The core of education: 4C = 4S
Recently I’ve been watching some old TED Talks about education, just to reignite in me some old sparks of enlightening education theories or concepts. Although we are in the age on Artificial Intelligence, experiencing its exponential impact in the education industry, when it comes to learning, there is still something very humanistic about it that I believe we should protect.
This post elaborates on the 4Cs and 4Ss and how I believe they are closely connected and crucial for learning and even ultimately survival of humanity and Mother Earth. What are the 4Cs and 4Ss? Read and observe well!
Creativity
Sir Ken Robinson stood out for me as a great presenter! He was able to engage the audience with his stand-up comedian persona, but also hold his audience with his intellectual perspective in education. As a thought leader in his field, Sir Ken has advocated for creativity (subjects like arts and dance) to be given the same as weightage and emphasis as subjects like the sciences. He strongly calls for celebrating diversity in education, and that importance should not be placed just on subjects like languages, maths, and sciences.
He shares that we are all born creative, and education squanders Creativity. I resonated a lot when he stated how education has made us fearful of failures, and that it only celebrates achievements and successes defined by a very limited scope of the human capabilities. Yet later, we wonder why humankind is losing touch with our culture and history, our feelings, and our humanity.
Intelligence is diverse, dynamic, and distinct. I second his call for a reform in education to reconstitute the richness of human capacity.
What is your Creativity Type? Fun curiosity type test by Adobe: Try it HERE
Critical Thinking
Another TED talk I thought was intriguing was this one on Critical Thinking, and how he simplified it into 4 steps.
- Perceive their environment
- Sense for danger or reward
- Decide between danger or reward
- Act on the decision
As I was listening to it, it reminded me of a few other concepts like the Kolb’s reflective cycle (What, So what, Now what) and the Design Thinking model (Empathise->Define->Ideate->Prototype->Test). When it comes to critical thinking, for me, it is basically a problem-solving mechanism, critical as it is crucial for the survival of self, species, and the world. It is innate, as much as creativity is.
And once a problem is solved, the next phase is making the solution efficient. Just look to Mother Nature for reference, how most flora and fauna are constantly evolving to live and be efficient like a well-oiled machine, like clockwork. They perceive and act. That to me is critical thinking in the works.
Curiosity
Everyone is born curious. Our curiosity is an evolutionary requirement to process our senses, which is essential for survival. Imagine if we can't see, can't hear, can't feel touch, can't taste, can't speak, all senses lost all at once, can we survive? Curiosity is innate, it cannot be learned like a new skill, but it can be encouraged and honed, prompted and sharpened. I don't believe there is a being that is not curious.
Whether an item can be eaten or what your favourite celebrity is up to, there is no argument that there will be effort and ways to find out the answers, be it as a child or an adult. The quote "when there is a will, there is a way" fully applies to when you are curious about something, don't you think so? You will observe the same innate curiosity in animals too, both babies and adults.
However, school, a place created for learning, has been mainly known to deter people from being curious, even causing many to have a specific dislike of certain topics or subjects. Tsk tsk tsk...
Curious of what type of curio you are? Do a short test HERE.
Collaboration
In the education field, this 4th C is not new. Neither is it new in any industry, as teamwork and collaboration is always raved about for building rapport and getting things done well. Even if one lives alone on an island, collaborating with Mother Nature is also needed to ensure one's survival. Can't just be taking off the land non-stop, resources are finite if not sustained properly.
It takes a village to raise a child. Teamwork makes the dream work. Love thy neighbour. All these quotes hinting the importance of collaboration. We are instinctively tribal, as we were since ancient times. Even most animals and plants, if not all, lives in tribes of sort.
My Epiphany
As I digest all these, I wonder if all these talks basically connects back to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. (And when we quote it as hierarchy, it is to be reminded that these concepts are not linear).
I wonder if Curiosity relates to Safety, and Creativity links to Sense of Self, Collaboration is contributing towards the Sense of Belonging, while Critical Thinking leads to Sense of Significance. Allow me to elaborate.
Curiosity is basically an innate ability to sense. Even with missing senses, we can still sense, not just external stimulants, but internal ones as well. And this sensory collection of information helps us with our reactions, be it physical, emotional, or mental reactions. All these are required to ensure Safety and survival, regardless of whether the reactions are risky or safe.
Collaboration is essential to nurture and retain the Sense of belonging. It may not be everything that helps you gain a sense of belonging, but it will definitely help retain it. Working together with another living being, a skill important for the survival of self and the masses. Notice that I did not state working together with another person? One can have a sense of belonging to a place. I see that as you collaborating with any living being on it. This for me looks like a lone person on an island, nurturing the animals and trees around them for a symbiotic relationship.
Critical Thinking, if I see this simply as problem-solving, this then contributes to the Sense of Significance. I mean, don’t you feel pride when you achieve success, or feel embarrassed yet joyful to have failed and learn something from it towards being better at helping yourself or others later? This S provides a sense of purpose for living beings, and that is the daily motivation to continue living.
And finally for Creativity, the innate ability to create anything that brings about the feeling of bliss to yourself and maybe even others, a feeling that transcends societal expectations and brings about some form of animalistic freedom and joy, a moment that is so intuitively easy to comprehend that it could just be your basic instincts that you have forgotten across time - your Sense of Self.
I’d like to emphasise that these Cs and Ss are not a direct 1 to 1 relation and are all interconnected. For example, it is with curiosity that you also get a sense of belonging as you nurture relationships with others, and this may later lead to collaboration, which at times is also crucial for safety and survival of self and the masses. And it is also with Curiosity that you take in your external and internal surroundings and reform it into problems to solve or opportunities to create something new to add value to the system.
For me, the ultimate algamation of all these 4Cs is the term Consciousness. It is just the very core of life! Question is, how can we protect this in our society? As for me, I wonder how we can protect this in education...
So did you find out what my 4Cs and 4Ss are?
p/s: Disclaimer: All tests linked in this post is not research-founded.
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