Recently I saw an interesting Youtube video which actually brought upon me finally creating this blog so I can aimlessly rant at the internet with the hopes that one day, someone may actually read this.
Education. A topic that should be at the top of all our discussion lists. After all it is today's children that will lead the next generation. It will be up to them to make the difficult choices that we have, so far, been unable to make. Yet, for some reason totally arcane to me, our governments spend more money and time focusing on military, transportation and welfare than they do on our future. How can we as a society justify spending more money on Welfare than on Education. Seriously.....Welfare...We are literally spending more money paying for the housing of chavs than we do securing the future of our children. And don't worry, I'll get to chavs, chav-likes and their effects on society soon enough (in another post). I'm not saying that there shouldn't be Welfare funding, there definitely should (because not all Wellfare spending goes to 15 year old mothers who got pregnant because they want a free house). But should we be spending more money on our anti-social, young parent youth than on the youth that can actually make a difference in our future? I think not!
Education. A topic that should be at the top of all our discussion lists. After all it is today's children that will lead the next generation. It will be up to them to make the difficult choices that we have, so far, been unable to make. Yet, for some reason totally arcane to me, our governments spend more money and time focusing on military, transportation and welfare than they do on our future. How can we as a society justify spending more money on Welfare than on Education. Seriously.....Welfare...We are literally spending more money paying for the housing of chavs than we do securing the future of our children. And don't worry, I'll get to chavs, chav-likes and their effects on society soon enough (in another post). I'm not saying that there shouldn't be Welfare funding, there definitely should (because not all Wellfare spending goes to 15 year old mothers who got pregnant because they want a free house). But should we be spending more money on our anti-social, young parent youth than on the youth that can actually make a difference in our future? I think not!
Albert Einstein once said: "Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live is whole life believing it is an idiot." He makes a striking point that, so far, we have all ignored. The world is constantly evolving yet our schools have been focusing on the same style of teaching for the last 100 years. The material has changed, the approach has not. How can we teach our children to live in the 21st century when we educate them as if they were still in the 19th century? How can kids deal with today's problems when they are only taught about problems of the last generation? Schools should be an ever-changing and evolving environment that follows the latest technological and social innovations. We should be teaching our children what is important now, rather than what was important when the curriculum was first created.
Schools should focus on identifying each child's strengths and weaknesses. Marcus might be a gifted writer, Camilla could be an extraordinary mathematician and John might be a exceptional artist but if they are sat there all studying the effects of Shakespearean literature on modern day writers then only 1 of 3 is getting something beneficial from the lesson. A child's traits should be identified early and incubated. Teachers must create a fire within a child with their teaching methods to make kids wants to learn rather than force them to through the ever looming exam and test. Education must be something that every child strives to accomplish rather than something they are forced to endure. The worst thing about all this is that its all within our reach. Exciting ways to educate our children are all around us. Look at Vsauce, MinutePhysics, SmarterEveryDay; these are just the tip of the iceberg. They all make learning interesting, fun, and exciting. This is what our teachers need to strive to be like.
We need to ditch the grandfathered styles and materials and focus on educating our children with the skills and knowledge that will help them build a brighter future. With the economic crisis currently floating over all our heads we should teach our kids about money, finance, budgeting, living within one's means. With increased tensions between races and religions we should be educating our children about cultures, societies and how to overcome differences and co-exist. We should be teaching kids on entrepreneurship so that they can go out into the world and try to make it a better place rather than focusing on what Joseph Conrad meant in Heart of Darkness. So many things are lacking in our society yet we do not strive to teach our children the things we did not or could not learn. We fail to correctly use the tools we lacked as children to better the lives of our own children and thus our world.
We lack many things things in our education system. We waste time on pointless subjects (Latin: I'm looking at you UK) instead of focusing on things that matter now. We pay our teachers miserable salaries when we should be fostering a competitive environment where only the truly best can be granted access to the mind of our next generation. I hope that someday, hopefully sooner rather than later, our children will wake up in the mornings and jump out of bed excited to learn about the next chapter in whatever book they find fascinating; be it art, physics or history. Rather than focusing on the lesson, teachers need to be focusing on what is truly important: the students!
Schools should focus on identifying each child's strengths and weaknesses. Marcus might be a gifted writer, Camilla could be an extraordinary mathematician and John might be a exceptional artist but if they are sat there all studying the effects of Shakespearean literature on modern day writers then only 1 of 3 is getting something beneficial from the lesson. A child's traits should be identified early and incubated. Teachers must create a fire within a child with their teaching methods to make kids wants to learn rather than force them to through the ever looming exam and test. Education must be something that every child strives to accomplish rather than something they are forced to endure. The worst thing about all this is that its all within our reach. Exciting ways to educate our children are all around us. Look at Vsauce, MinutePhysics, SmarterEveryDay; these are just the tip of the iceberg. They all make learning interesting, fun, and exciting. This is what our teachers need to strive to be like.
We need to ditch the grandfathered styles and materials and focus on educating our children with the skills and knowledge that will help them build a brighter future. With the economic crisis currently floating over all our heads we should teach our kids about money, finance, budgeting, living within one's means. With increased tensions between races and religions we should be educating our children about cultures, societies and how to overcome differences and co-exist. We should be teaching kids on entrepreneurship so that they can go out into the world and try to make it a better place rather than focusing on what Joseph Conrad meant in Heart of Darkness. So many things are lacking in our society yet we do not strive to teach our children the things we did not or could not learn. We fail to correctly use the tools we lacked as children to better the lives of our own children and thus our world.
We lack many things things in our education system. We waste time on pointless subjects (Latin: I'm looking at you UK) instead of focusing on things that matter now. We pay our teachers miserable salaries when we should be fostering a competitive environment where only the truly best can be granted access to the mind of our next generation. I hope that someday, hopefully sooner rather than later, our children will wake up in the mornings and jump out of bed excited to learn about the next chapter in whatever book they find fascinating; be it art, physics or history. Rather than focusing on the lesson, teachers need to be focusing on what is truly important: the students!
