Fast forward around 200 years [from the Industrial Revolution]. The world is totally different, yet in education, not much appears to have changed. Classrooms and lecture theatres still look pretty similar... Whilst technological storms and digital disruption rage, the revolution appears to have stopped at the school gate.
-Carla Aerts, The X Report, Jan. 2020
For years, the “top-down”, didactic, government curriculum-based approach to teaching and learning has been the standard method of education in Nigerian schools. However, it is no longer news, that there is the growing dissatisfaction in the society - and amongst students, with the conventional education, which place emphasis on rote learning and cramming of information that never benefits them in the long run.
Our education system has continued to place a premium on mere academic knowledge and the ‘need’ for “good grades” - even if achieved by mere “copy and paste”, than actual understanding and critical thinking. In doing so, it has not only continued to ignore the learning needs of students with other kinds of intelligence, but has also largely failed to equip students with valuable character values and life skills.
It is however becoming more obvious, as more advanced nations have long since recognized, that the need of the moment is a truly holistic approach to education that promotes multi-dimensional learning, and ultimately achieves the all-important objectives of critical thinking, character development and capacity building, as opposed to mere ‘information acquisition’ for the purpose of academic assessments.
At MorphGen, we strongly believe that the Student should be the center of education - and that educators play a vital role in shaping their minds and future. Which is why we have developed the Beyond the Curriculum (‘BTC’) Program – a suite of alternative learning solutions carefully designed to create a more holistic teaching and learning experience, to be delivered in collaboration with educators - which we believe will not only enhance knowledge dissemination and acquisition, but will also address the more important needs of character and capacity development, and ultimately result in the all round personal growth of each learner.
In acknowledgment of the fact that students learn in different ways, the BTC Program is designed to enhance the learning experience by providing expanded learning possibilities for students beyond the conventional training system, incorporating modern methods such as peer-to-peer learning, co-creative learning, educational films, experimentation, field trips, and more.
The potential impact of truly learner-focused, globally relevant educational methods and systems cannot be overestimated, and we’re excited about the possibilities!