends.

The picture I’ve painted might make it seem like teachers are no longer needed, but that’s not true. Learners still need to work through the curriculum. Notice the wording—it’s the children who must work through the curriculum, not the teachers. And believe me, they are skilled at it, because every time they sit in front of a computer, they work through a theme—whether it’s a syllabus theme or not, it’s still a theme, and they work through it. It’s interesting to note that children retain internet knowledge much longer than they do after a teacher covers a theme and revises it twice.

This means children already discovered the secret how to work through themes.

It is now time for teachers to acquire the much-needed curating skill to guide learners to work through syllabus themes in the same focused ways.

The Marvelous Minds Thinking Tools team are specialists in curating skill and has proven successes.

That’s why we’re hosting a summit to showcase what we can do and how.

When: 26 October 2024

Where: Eduvos University Pretoria https://marvelousminds.online/mm_summit_about/