Small poppies ... learning to learn in the 21st century

"So that tall poppies can lift their heads to the sky ..."

Small Poppies ... Learning to Learn in the 21st Century

"So that tall poppies can lift their heads to the sky ..." - these words are taken from the title for my upgrade paper which I presented at the end of the second year of my PhD studies.  Why use the analogy of 'poppies' to describe the experience of young learners in the classrooms of nowadays?  Well, I borrow this analogy from M Gross (1999) who adopted the analogy of 'tall poppies' to describe the experience of gifted children in the early years.  In her paper published in Roeper Review (Vol 21, No. 3), Gross talks about the 'cutting down to size of children who develop at a faster rate or attain higher levels of achievement than their age peers'.  

I would extend the analogy of 'small poppies' to the whole community of learners in schools that are succumbing to the pressures of current policies of standardization, regulation, testing and accountability in Malta and Europe designed to ensure that all learners meet minimal expectations.  Such a climate is pushing school leaders and teachers towards a kind of educational practice that values uniformity and standardization to the detriment of creativity, motivation and talent development for both teachers and students.  

Unfortunately, this 'cutting down to size' or trimming of poppies so that the educational field (school or classroom) looks uniform and tidy, practical and easy to handle is allusive to current educational practices that are still present in our schools despite much talk about differentiation, inclusion and quality education for all.  Our 'small poppies' would like to lift their heads to the sky by being provided with opportunities for meaningful learning to take place through a variety of learning experiences that take into consideration who they are as individuals, where they are coming from, what they already know and what they would like to learn, amongst other things.    

So this educational blog is not about giftedness or the 'gifted' learners in our schools, although my interest in this area has been the driving force for my investigation into those factors that facilitate the unveiling and nurturing of emerging abilities, gifts and talents in young learners.  It is about education in the 21st century, about finding ways to motivate, inspire and equip children with those essential skills necessary for them to develop into independent and enthusiastic learners.  It is about building positive learner identities so that children view themselves as capable learners who can overcome any obstacles that might hinder their progress or stifle their emerging abilities.  It is about believing that every child has the potential to learn and that school leaders, teachers and parents can work together to create enabling and supportive learning environments.

And I must conclude this first blog post with a quote by Albert Einstein who, more than a century ago, highlighted the way in which education might be playing a role in stifling children's inquisitive nature to discover, to venture and to learn:

"It is in fact nothing short of a miracle, that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry, for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom, without this it goes to wrack and ruin without fail."