I Don't Know Yet

The Power of 4 Words

On Friday I was invited to the National Education Union, Arts & Education Roundtable discussion. We talked about what we felt was wrong with the current education system, how this impacted teaching in creative subjects, and what we felt needed to be done to help shift the current pedagogical misunderstandings which teachers and pupils are exposed to.

At one point, of course, the conversation shifted to a discussion about the fact that progression in art, music, drama etc is never linear and that we need to move away from the current system fixated on tangible, teachable, assessable “knowledge” if we are to help pupils and teachers experience and understand the rich learning enabled by discovery. Through discovery, nuggets of knowledge are embedded in experience, so they become memorable, but more than that, through discovery pupils learn to hypothesise, imagine, collaborate and contribute.

I have a small banner with the words “I Don’t Know Yet”, and at times, I think that these small words hold the most power.

“Not knowing”, is not generally something we aspire to. Not knowing doesn’t get us good grades at school, and it’s not going to earn us any favours as pupils, or teachers, in class.