Changing the Future Education: an Old Fashioned Term

                                                                  Jonathan Vela Saavedra

Changing the future of education is a very popular and known phrase, nothing else than that, used by thousands of people such as the government, education Ministers and even professors who are about to retire. Future education is defined as the big impact and change the teaching and learning process will have in our society in the next coming years. Some time ago, government and education experts started to worry about the low English levels students were graduating with after school, so they began to come up with different ideas, methods and approaches in order to change the future of education. Today, in most of the English classrooms professors still think about changing the education, improving the education, but classes are the same from that time ago with unmotivated students, meaningless lessons and even worst teacher-centered classes.  However, government official  insist  the education system has improved and English is taught better than before.   Education has to change now, this is the moment when teachers  have to stop thinking and start acting in order to improve the teaching-learning process, otherwise our education and the illustrious “Bilingualism project” will always be a disaster in Colombia.

First, Language teachers have to understand they are mediators between knowledge and students, that the traditional methods, which make the English teacher an all-dominant authority, are old-fashioned and must disappear now. Some time ago Dewey (1938) criticized the spoon-feeding of knowledge, and highlighted the significance of the learner as an active agent in his own learning process. Later on, he suggested the celebrated term “learner-centeredness” which today, about 75 years later, keeps being just a term since English teachers still plan classes without taking into account students’ needs. They do not even think about the reasons why students are in the classroom or what their purpose is to learn a second language. Sadly, the idea of future education just remains in our minds and it will continue in the same condition unless teachers change their way of thinking.

   After the year 2000, the government got more involved in the second language learning in Colombia, according to Jan Van De Putte, a British Council Colombia and National Education Minister consultant, “due to economic interests (because of opening process and globalization)” and they created a huge project called “PROGRAMA NACIONAL DE BILINGUISMO. Colombia 2004-2019”. It basically consists on the English proficiency in Colombia as a second language by 2019. Today, we are about 7 years away from the deadline and students are still graduating from high schools with Basic English levels, A1 According to the Common European Framework. So, what are language teachers doing at school? Are they implementing new technologies in order to improve the English levels? The answer to both questions relies on the conditions schools work with and the communication breakdowns between government and professors.

Finally, It is necessary to say that “the chalk and cement board are behind” as Diana Carolina Cantillo says in her article “la educacion del futuro”. Nowadays, we have a lot of different materials to enhance the English teaching-learning process, to go out of the classroom and to have motivated students like technology which gives Language students thousands of tools to “touch” the language, to have contact with culture, to work and learn meaningfully.

Education has to change today, Colombian teachers have to modify their mind and stop complaining about “the situation”, you are the ones who make the difference; you are not the centre of the class. Take into account the Humanistic Approach developed during the half of the 20^th century or the Communicative Language Teaching from the 60s, the internet possibilities and how useful it may be for your meaningful lessons, change your perception classes are students-centered and nowadays students’ needs are different, the world is different, so the future is what you are doing right now inside the classroom, and only in that way the Bilingualism project and the English teaching- learning process will be completely successful in our country.