As my Junior year is coming to a close, I have been thinking about my education. Always learning in chapters and processes. What crosses my mind is, what will the next step in my class be. Maybe memorizing a list of vocabulary words or trying to understand why fibonacci numbers are so important. Either way its just one more stride on the long trail to college.
In america today, our education system has or needs to change to adapt to the new ways of life, more specifically the new technology. Technology has forever changed our communication and how we receive and gain knowledge. Last week, my math teacher asked me if I would enjoy learning by staying at home and Skyping with the class. I was truly surprised by the question and had never really thought about the possibility of learning like that before. Personally, I wouldn't enjoy that because it would take away the social aspect of school. And I think it would make the already rigid school system even more so.
While the purpose of education is to nurture and to develop qualities like creativity, communication, and collaboration, school's have become more dependent on standardized tests than ever. With such an inflexible collection of teaching material it seems to almost undermine the purpose of education. Instead of developing these qualities, learning through this kind of system molds every student into one kind of student. Where a student can name every president and spit out a textbook definition in a second, but not know how current problems in America will impact the future.
The education system regurgitates the same information to every student so the result is one kind of person. What changes can be made so this doesn't continue happening? Is this a good or bad thing that this is happening to our education system?
This reminds me of a post on Humans of New York I saw recently. I think it was in the May 2012 section on Facebook, but it had the picture of a high school boy and read:
ReplyDelete"The education system is so geared toward fact drilling and rote memorization that students often exit with a head full of dates and formulas, but without the ability to constructively think. Now, if we readjusted the testing and educational system to focus on critical reasoning rather than memorization, then even if we knew fewer facts off the top of our heads - we would be smarter overall. We would take a step toward doubt – and a step toward thinking for ourselves."