Is it time for our education system to change?
Our education system, which measures us with a yardstick called exam, focuses mainly on our IQ level and specifically on our memorisation and standardization ability. Built in the era of Industrial Revolution, our education system was mainly established to create a class of employees for the manufacturing sector in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Rote learning or memorisation is the only thing which is taught in our current education system, rather than analyzing what is actually needed in the current technological era.
Each child still has to face a single exam, which would then determine whether the child is fit to be a better employee of tomorrow. Children who are good at memorisation are able to score good points in this exam, which is applauded by the society later. What we and our education system forget here is that each child is different, and they have their own capabilities. Then why don’t we examine them according to their capabilities? This would help the child to be more skillful in the area of his or her interests, rather than memorizing the same old definitions and formulas. Isn’t it unfair to measure a child’s ability through a single exam, which is the same for many?
The co-founder of the institute for Habits of Mind and EduPlanet 21, Dr. Bena Kallick calls the world as being VUCA, i.e. Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and full of Ambiguity, where the world is changing very fast and jobs are not guaranteed as well as uncertain. This is the type of world in which our children are growing in, where future jobs are not created, and most of them need to be self-employed.
It’s time for our education system to change. The purpose of our education system should be to empower our children with skills like decision making and critical thinking so that when they are stuck, they can come out of it easily.
Rather than rote learning, it should be changed to skill-based learning, revamping it to identify the strengths of a student.
Ways to improve our education system:
Identify and polish the skills of a child:
Areas of interest should be recognized by the schools and provide education to them accordingly. This would help them to acquire more knowledge in the particular field, ultimately helping them to earn their livelihood.
Technological know-how:
As the world is moving towards the technological era, it is necessary to impart our children with technological knowledge. We still emphasize more on the knowledge of science and maths, which might not be so important for our future.
Health Education:
Yoga and other workouts should be included in our education system, which would help our children to know the importance of being fit.
Smart Classes:
Various technologies must be used to impart proper and clear understanding of a concept. Most of the time, verbal teaching is not learned by many students, in such cases, visual teaching—using videos through smart classes helps many of them to grab the concept better.
Our ancient education system, which was followed in Gurukulas, is still remembered by many, so why do we want our children of the current generation to remember only definitions and formulas, instead of knowing about the world in a better way.
