Education: The Old Story to the New Story

            Education is so vastly prevalent in the global community that without it society would not be able to function. The problem is that in an ever changing world, education has not adapted as needed to new and challenging facets of the real world. The real world as we know it is not like the world of 100 years ago, 50 years ago, or even 10 years ago. We can see cultural and societal changes year in and year out, yet the schooling system remains relatively similar. Only now are we just beginning to recognize the dire need for change in our educational system.

            When the education system was first implemented as tool for sharing information, it was at a time where society was appreciative of the opportunity to go to school and learn. The teacher was highly respected and could easily deliver information while have the uninterrupted attention of their entire class. However now we have reached a stage in life where the basics have become boring for students to learn and students are more and more unmotivated to intrinsically take an interest in the subjects they are being taught. There is a genuine lack of respect for authority as well, making delivering information effectively a real challenge for teachers. For this and many other reasons that I could talk all day about, the old “factory” model of teaching is simply not good enough anymore for achieving our national and societal objectives.

            There are many models that have been explored and theorized, like Traditional, Project-based, Holistic, Social reconstruction, Guided discovery, group work, lectures, concept attainment, and so on. But there is no one that has proven to be head over heels more effective than all the others. More often than not, the best method involves using parts of all the models depending on the learner, the teacher, the lesson being taught, and the general environment around. For example, lectures for exam review would be appropriate, while group work for learning about solving an application type problem would also be appropriate. The concept of personalization is something should be greatly considered while choosing your model of teaching. I really like the idea of students driving their own learning since it allows for them to make progress in subjects and information that is relevant to them. Through personalization, the student can get out what they put in (if they put in effort they will gain much more than those who don’t try). This puts the responsibility on the student for learning; the teacher merely facilitates and answers and questions the student might have. I honestly believe that virtually all students have great potential, but they don’t rise to the occasion since they are being force-fed information that they may or may not care about at all. Through personalization students can at least learn through methods that are effective to them about information that is relevant to them. In addition, encouraging good work and effort rather than trying to eliminate mistakes can lead to more productive work by students on future learning opportunities. We need to remember that mistakes are actually good; they facilitate learning and lead us to deeper questions and greater discoveries. Underlying this movement is the switch of focus from assessment of learner to assessment for and as learning. All 3 of the assessments are important for normal school functioning, but using assessment for and as learning are much more personalized, which in turn is exactly where I want to see education go in the future.