Marlow author Tony Buzan: Education system is "18th century" (From This Is Local London)

Marlow author Tony Buzan: Education system is "18th century"

1:20pm Wednesday 18th February 2009

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A GLOBE trotting education guru who once taught Pythagoras to unruly pupils through penalty shoot outs has slammed the education system, branding it stuck “in the 18th century.”

Marlow resident Tony Buzan, an international author, lecturer and education adviser, says the methods used for learning in schools are fundamentally wrong and are at the root of society's ills – even the banking crisis.

Mr Buzan, is renowned for developing mind maps, an alternative form of note taking using diagrams and images to connect themes.

The writer, who has worked with education ministers home and abroad, including Singapore, Japan and Malaysia, designed mind-mapping after studying the note taking techniques of some of the world's great minds - including Leonardo da Vinci, Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, and Winston Churchill.

He decided that conventional methods were "opposed to what the brain needs."

He said: "All the great thinkers no matter what their fields, whether it was science, literature, music, war or politics, they all made 'messy notes'.

“They used a lot of sketches, codes, symbols and arrows.

"You could call it very sophisticated doodling, so the mind map you could call the ultimate doodle, because it has meaning.

"To be able to be remembered notes have to stand out. You have to use images, colours size and dimension - you have to engage the brain with its own language."

He said modern methods of education are flawed because “nobody looks at the fundamental of how the brain works”.

"It's happening in England but it’s slower than in other countries because England is not as interested in education, either at the political or family level, which is why we are rapidly sliding down the international league tables,” he said.

“We are still in the 18th or 19th century mode of education, it is static and stagnant."

"They have been tinkering and putting on bandages over these giant wounds,” he said, “Children are taught what to learn that they're not taught how to learn - that is the quicksand into which they fall, it's taken to granted.”

He proposed introducing a module on 'how to learn' for one to two hours a week.

He said mind mapping has become essential in education in far eastern countries such as Malaysia and at a Mexican university which caters for 30,000 students where each is required to complete a certificate of competence before undertaking their degree course.

He said it was vital for disinterested pupils to relate to subjects like maths through something they enjoy and understand such as football or darts.

Mr Buzan, whose office is based at the Harleyford Estate in Marlow, taught classes at a notoriously difficult inner London school in the 1960s about maths through football.

He used penalty shoot outs to illustrate force, momentum, angles and to teach them percentages.

They learnt averages by analysing the goals per game of the top strikers of the time such as Jimmy Greaves.

He said: “It's what all school classes should be like rather than these ludicrous syllabuses.”

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