What should children be taught in their grammar schools these days?

What should children be thought in their grammar schools these days? What will our society look like in twenty years? What are the most efficient ways of teaching? What should the beneficial IT lesson be?

These and similar questions we put not only to ourselves but to various figures across disciplines as well, to people from science, business, education, parents and to all active people who understand that good-quality education is our future and that we cannot fully rely on our state in this regard.

"Our future is uncertain, that's the only thing that we can claim for sure," said Michael Sebek, professor of cybernetics at CTU (Czech Technical University) in Prague during his interview with Lucie Výborná on Czech Radio. Therefore, in his opinion, schools should prepare children for any future and develop those skills that are appropriate for every future. Our school has come up to the same conclusion and we think that it is necessary to develop creative and critical thinking, flexibility, the ability to communicate and the need for lifelong learning. Thus, there is responsibility instead of blind obedience and curiosity instead of expectation of closed lectures that we want to create our school on together with overall approach to students. We want our teaching to be a source of inspiration and good tools. We want to encourage young people to "try", not to be afraid of trying things in spite of making mistakes because one can effectively learn by making mistakes and it moves the person on and further. In our view, one of the main tasks of the school is to give people information about their personality, who they are, what their values are, what they are very good at or what their limits are. This is the only way to build an individual's natural self-confidence in order to live a fulfilled and happy life.

We want to be a place where there are good and healthy interpersonal relationships, a place where people respect each other, a place where both children and adults like to attend and meet because they feel safe there.

We have a wide field of activities in our IT specialization and we focus on modern technologies. The state-level ICT standard for grammar schools does not impose anything specific on us, it is very general and very academic standard. While trying to describe the key competences of a "digitally" literate individual in a comprehensive way, the formulations are so vague that they do not really provide schools with any key for the practical realization of ICT teaching. For instance,

"A student controls, interconnects and applies available ICT resources. A student utilizes theoretical and practical knowledge of the functions of individual hardware and software components to solve tasks creatively and effectively."

While the details in other school subjects described in the curriculum often go to the level of writers, terms, historical events and so on, there, in ICT, you will not find the word like IP address, browser, local storage, cloud, and so IT school teaching looks like this at most of our schools, as it is also aptly written by Mr. Michal Bláha on his blog.

We have decided to prepare a quality ICT curriculum by ourselves and create it based upon our own knowledge and experience in IT practice. We have decided to cooperate with the technology companies, both to commercial and non-profit sphere. We have addressed to important scientific institutions. We want to be in active contact with all progressive Czech universities. 

As for abroad, we are most attracted by Finnish schools. The Finns take education really very seriously and it is one of their main priorities so their education is at the top level and their results are among the best, although Finnish children spend the least time at school from all over Europe. Every child is important to Finnish teachers, everyone is gifted and everyone deserves attention. The teacher is a true personality there, highly competent not only in terms of expertise but also in human terms, and on this basis Finnish teachers are also valued both financially and socially. We would like to see such a model here too.

On the ground of the interviews we have hold, we are convinced that our public is not indifferent to education any more and that there is a growing number of people who realize the need for quality education and the real need for its system change.

We appreciate and thank everyone for their opinions, ideas and interesting suggestions.