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!
So I was wrong when I said i wouldn't ready your blog - I read half of it.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure you're aware of TED talks, and if so you've probably seen this, but this is the best talk on education i've seen http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_build_a_school_in_the_cloud.html
He won the TED award for this talk.
Knowledge is power try this: Ayn rand - Atlas shrugged.
ReplyDeleteIt's very easy to blame the government for these kinds of issues. I'd like to see you do a better job. Education is just one problem that the government has to deal with. Maybe in your eyes welfare is less important and those resources can be used to improve the education system, but how? Realistically speaking the whole education system cannot simply be changed just like that. If you're the man behind the desk running this country there are two priorities in your mind. 1. I will do what I think is best for the country 2. I will do what I can to stay in this position so that I can continue doing what I think is best for the country. The fact that you don't agree with what the government is doing doesn't mean they're wrong, or right for that matter. They're making decisions just like a businessman will make investment decisions. What else can you expect... At the end of the day if they don't get votes they're out of a job so they need to please the masses. And when you want to please the masses, you can't just concentrate on one thing more than the other just because a group of people is unhappy with it, because no matter what you do someone will always be unhappy. And that is the problem with society; people expect to be catered to individually yet are not independent. No matter what the issue is, it's always the government's fault. It's very convenient, but hypocritical. If you want to be treated as an individual, become independent. At the end of the day that's how people succeed. You don't just become successful because you went to a good school and you got straight A's throughout your life, but because you work hard to get what you want. The government isn't going to give you your dream job, or your dream car, or pay for a 7 bedroom house so that you can live comfortably, so why do you expect them to teach your child what he needs to know in the way that he, individually, needs to be taught. It's very easy to say that the government should change its ways and invest more in an educational system that suits 'my' child. But it won’t because it doesn't have limitless money to do so. So instead it caters for the majority of children, and focuses on teaching things like maths and English and history. Sure, not everyone will be as good in each subject, but it is common knowledge and everyone should be educated in it because this is the world we live in and this is what society requires us to know. Think about how often you would mock ignorant redneck Americans who talk of immigration problems when they can barely even construct a sentence properly. If you think you don't have to learn it because you're good at other things and you won't use it in your career, well that just makes you lazy, which is my main point. People are lazy, and expect the government to make the changes for them but really the changes should come from the individual. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the educational system, it is evolving as it should and will always have ups and downs and people who are discontent with it. But if you think your child is particularly talented at something, it is YOUR responsibility to make sure they go for it and do well at it. If you look at people who are successful you'll see that, for the most part, they would have been brought up by parents who value education and were successful at instilling those values in their children through active involvement in their education. If you do that, it doesn't matter if you go to the best school in the country, or the most underfunded school you can find. Resources are out there, libraries, internet, etc... Anyone can learn anything they want. Just get off your ass and do it. If you think your child's education is important then YOU give it that importance. If every child's family took part in their education, I assure you we would live in a much nicer place.
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