The Education Factory
The rote learning of past generations has gone out of fashion in today’s educational system. Memorizing and constant repetition does not create energetic learners or problem solvers. Children learn through play. The joy of discovery gives a student the motivation to take that lesson to the next level of understanding. This model of learning is exactly why video games are as popular today as they are. These games afford anyone the opportunity to solve complex puzzles in order to discover the next level of the discovery. If game makers understand this concept and have learned to exploit it why can’t the education system? Perhaps it is because, like the Titanic, the education system is a very hard ship to turn. The current structure of public education was created during the beginning of the twentieth century. Agriculture was the dominant industry but factory work was expanding fast and seemed to be the future of the country. Today many of our farms have become corporate factories and the fields are filled with foreign workers. Manufacturing has changed as well. The base of factory jobs continues to shrink and bleed out to other counties and the guarantee of a job regardless of problem solving skills has all but evaporated.
The changes in our world from the last century to this are undeniable. As citizens we face problems and challenges unimagined, even a decade ago. Now we must find a way for our children to learn the best lessons of the past and apply them without trepidation to the problems of the future. One place we can look for a template of success from which to guide us is the preschool and daycare center. Society, in its wisdom, has left toddlers free of the pressures, expectations and set standards imposed on the rest of us. Children of the ages of 3 to 5 learn from one another in the same room. They are allowed to learn through discovery and play, at their own pace and in their own way. For those first few years we have isolated them from the pressures of producing results and measuring up. The process of learning becomes a team effort, not a contest, and the product of discovery is simple joy.
What a shock it must be, to those young minds, to enter the larger school system. Increasingly the pressures put on a six-year-old mirror those put to an eighth or twelfth grade child. The process changes without warning, to line in the sand obligations of development that a child must reach. Although there is a place for these kinds of demands on older learners there is no evolution of the concept given to younger students. The pressure to measure up to their peers can feel equally as oppressive to a six year old as a high school senior may feel trying to get into college. Now the pressures of standardized achievements and tests are knocking on the door of the preschool and day care. It is time, for the sake of our children that the aspirations of learning push back against the need to measure. Today our children are working hard in school for fear of not measuring up to the standard. I think it is time we start letting them work hard toward the discovery of their world and the fulfillment of their dreams.
The school system today is structured as education factories. Children are the raw material that are put through a process, then tested at the end for quality control. Having been exposed to the same material all in a similar fashion, then testing, each child should be equally educated. Just like any factory the process then can be adjusted to increase productivity and uniformity. The differences between siblings in any family will attest to the fallacy of this point of view. Cars get put together this way as well as a host of other complicated products. Why not children? Because every child is as unique as a flake of snow and carry with them potentials far beyond pulling a lever or asking, “May I take your order?” After all, our system of education does produce a large percentage of young people capable of reading, writing and solving at least simple math problems. The problem is that at the end of the process they don’t want and find little joy in reading, writing or mathematics. The factory model of learning makes the process a job, an ordeal to get through instead of a journey of development to participate in. For learning to have value a child must acquire the skills, then have an interest in applying them.
The changes in our world from the last century to this are undeniable. As citizens we face problems and challenges unimagined, even a decade ago. Now we must find a way for our children to learn the best lessons of the past and apply them without trepidation to the problems of the future. One place we can look for a template of success from which to guide us is the preschool and daycare center. Society, in its wisdom, has left toddlers free of the pressures, expectations and set standards imposed on the rest of us. Children of the ages of 3 to 5 learn from one another in the same room. They are allowed to learn through discovery and play, at their own pace and in their own way. For those first few years we have isolated them from the pressures of producing results and measuring up. The process of learning becomes a team effort, not a contest, and the product of discovery is simple joy.
What a shock it must be, to those young minds, to enter the larger school system. Increasingly the pressures put on a six-year-old mirror those put to an eighth or twelfth grade child. The process changes without warning, to line in the sand obligations of development that a child must reach. Although there is a place for these kinds of demands on older learners there is no evolution of the concept given to younger students. The pressure to measure up to their peers can feel equally as oppressive to a six year old as a high school senior may feel trying to get into college. Now the pressures of standardized achievements and tests are knocking on the door of the preschool and day care. It is time, for the sake of our children that the aspirations of learning push back against the need to measure. Today our children are working hard in school for fear of not measuring up to the standard. I think it is time we start letting them work hard toward the discovery of their world and the fulfillment of their dreams.
The school system today is structured as education factories. Children are the raw material that are put through a process, then tested at the end for quality control. Having been exposed to the same material all in a similar fashion, then testing, each child should be equally educated. Just like any factory the process then can be adjusted to increase productivity and uniformity. The differences between siblings in any family will attest to the fallacy of this point of view. Cars get put together this way as well as a host of other complicated products. Why not children? Because every child is as unique as a flake of snow and carry with them potentials far beyond pulling a lever or asking, “May I take your order?” After all, our system of education does produce a large percentage of young people capable of reading, writing and solving at least simple math problems. The problem is that at the end of the process they don’t want and find little joy in reading, writing or mathematics. The factory model of learning makes the process a job, an ordeal to get through instead of a journey of development to participate in. For learning to have value a child must acquire the skills, then have an interest in applying them.
posted by kamuizot at 2:42 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home