| Chieh on Education / Problems with the TOE Problem 1: Someone stepped on my TOE Anyone who has paid even minor attention to psychology (or has any common sense) would understand the concept called "use it or lose it." The idea is very simple. After learning something, if you don't use it, you will likely forget it over time. In a goal-orientated education, everything you learn is for the purpose of accomplishing a task. So there is a direct mapping of knowledge and usage in the mind of the students. But in a theory-orientated education, there is little concentration on how to use the knowledge, so the connection between knowledge and its usage is rarely bridged. This lack of connection results in students not knowing why learning a subject is important. Due to our current theory-orientated education system, it is difficult (probably even impossible) for our students today to apply what they learn in school to everyday life. The students’ brains maybe be filled with facts, but they will not know how to use them. Following the "use it or lose it" idea, most students will forget a good deal of what they learned the previous semester after the summer vacation. Education is the amount of knowledge and wisdom retained after learning it. If you forget everything you have learned, you really did not receive an education. You might have gone through the exercise of attaining knowledge, but you will not benefit from the exercise unless something was actually gained. In our current education system, it is almost guaranteed that a good deal of students will forget most of the knowledge they learned due to a lack of usage. Not only is our current education system extremely inefficient, it is also very expensive. We all know this because each of us has gone through school, and chances are good that most of us don't remember details about subjects learned in middle school, high school, or college. To younger children in the public school system, school may appear to be free, but in reality public school is very expensive for society. Given the amount of money we spend each year, wouldn't it make more sense if we actually remembered half of what we learned in school? If we go through several years of school and forget most of what we learned, how much benefit have we really received? With the amount of money we are putting into education, is there a way to get more bang for the buck? Is there a more efficient and cost effective way to help our children? Common sense tells us that there must be a better way. But human nature also tells us that it is probably a lot of work to make that kind of change. Human nature knows that any societal change is difficult because the change must start from the minds and the hearts of individuals. And there is nothing more difficult to change than how people think. Problem 2: Not knowing what you have is the same as not having it It was absolutely revolutionary when education was made public. For the first time, families, regardless of their financial background, could send their children off to become future doctors and lawyers. For the first generations that benefited from the public education system, this change was a societal miracle. Students at that time viewed school very differently than students of today because school was something new. School was more like a privilege than a right. Unfortunately, as generations passed, children no longer viewed school as a privilege, but rather as a chore. It is very difficult to appreciate what you have when you don't know what it's like not having it. And not knowing what you have is the same as not having it. This, after all, is human nature. For as long as public education has existed, very few students have started their learning career with any sense of appreciation. In a perfect world, every student would understand the purpose of education, and every student would work hard to make learning his or her top priority. But this is not a perfect world. Given these circumstances, we can either take away the public education system or simply recognize the reality of the situation. Our current education system never addresses the issue of motivation. This leads one to conclude that our public education system either thinks that every student wants to learn, or it doesn't think motivation is very important at all. But once we have accepted the reality of the situation, we can start thinking up new approaches to counter old problems. And the reality is that not every kid will be motivated or appreciate what we do for them. We can either ignore it like our current education system has been doing, or we can do something about it. To increase student appreciation is very difficult since it requires an increase in awareness. But creating motivation is rather easy—we simply have to make learning fun. And to make anything fun, we are lucky to have our successful entertainment industry to help us. If there is only one theme these essays manage to convey, it should be the importance of placing emphasis on inspiration rather than force. Using a grading system as well as a testing system is a form of force, and force is never the best way to achieve anything. There will always be cynical people who claim that without tests and grades kids will never learn. That may be true under our current system, but it doesn't have to be this way. I know in my heart that it is possible to inspire our children to act. Our entertainment industry does it every day. For every child inspired to become a scientist, hundreds are inspired to become professional basketball players. For every child inspired to become a mathematician, many more are inspired to become pop singers. We have children memorizing lyrics to songs instead of Edgar Allen Poe. But what is the difference? In both cases, learning and the desire to achieve take place exactly the same way. The only difference is that the entertainment industry does a much better job. It is not only possible to inspire children to learn, there is actually a systematic way to engage people. There are tons of psychological studies on how to hold people's attention. There are countless papers written on what makes games fun. The resources are all there. We simply have to learn from these resources and incorporate them into our education system. Problem 3: Making things worse With a public school system, it is already difficult for children to appreciate education. But the TOE philosophy compounds the problem by not providing a clear reason for learning anything. At least with GOE, students have a clear link between what they are learning and what they will become. With a TOE system, students spend a lot of effort learning without ever experiencing a direct relation to the benefits of learning. TOE basically takes all the motivation out of education. At least with GOE, even if the teacher is not very interesting, students know exactly what they will get out of it. That knowing of the final outcome counts in this case as a major motivation for students to want to continue. But with a TOE system, students are required to work just as hard without knowing ahead of time how the knowledge gained is ever going to be useful. Teachers under the TOE system are very much disadvantaged. Not only do they have to know the subject well, they also have to engage their students. Since the education system regulates the teaching schedule, it really doesn't leave much time for the teachers to engage the students. And frankly, it is a lot of work to engage students, especially without extra pay. Although the TOE system has a good intention, students are learning for the sake of learning. They are learning for the sake of their futures. Its biggest downfall is its assumption that everybody has the ability to come to this conclusion. Now that I have done enough TOE bashing, does this mean that GOE is the way to go? In my opinion, GOE's biggest weakness is its lack of concentration on theory to help kids adapt to change. Fortunately, now that we understand the benefits and disadvantages of both systems, we can start looking for a hybrid. Instead of choosing one or the other, we can start taking the good from both while leaving the bad behind. Yes, in education we can have our cake and eat it too. |
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