| Chieh on Education / Teacher's fault? It is very easy to blame teachers for the negative impact they may have on children, and for a long time I laid the blame on them. However, as I looked deeper into our education system, I started realizing that the teachers really don't have much flexibility in terms of what they teach and how they teach it. There is a system put in place that regulates much of the teacher's activities. So if any major changes are to be made, the current system is where it has to begin. One of the central themes here is the idea that people have the ability to learn a great amount of information if they actually "want" to learn it. With such desire, not only would he or she learn the material faster, he or she would also retain the knowledge longer. Motivation and inspiration are the two words that would best characterize this theme. So naturally, the next quest is to find the source of such inspiration. And if we were to find this mystical power, is it possible to manifest it on a global scale? Up to now, our education system has resorted to grades and tests as incentives for learning. This might work in terms of forcing some students to learn, but it lacks an inspirational glow. If we are honest with ourselves, it is not an effective way to spark further interest or personal research after class. We will not see kids begging for more homework under this system, even if we get them to buy into this grading system. With more investment in the grading system, in fact, it is more likely that grades become the purpose of learning. With all the emphasis on grades and exams, our current education system performs rather poorly in terms of inspiring a passion for knowledge. We are giving our kids the wrong reasons to learn. So the problem is not as simple as just getting better teachers, or throwing more money into education. There is a sense of apathy among students that we must first confront. Yet our current education system doesn't seem to care if the kids are even interested. Worse, our system often assumes that kids should just want to learn. There is an attitude that unmotivated kids are simply bad students. After all, why would students not want to improve their own future? With all the hard work we educators pour into our kids, it makes sense that they should be grateful and work hard. These sentiments may be logical from the perspective of teachers, but they imply a lack of understanding of our children's point of view. As my essays will demonstrate, it is precisely the vibe created by these assumptions that pushes our kids away. There is nothing wrong with wanting our kids to strive, nor should we condone ungratefulness. The argument against our current educational approach is simply that it is not working. Our current system may work for the “good students,” but it buckles against apathy and lacks the element of feeling. There will always be teachers who manage to overcome the system and still imbue a sense of passion, but they are not in the majority. The reason behind this missing link has much to do with our negligence of the student perspective. I will tell you something obvious about kids: very few of them upon first entering school will aspire to learn everything, or even anything. Most of them won't even comprehend the importance of an education. As important as math, literature, and science are, very few kids truly understand how learning those subjects will impact their lives. Due to a lack of life experience, they cannot be expected to make such farsighted conclusions. This is just how kids think. They naturally want to play, and have fun. They do not naturally want to sit and listen to an adult lecturing the entire day. Have you noticed the difference between the children's perspective and the assumptions of adults? Contrary to popular belief, our kids will not automatically want to learn. Even many of us adults don't want to learn. We may chant on our lips the importance of education, but very few of us would ever consider going back to school just for fun. The truth is that the education system we have currently set up is not very fun, and the assumption that students automatically want to learn is wrong. Despite this wrong assumption, we continue to build our education system upon it. Over time, we have simply become convinced that this is the only way to go. Instead of designing our education system around our kids, we beat our kids into conforming to the same system our parents devised. It is due to this assumption and the general attitude of educators that the entertainment industry is winning. We, the educators, often forget that we too are salesmen, and that we are in the business of selling knowledge. Like other salesmen, teachers have the potential to present knowledge as something irresistible. Yet we often make the mistake of assuming that our knowledge is automatically desirable. Abiding by this assumption, we often fail to sell our product at all. |