What is education actually for? Are we doing it right?
Children attending school at the Chomkeo elementary school in Kenthao District, Sayaboury Province.
“Where’s the nearest gas station?”
“How’s the traffic near home?”
“What’s the final score of the derby match today?”
These are the questions that we mutter into our phones. Thousands of requests are completed by virtual assistants every minute.
That’s just how powerful the technology we possess today is. It has drastically changed the way we live our lives.
In the 21st century, the world is advancing faster than ever. Humans are becoming more productive with the seemingly infinite amount of resources surrounding us. Space-shrinking technology takes over the world, making burdens from tasks easier to bear. As a result, many aspects of life are greatly improved.
Space-shrinking technologies are dominating the world, which increases the efficiency of bringing out daily tasks; yet, disheartening it is to see that the bags of school children only grow bigger every year. The gradual addition of heavy textbooks ache the backs of these students: they feel that the burden they bear is more than enough.
It is quite alarming that the system implemented today is still largely the same over the past two centuries. Schools place academic excellence as the prime priority; other things do not matter that much. Along these lines, students are conditioned to think that getting satisfactory grades should be their main goal.
Ultimately, do grades matter? Should they be the sole benchmark that guarantees one’s success later on in life? The answer is not necessarily.
With all of this in mind, we have to take a step back and look at our education system. The Webster’s College Dictionary states that education is the process of acquiring general knowledge and of developing the powers of reasoning and judgment. Education was intended to be an enlightening experience; to nurture a lifelong appreciation for learners. Yet, when we think of education today, we think of the overwhelming amount of assignments, and year-end examinations that will determine whether they will pass or not. We view education as a system that worsens the wellbeing of students both mentally and physically.
Education is supposed to make us inquisitive, bright and full of ideas. Whatever happened to the old version of ourselves, the ones who always pestered parents with questions of how the world works? Are we getting any smarter, or are we heading the opposite direction?
Some ambitious parents enroll their children into intensive after-school tutoring sessions with the hopes that they will achieve the high expectations put on them. These parents forget that their children bear 7 hours of school a day, having to cope with so many responsibilities thrown at them.
Sure, these tutoring sessions might bring benefit and help children score the stellar grades their parents have always thirsted for. We must consider, however, that after the test-taking is over, most children will forget everything they have learned. This is a process that does not nurture life-long learning that earliest models of education aimed for.
In the name of getting ‘good’ grades, students plunge into what feels like a never-ending depression. Their train of thought does not function properly, as the only thing that they focus on is their inability to meet their parents’ projections.
Through this, students will not gain any more knowledge; even worse, they will only lose their lives due to the immense amount of pressure they have exerted on themselves. Though Asian countries such as Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Japan pride on the fact that they are home to the world’s smartest students, they also look down upon the fact that they have the globe’s highest student suicide rates.
The education we know today is a result of the Industrial Revolution. More than 200 years ago, the lower and middle classes worked low-paying jobs such as machine operators, contractors, weavers, and farmers. The system was designed to make students obey authority and abide by the rules; when in fact, today’s world requires people who break out from the norm and change the world in ways that have never been seen. Those who devised the system envisioned future generations of workers and purposely made education a one that degrades the moralities of students, with the intention to mold them to become fraught workingmen who only care about making ends meet. This is the greatly outdated education system we know today, and it only stunts the growth of youth, not help them flourish into better, creative beings.
Instead of cluttering our minds with facts irrelevant to our futures, we should be taught essential life skills that can help us in not only one specialized field, but in many vocations. Career paths and job opportunities come and go, but the fact that we learners should know how to live our lives right remains as a reality of great significance.
We have had the wrong assumption of what education is for a very long time. Again, the main goal of education is enlightenment, meaning that we should be aware of many aspects of our lives. In actuality, the education we are familiar with today is a system that instructs children never to leave their classrooms, forcing them to bear seemingly long and winding hours. They will then continue to higher forms of education, and after graduating from university, they will falter after realizing that this present reality is more than attaining what is called “good grades”.
Having realized the errors in the system, education needs to be reformed drastically to lead next generations onto the right path. There are only a few but leading cases that have revolutionized education as we know it. A profound example would be Finland.
Finland is one of the few countries that adopt the aforementioned mindset. 30 years ago, the Scandinavian country had one of the world’s worst education systems. After educators realized that students were regressing at a rapid pace, they transformed the curriculum’s approach into a more holistic one to benefit both teachers and students. Since then, Finland has drastically improved in terms of literacy and reading, Maths, and Science.
A classroom in Finland.
The reason why Finland’s teachers are so respected is not only because they account for a small part of the population, but because they are the only ones that are required to get a master degree in research and classroom discipline. Once a method produces undesirable results, they will keep trying new ones until the students are able to succeed.
Students do not need to take any tests until the end of their senior year of high school. Schools throughout use the same curriculum, meaning that there isn’t any competition or comparison, so students get the same education no matter if they are rich or poor.
Finland’s education spends more money and time on the quality of learning rather than standardized tests.
Another instance that makes Finland’s education system so successful is the emphasis on the importance of vocational education. While other countries may few this as a dead end for students, the Finns highly respect vocational school and see it as the more practical and secure path for many. There is an almost equal division between students who choose to go to vocational school and traditional high school. Most students who chose a vocational path already had an idea of what they wanted to work as and were willing to hone necessary skills for that career. They could start working and earn money after only three years of school and didn’t have to go to university. Finland offers 120 vocational certificate programs in 50. fields that students can choose to study at different vocational schools in Finland, including tourism, business and entrepreneurship, social services, and catering.
Living in the rise of a digital world provides people around the globe with limitless possibilities. Learning does not have to stop in the four walls of school: the very gadgets that we possess can be utilized for an optimum learning experience. Khan Academy is the most popular website that has proved this statement true. Founded by Salman Khan, the website has been praised by many: from stressed students, esteemed educators, to Bill Gates, the world’s most powerful man. In his book The One World Schoolhouse, Khan writes that the old classroom model, based on same-aged individuals placed in batches coupled with a one-pace-fits-all curriculum, does not fit the rapidly changing standards of today. Khan Academy is a pioneer in combining technology and learning, resulting in a meaningful learning process. Moreover, the site is free and can be used by learners from all ages, as long as they understand English and have access to YouTube.
Ultimately, education is still of very great importance. Education gives us knowledge of the world in which we live and guides us in developing our perspective. It aids us in building our opinions and having different points of view on important matters. Education is not just about lessons in textbooks: it is about the lessons of life. The values that children will be taught are important in dictating what they will become in the future. Realizing this, the education system should be drastically amended with the purpose of putting children on the right path.
The world has changed at such at an astounding rate that the education system used today simply does not fit. With innovations made in the field of technology over the past few years, it is quite effective to merge programs similar to Khan Academy with learning in school. Educators around the world need to unite, acknowledge the current state of education, and think of ways to change the system, possibly following in the footsteps of Finland. They also need to be aware of the fact that certain career paths will turn obsolete as a result of the advancement of artificial intelligence.
