How to bring EA into the classroom?

This article is written for others working in the educational sector. It starts a discussion on how to bring the ideas of EA into the classroom.

I first tell something about myself and how I came to these ideas, secondly I lay out my thinking about the ethics of talking about ideas (like EA) with children, whereupon write about the main question of this thread.

My background: I am a primary school children at a school for gifted children in the Netherlands. I dare to say I am exelent at my job, as managing my class, conveying the curriculum and doing the necessary teacher-tasks feel not as difficult to me. I have time left to experiment in my class with all kinds of educational ideas. Furthermore, I am doing a thesis on teaching children to appreciate the school curriculum. Since I encountered EA, doubts of continuing my profession arised. The main EA thought on teaching [https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/teaching/] is that it’s not neglected and the influence a teacher can have is limited as you are only able to influence a limeted amount of others. On the other hand, I am good at my job and I am teaching a special target group of gifted children. I think we could also debate if there are no big issues in our education system witch I could tackle as a teacher, but I leave that to another discussion thread. Whilst doubting a carreer change, I am working at the moment as a teacher, and will so for at least another year. For this period I ask myself, what can I do now with the ideas of EA in my profession? Specifically on conveying the EA ideas onto my students and collegues.

Ethical considiration: Firstly, is it ethical to convey EA ideas to my students and collegues?Should education be allowed to convey certain political or philosophical ideas? Should it not be independent? Shouldn’t only parents be allowed to influence their childrens ideas? In my opinion I am allowed to influence my students philosophically and politically, mainly because 1. all ecucation is imminently influencing children, 2. because I think students should be influence by a variety of people and 3. because the development of learning to think about different ideas is dependent on coming across these ideas and being supported to think about them.

All education is based upon choices. Choices of subjects that are taught, choices of content matter within these subject and teaching styles of teachers which are heavily influenced by culture. So we have to think about these choices and continuously improve them, but we cannot say we can’t influence children if we want so.
I think every situation a child is in, it giving children new ideas, bad ones and good ones. Meeting many different ideas and teaching the child to think about these ideas is therefore the only option. Some people will share valueable ideas and help children think, and some will hinder a child’s development, this is innevitable. The good (which is almost impossible to define) will compensate for the bad. This all makes it that I believe students should be inspired by the ideas of educators, parents and others, letting meet a variety of voices.
Of course there is a line: Educators should not force their ideas onto children. We should leave space for discussion, criticism and thought. Thereupon, we should be more careful sharing our ideas with children as they have not yet the abilities and knowledge to be critical and think about the arguments, therefore we should support their thinking. But this is not an argument against talk about our ideas with children, it is actually the oposit, as talking twith them about different ideas develops their ability to think.

Main question: How can we get the EA ideas into education? To think about this, I am thinking to create a system/framework to catagorize various approaches. It starts of with the smallest steps I think you can take to do this going up to the most radical changes. I am very curious about ideas from the community so I can add these to this framework. (And yes, the love of frameworks has also arised from EA. My love to William MacAskill).

0.Conveying EA ideas unintentional A. Speech: Being involved with EA changes your thinking and your speech therefore it automatically conveys EA ideas to your students and collegues. Language matters! Educators know this, the way we say things, the order in which we say things and the words we use can completely change all situations (this is of course not only the case for education). To even go further, the way we word things show the solutions we think of. For example, stating we have a climate problem or stating that we have to find solution to live climate-neutral, pave paths for two very different lines of thinking about the same problem. In this way actually, starting whith speech might not be the smallest step, but is an easy step as changing your speach is something which can be done without effort and inmediately. So, by only knowing about EA your thoughts change, and with it your speech as well. So being involved with EA will automatically alter your education and it will influence the way you speak with your collegues. For example, I was teaching arithmetic’s and suddenly the word ‘effective’ came out of my mouth. Then I eleborated what the word effective meant, giving examples, concluding that you could use various methods in arithmetic’s but is the best to find the most effective method for each situation. I was aware that this was a result of EA ‘indoctrination’ on me from the past year. So, your thougts and words will change and you will convey this to some extent to your students. Other EA related ideas, like the critical thinking skills learned at universities will have similar effects.

1.Conveying EA ideas intentional on a small scale without requiring much effort A.Deliberate change of speech Something I now want to experiment with, since I started thinking about this topic (this originated when I talked with another educator on EAGxRotterdam), is deliberatly using EA semantics, EA-language while educating my students, during all primarys school subjects. In this way, I convey the EA-philosophy through just being with my students and collegues.

2.EA-Projects in education A. Donating to charity Since I have come across the ideas of EA I started donating 10% of my income every year to charity. As a teacher, I thought it would be a valuable learning experience for my students to let them choose to which charity I donated my salary. Last year, my group 8 (children aged 11-12 years old) researched charities based upon different sites. They got some instruction and inspiration about EA from me. After this all they had a group discussion, upon which they decided which charity to donate to (a tree planting charity). This year I taught group 6 (children aged 9-10 yearsold). I gave instruction about charities and the importance of effective charities. Then I let them do research on the site doneereffectief.nl (the Dutch site of EA for donating), upon which they had a group discussion deciding to donate to the climate fund. I am still experimenting with this, as I try to find out how I can raise my students awareness as much as possible. I decided to give my students less freedom this year as they are younger and because I think it was better to give them good sources (doneereffectief.nl) as supposed to also having to teach them about good sources of information, as this would derive the main focuses of learning about what a good charity is and what the current world problems are (following to EA).

3.Creating an EA-Curriculum A. I am in the process of writing an educational module for another project. The idea in the back of my mind is there to write a similar EA module.

4.Even bigger??