25 APRIL 2022
Melkbosstrand Private School is unique and stands out from its counterparts for several reasons – one of these being that we are focused on providing High Touch education in today’s High Tech world.
What is High Touch education and why all the recent interest and hype about it and more importantly why does MPS believe that focusing on and providing this type of education is key to the future of its students and the world?
High Touch High Tech (HTHT) learning
As the world has becomes more and more focused on Technology so the focus in Education shifted to a more technologically driven approach with less emphasis on High Touch skills and growth.
One of the results of the global shift in education was an eventual realisation that Education is facing a potential crisis
– children are trained to master new technology but are severely under-equipped and do not have the necessary skills to deal with or cope in today’s world.
In layman’s terms – children were being released into the world fully capable of handling the technology they are surrounded with but not at all able to handle each other and their fellow man – working in a team, collaborating, communicating and self-regulation skills were all lacking.
So along came another shift – one that we at MPS embrace – a shift towards High Touch education along with High Tech.
The pure HTHT approach to learning combines adaptive technology (High Tech) with personalised teaching focused on the cultivation of students’ higher order skills (problem solving, critical thinking, analytical thinking, etc) and socio-emotional growth (High Touch).
The MPS approach to High Touch Education
At MPS while we acknowledge and embrace the global integration of technology in just about every aspect of life we believe that it is crucial that our top priority is to focus is on on the holistic development of the child. Technology and technological advancement most definitely has its place in the education realm today – the difference, we believe, is that in addition to this we need to be equipping our students from the very youngest right through to our matriculants, with vital “higher order skills” all while helping them with their growth and development on both the social and emotional fronts.
Higher order skills include teaching them how to think both critically and analytically and to solve problems creatively. These skills together with support and advice in social and emotional spheres of their development are the key facets or ingredients of our ChangeMakers recipe…. we want them to be able to negotiate the world in all its facets, master interactions with fellow human beings at school and eventually at work and in the community – ultimately we want to produce young people who will be able to make a real, positive, Impact in the world.
The fact that we are surrounded by, in our opinion, the best, most beautiful, setting for any school and our smaller classes both add to our ability to give our students the best possible learning experience.
At MPS we believe in Raising and Releasing ChangeMakers – we know this is the way forward in the future and the key to a bright future for our community and the world.
