Making a Change to Current Education Systems Education varies in purposes. The most fundamental one, now embraced by many people around the world, Is to prepare the next generation for their future. However, the word “future” varies in opinions toward it. The public education system can be dated back to the 19th century, when the society starts to boom with prosperity thanks to the industrial revolution, and Is generally believed to be set up for commercial and industrial needs, resulting in the most useful subjects, in terms of lobs, landing on the top of the educational hierarchy.
In fact, as researchers compared various education systems around the world, they were met with an astonishing, yet at the same time, granted-fact that almost every education system on Earth has, more or less, the same hierarchy of subjects: mathematics and language at the top, followed by other academic subjects such as humanities, and at the bottom, the arts. And as a widely recognized consequence, many people who are highly talented in areas other than dominant ones think they’re not because their abilities are not valued at school.
In terms of this, “future” seems to be forced Into a linear reiterative with no further motivation or possibilities. In response to this, Jamie Oliver, internationally renowned chef and food specialist, came up with an interesting metaphor: we have sold ourselves Into a fast food model of education, in which everything is standardized, and it’s impoverishing our spirit as much as fast food is depleting our physical bodies. In fact, education Is said to dislocate us from our natural talents. Hopefully, however, many experts and specialists have come up with different ideas to steer our current education system toward a better future.
In the following part of this essay, I, as a concerned student, am going to discuss potential solutions to this problem and some of the obstacles ahead them. According to Geoff Mulligan, chief Executive of the National Endowment for science Technology and the Arts, In response to large numbers of bored school children who can’t see the relation between what they’re learning and future jobs, and employers complaining constantly that graduate employees don’t possess required abilities and motivations, Young Foundation, a British organization whose goal is to develop new ideas on education, Introduced studio schools In the past few years.
Studio schools, along at students from 14 to 19, are a new kind of school that reverses the practice learning structure. Instead, with 80 percent of their curriculum done by practical real-life projects. They encourage students to get their hands dirty and learn by doing. The origins of their ideas are said to be traced back to studios in the Renaissance, where working and learning are fully integrated.
As an experiment, Young Foundation invited teenage students to Join these schools, and surprisingly, to only did the students feel much more motivated, the GEESE exam results, which came out two years later, also showed that students who were evaluated as the least performing, had actually Jumped right to the top. However, despite their exceptional tofu performances, status cocoons seem to nave tenet restrictions. Hrs AT all, It Is generally acknowledged that not all students learn best by doing practical projects before they learn fully about the theory (though according to several researches, a majority of them do).
As a result, studio schools may not be able to fully replace main treat schools, leading to the following problems. Secondly, as studio school students graduate at 19, it is very possible that they’ll need to attend college as well. This sets before us two obstacles to overcome. One is the difficulty of evaluation, which may be relatively easy to solve, and the other the hardship of balanced education in college, which results from the deeply embedded concept itself.
The former suggests that since studio schools and main stream schools have different educational approaches, it would probably be hard to establish an examination yester which can equally evaluate students from both sides. On the other hand, for the latter, it seems that educating both under the same undergraduate curriculums would suffer certain hardships. Third, to educate students in an entirely new way probably means that specially-trained teachers capable of doing this are required.
It also indicates that before the range of studio schools can be expanded, we may have to first solve the problem of required teachers. So far, as studio schools are not yet a widely embraced concept, this can be, to some extent, another obstruction. Last but to least, as the most reputed problem, public values are supposedly the hugest barrier set before studio schools. Since a majority of the public seems to conform to the deep-rooted traditional academic concepts, it would probably take time to spread the notion and convince people to give it a try.
Still, to establish an education that is universally compatible education system that satisfies everyone’s needs appear to be impossible. However, people are coming up with innovative ideas that may change this. One proposal is personalized education. As said by Ken Robinson, author of New York Times best-selling book on education- the Element, human resources are similar to natural resources: they’re buried deep. Therefore, it’s us who have to build circumstances where they can be shown, and personalized education may be the solution.
Personalized education is about combining different styles of education: main stream, studio schools and others, and building up a system with children starting from high school to college or graduate schools, that is, straight from school to work. (Basic education in elementary school is still essential, so there’s probably no deed to change that. Besides, high school is more recognized to be where problems start. ) Under these circumstances, the obstructions of college entries mentioned before may be settled.
Each student has their own potentials and is therefore scheduled to classes based on their interest and previous in-class performances in these schools. Different courses may be taught in different teaching methods, including both theory-to-practice and practice-to-theory. Though the system may sound complex and tedious to design, technology, fortunately, has been able to catch up with our ideas. According to Interfaces magazine, New York City Department of Education, in corporation with Analytics Operations Engineering, Inc. Has been developing the schedule system, which aims at customizing individual students’ learning experiences, since 2010. Incorporating machine learning and integer programming into its sophisticated algorithm, schedule has by now managed to allocate and make the best use of education resources. However, aside from the permission AT technology, It seems Tanat we still need t root Don general society and the government to carry out such a huge reform.