I just watched an extraordinary video by a 17-year-old student in Beirut.

I’m going to share the link with you below so that you can see it too.

If you ever thought that there was nothing wrong with education right now listen to him and tell me you still believe it after you have watched the video?

As I was thinking about what to say about it suddenly made me think of the lyrics to the Pink Floyd album ‘Another brick in the wall’.

‘We don’t need no education
We don’t need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers leave them kids alone
Hey! Teachers! Leave them kids alone!
All in all, it’s just another brick in the wall.
All in all you’re just another brick in the wall.

We don’t need no education
We don’t need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers leave them kids alone
Hey! Teachers! Leave them kids alone!
All in all, it’s just another brick in the wall.
All in all you’re just another brick in the wall.’
All I could remember of the lyrics was ‘Teachers leave them kids alone’, so I looked them up and found them to be very descriptive of what Jihad Kawas was talking about.

We have had Generation X now have their own children who are called Generation Z. Jihad Kawas is one of them. He talks very calmly and amusingly about school not saying that he hates it just saying there is a better way. He asks parents to demand the type of school he describes.

He says that for him there are three things wrong with school. Time, assessment and subjects.

He says we seem to spend all day at school waiting. Waiting for the bus to go to school, waiting for lessons, waiting for lunch, to be inspired and waiting for it to end. He asks the question what could a kid do in 8 hours if he was not at school?’

He tells an amusing story about assessment where he had a physics exam but forgot to write the formulas on his hand, which he confesses he usually did.

Because of the failed the exam and was really ‘pissed off’ with himself.

So he went home and spent a long time learning how to produce a video game about how he felt about the experience. Ironically he did lots of learning and produce a game where the teacher got killed by his head. He demonstrated all of the theories and principles he needed to pass the exam and showed them to his physics teacher.

Although he had demonstrated enough to pass the exam, the assessment did not allow him to be examined on the content that he had created, and so he failed.

So finally the last point that he hates is learning things that he doesn’t think he wants to learn or is not interested in.

He imagines a school where you learn the things you’re interested in, and you learn by doing things rather than sitting listening to teachers talking about theory.

A school where you’re assessed on the things you produce what and how well you memorise facts she may never use.

A school where you can learn with students of any age and be inspired by the differences in your experiences.

A school where you can learn by failing and not be punished for failing.

At the beginning of his very engaging talk says ‘we find school irrelevant or even destructive to what we do’.

This is not an unintelligent guy was going to be unsuccessful in life. He has already formed a company and was invited to Apple’s conference selected from millions who applied.

This is a guy who wants to be successful and learn the things he thinks he needs to know and is interested in and then you’ll be inspired to do more.

Wouldn’t this be an easier way to educate people?

You may think it’s impossible, but I would say to you that with even current technology, let alone what will happen shortly, we could do this now.

It is easy to imagine how core subjects could be related to personal learning styles and subjects, and more importantly, goals.

Assessments could be in many different formats from models to tools, video presentations written pieces or even the effect that the piece of work has on other people.

If we can put a man on the moon surely, it’s not difficult to do this?

I’m going to write to him and send him the lyrics of the song and see if he thinks that it sums up the situation; I do.