Education Expert Prof. Renata Bilbokaitė: In Addition to Theory, Teachers Should Teach Spiritual Subjects

Influencers should not be more popular than teachers, says Prof. Renata Bilbokaitė, Director of the Šiauliai Academy of Vilnius University (VU). She says this is because schools are so focused on the curriculum that there is no time to spend with the students. Therefore, according to the Professor, there's a need for balance. In addition to theories, students should learn about spiritual things. Does school prepare for exams or life? VU podcast Mokslas Be Pamokslų discussed the topic of celebrating Teachers' Day.

What does it take to prepare for life?

It is often assumed that a teacher's primary goal is to prepare children for exams. Everyone's focused on grades, results, and achievements. However, according to Prof. R. Bilbokaitė, teachers also raise people and help them solve problems that are sometimes irrelevant to the lessons' content but affect their complex personal experiences and feelings.

"If we put these two elements together, we might be able to raise a complete, multi-layered person or to help them prepare for life," says the Director of the VU ŠA.

According to her, a major problem arises when, instead of striking a balance between theoretical and spiritual teaching in a 50:50 ratio, we concentrate 90% on understanding facts, meanings and the world and on learning about it through the disciplines, which become especially difficult for adolescents in the upper grades. However, very little attention is paid to the chosen spiritual concept and the development of feelings and emotions.

"There is an unfilled field, a medium they still have to fill on their own. That's when they start saying they're not into, for example, math. Maybe they are much more interested in something else, and we, as a society, have chosen a different paradigm - a more scientific, literacy-oriented paradigm - and we have missed out on the depths of that," the Professor believes.

The teacher's goal is not only to impart knowledge but also to inspire children

A teacher's vocation or the profession itself means being a guide, a leader, and an authority that pupils will follow, says Prof. R. Bilbokaitė. The responsibility of spiritual teaching, she argues, therefore, falls on the shoulders of the teacher. But this should not be a great sacrifice or suffering - following authority should come from the fact that the teacher is engaging, that his or her world is much wider, points out the education expert.

"Every teacher should want to live up to students' expectations. Influencers should not be more popular than those who create more value. But if this is the case, then students, especially teenagers, need other experiences that influencers can provide, and teachers cannot. Why? It is likely that we are very much focused on programmes, on content. There is no more time to spend with a pupil than 50 years ago. There are meetings with the class teacher, which, I have to say, are very limited, and the teacher doesn't have much time to devote to the student to ask how he or she is doing. Students are a lot deeper than we reveal. We simply don't give them the time and attention they deserve, or not enough of it," says the Professor.

More emphasis is placed on theoretical teaching because orientation towards concrete subjects is easier to measure than soft subjects, says Prof. Bilbokaitė.

"A simple example from higher education. If there are 100 students in a course, it is very convenient for the lecturer to measure knowledge: you have learnt, you have not learnt, you have solved, you have not solved. But it's just knowledge. We don't measure skills or competencies. This is where creativity begins: one person might reveal himself through one task, another through some other task," she says.

The first question, she says, is, what do we want schools to teach? The focus is on knowledge, with the hope and aspiration that students will be literate. But education cannot be one-way, she says, it must be integrated.

"Programmed learning is very good. It has certainly worked to some extent, but it's just one algorithm of an information language. What about the rest? What about art, then? What about creativity? Human beings are inherently designed to create. Nowadays, "sustainability" has become almost a swear word, but sustainability is simply about "I create and do little harm to the environment." We are not there yet. We measure what is easily measurable: a test, a piece of work read, or a task completed.

Note why some children say they don't want to read books. Because some of the works don't call to them, don't make them feel things. So maybe we should let them choose some of the pieces, or perhaps we have to let them experience it by watching a movie because it's still an experience. Now is the time to question, and when we have education problems, they are welcomed because people are willing to solve problems. What has been there for many years should really "go away"," the Professor is convinced.

How to find more time

Time is often at a premium for educators in today's childhood education. One of the biggest problems is demotivating experienced teachers and new educators.

"If I said that we need to raise salaries and reduce the number of classes, I would probably become more popular, but it's all about finances, and the same goes for higher education and medicine. But we are probably talking more about content. The first question to be answered (and this is what the new programmes are trying to do) is: Is it really necessary to have such a large amount and such a vast array of data? Maybe we need less but deeper," says Prof. R. Bilbokaitė.

However, she says a good start has been made with inclusive or STEM education. It's a model of educational organization that uses science, technology, engineering, creativity education, and mathematics to develop students' investigative skills, collaboration, and critical thinking.

"Complexity and integrity coming into education is a wonderful thing. But are we sure we're not moving towards the other extreme when we, having ten STEM centers in Lithuania, expect a 50% increase in science enrolments in five years? It shouldn't be about enrollment, it should be about people. People who are free to establish jobs. After all, it's the experience, if we have deep experience, that helps us flourish later in life. But without deep experience, there will be gaps and incompetence in the later grades. I am in favor of narrower content, more integrated with other subjects.

Why do many students have little understanding of natural sciences? Research shows that teenagers are more likely to have feelings for themselves, for the other or the same sex, to be tormented by cognitive questions of being, and to lose the sense of learning algorithms and patterns. People no longer see the connection between the chemical equations they solve in their notebooks and the reality of life. Therefore, failing to show why these things are important makes those algorithms boring. Education needs to be brought closer to reality, so there is no huge gap. Other studies show that teenagers learn most life lessons about getting to know other people from movies, not at school. So what is a school? Does it represent scientific literacy, or should there be something more through those good examples? I always support those teachers-leaders who also demonstrate moral values," the Professor said.

Reasons why being a teacher is no longer considered a prestige

During the podcast, the expert noted the reasons why teachers' authority has declined. Ten years ago, she and her sister carried out a study on the image of teachers in the media. At that time, she said, 90% of the headlines used words such as "did," "made a mistake," etc.

"There may have been some moral departures from what society expects of an educator as a high-level moral being. But with the advent of the internet and social networks, I had to accept that a teacher is also just a person. Everyone very quickly realized that they had made one of the biggest mistakes in society because belittling a teacher is like belittling parents. For a child, parents are the most important people until they are in primary school, and then they share that level of importance among adults with their primary school teacher.

This means that you cannot raise your child in any other way than through authority. They will not learn from you if you are not their authority. We have been correcting the mistake of not meeting teacher expectations for almost 10 years. In particular, in the last five years, the aim has been to make teaching a prestigious profession again. I think that prestige has not been taken away. If we were to ask the children and society itself, I think the answer is definitely that a teacher is an authority," she says.

According to Prof. R. Bilbokaitė, there is still a mismatch between expectations and the desire to earn a lot of money. She argues that people in education are not in it for the big bucks. They want to contribute to shaping young adults, to excite them, and to get something out of them as well.

We are creating a human being, contributing to comprehensively shaping and coloring that human being. That's the point. Yes, it's difficult. Yes, it requires a lot of effort, it's sometimes unpleasant and extremely difficult, but that's why you're here for. Otherwise, this is not the place to work. A large proportion of teachers are like this. (...) Society simply needs to reassess its values. Parents should also have confidence in the teacher and teachers should have confidence in themselves," says the education expert.