We can't use the educational techniques of the past if we have any hope of preparing for the future.
EDUCATION The problem with our education system is more of concept than execution at this point. From the ineffective early education to the overwhelming cost of higher education you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who says we’re “getting it right”. But our REAL problem is that none of the “solutions” offered is going to change anything. Why? The answers basically boil down to more money.
Why won’t that work? Well, to answer that you only have to ponder “what will be done with the money”. More books? Ok. New schools? Alrighty. Now, buying these things with increased funds will do… what? Our greatest concerns in education at the lower levels comes to the “Three Rs” and math. There’s really not that much that has changed over the years in those areas, so.. how will new books fix our problems? New schools? We have tried that before and the failure rate was practically unchanged. What we find is that merely purchasing new things does absolutely nothing to fix any of our below average results. So, what will work? In it’s most basic sense… “resource reallocation”. Now, that is a pretty vague notion in itself but really the crux of what we’ve been doing wrong. While we’ve been told over and again that our problem was that we just didn’t have enough resources, it’s really that we’re not doing it right with the ones we have. Here are some of the points that need to change to help get the ship righted. Memory doesn’t move society forward- We’re not even looking in the right direction in most cases. While it IS imperative to commit the “Three Rs” to memory as far as the processes of math and the rules of language are concerned since they are the basis of every other area of education, ALL OTHER subjects are diminished if all we do is memorize information. Now, if you think about it.. how many advances in society/technology have spawned because someone just remembered more from their classes than everyone else? Zero. Absolutely zero. No, if we want to raise individuals who can make advances and solve problems we need students that we’ve taught to PROCESS information. To take it, manipulate it and form it into something that WASN’T in a book. We need people who can mold the known into the unknown. We have, for quite some time, heard from many corners that standardized testing doesn’t give us quality education. So why isn’t anyone looking at alternatives? The alternative is that we STOP pushing memorization and BEGIN cultivating ability for more advanced cognitive processing. We have to bring more focus on the areas of debate and philosophy. Philosophy is necessary because, if presented properly, it helps stimulate abstract thought. Why is that important? Abstract thought centers on things that aren’t defined. It encourages one to consider things from different perspectives and view things in new ways. It’s absolutely necessary if we want to raise people who can create and conceive. Debate? Debate, when kept civil and structured with an official to keep things moving in the right direction, teaches us to process and analyze opposing viewpoints. To accept that our viewpoints may not be the most valid and to be able to process information well enough to recognize that. Team debate will also expose students to how other students think and reach their conclusions which can help them along with new ideas… about ideas. In fact, “team studies” would expose each student to far more in the way of new ideas in every area which can give them opportunities for learning unlike anything we have now. If we structure classroom material around the principles of philosophy and debate then what we get is a better “understanding” of a studied subject as opposed to merely memorizing dates and names. This can be applied to the vast majority of subjects that students are exposed to.
Ditch books- WHAT?!? I know, it sounds a bit cooky at first… but hear me out. Think back to when you were in school. Remember when you’d get your textbooks at the beginning of the year? Maybe it would have all of the pages. Maybe the last student didn’t scribble/marker over the important parts that your teacher would focus on. Maybe the information in there is up to date. Maybe. But most often you would suffer from at least one, if not more, of these problems. And honestly, the “up to date information” is probably the most important one of these issues. If you’ve ever looked into it then you know that textbooks can be EXPENSIVE. The information contained within is static and, in some instances, at risk of being influenced by the biases of the author/publisher. You also have to buy books for every student in every class for every subject. Add to that the possible damage that can impact it’s usefulness in class and it starts to become obvious that other methods should be sought. So, what to do? Ditch ‘em. Take the money allocated for textbooks and instead invest in tablets and school-wide broadband. Now, some schools have gone the route of getting tablets but then go back and purchase e-copies of the same textbooks they would’ve bought anyway. That’s not really forward motion. That puts you back to static information and buying “books” for every subject. But ask yourself.. what information in that book cannot be found on the internet? What’s more, the amount of relevant information available on the web DWARFS that in the book and in very real ways makes the idea of a textbook obsolete.
Restructuring how we allocate teachers- One of the things we hear over and again is that we need a better teacher to student ratio. It is said that this will help give more personal attention to each student and that would help them reinforce the lessons better. This can be true with some subjects. As mentioned before, the “Three Rs” require a certain amount of memorization. In these instances it can DEFINITELY be a benefit if a teacher can spend more time with specific, struggling students. However, with the educational model presented above you could actually use FEWER teachers without negative impact to the studies. You see, with the “team learning” described above you can have much larger classrooms because the focus is not on individuals retaining the specified facts so much as the individuals exposed to an environment that will help them achieve far more of their potential. This can be similar to the classroom structure we see in universities. It is considered to be that “higher” education is of a better quality so it would stand to reason that adopting that at lower levels would have a positive effect. As we reduce the need for teachers at the HIGHER levels, we can reallocate those teachers no longer needed to the LOWER levels where the basics are learned and more attention is needed.