Dipraj Zagade

Engineering student, Author

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What should the revolutionized Education System be like?

By now you must have experienced some faults in education system that you have been a part of. Or perhaps if you are fortunate you may have never been in an education system. Whatever may be the case, what do you think the revolutionized Education system should be like? What is your idea of a better educational system? And what do you think are the deficiencies in the current system? What should we, as a society, expect from Education system?
Education is an ongoing process. But education system does not seem to encourage this process. As Sir Ken Robinson has pointed out in this talk, is it not that aim of this education system is to create employees? Is it not that the education system reflects what we as a society put emphasis on. Perhaps it is time that we should get out of temporary influences and create education system that would not be an end unto itself but a stepping stone for a more evolved life.
What then do you think we must include in such a system? What should its characteristics be like? What should it must have and what should it must not include? Your thoughts on education system..Discuss!

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    Jul 19 2012: I'd like to see mostly-free public schools where the entire community shares the same stake and helps to ensure the best quality. Not quite so free for those taking electives with expensive, one-shot equipment. I would like to see cameras in every classroom and bus (any public space, actually) to help prevent bullying and crime. I'm for the more nurturing environment, even if that means letting kids go their own way to some extent, but at the same time a reinforced emphasis on the basics (or 3 R's). They should be taught how to learn, how to pursue their own lines of study, not memorize ream upon ream of only possibly-useful facts like some University of Trivial Pursuit. The end of secondary/high school should impart some basic life skills, like how to manage personal finances to some degree and the dangers of credit - maybe even how to do basic cooking, laundry, etc - some kids seem completely hapless once on their own. Schools need to teach socialization, not just assume it happens by being present. They need a security force commensurate with the conditions, both for student and teacher safety. They do not need standards testing; there is no universal, magical metric that can be fairly applied. There is often great disparities between schools both in teaching talent and student's intake abilities, let alone the amount of money that goes around.

    I admit I lack the whole picture and that several of these might even be bad ideas, but I know we need to keep making changes until we get something overall better for everyone. Education is THE most important thing there is after basic survival needs are met, and everyone should have equal access to it. Private schools undermine the society as a whole but I would not abolish them; in fact, would prefer them even over home-schooling. Home-schooling is fine if it's in addition to the whole-school experience. I also liked a lot of what D Hamilton says, more dreamy though it may be.

    Education = Kids = Future
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    Jul 19 2012: I will speak from an American perspective, but in my mind this is the model that the entire world should adopt.

    Start with public schools, a big investment up front, huge cuts in the future. Write into the contract of 10,000 of the countries best schoolteachers, that they have to record their classes with a webcam. For this, they will recieve a substantial raise. After each class is recorded, they tag each question asked by a child.

    An enormous database is built, and the worlds first online public school is born. Every grade, every class, and every fitness training routine, you can possibly imagine. Teachers are ranked by universities, other teachers, and students. The student, at home, or daycare whatever age, from 10 to PHD, picks a professor, and watches his or her class. If they have a question, that teacher didn't answer... The student can find a teacher who did answer it.

    The public school system becomes 1 unique entity, which could eventually be non profitized, and put in private control. Class sizes in person drop, and eventually become almost non existent. This new entity hires maybe 50 professors in every field they can possibly think of, and creates classes you can raffle into. Everything else "public" is replaced.

    If you want to go to a private school, and you can afford it, go for it. If you can't, you can have the best education on the planet for free, provided you are a US citizen with internet access, and a webcam. We will likely sell cheap classes outside the us to offset some of the costs if we're the first to do this well. If India is the first to do it... You can slang classes to us.

    What's the webcam for? Tests... That is how students should be tested fairly online. You plug in a webcam, and someone watches you take the test. You agree to let them view your computer screen too, to make cheating incredibly difficult.

    We learn to treat this as an entry level degree, you're vaguely competent, not proficient.
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    Jul 12 2012: Thank you William for your reply. I do appreciate your ideas.
    I agree with you that the education system should be oriented to produce independent thinkers.
    It should encourage people who think out of box.
    It should help people develop and utilize new ways of thinking instead of making them adhere to someone else's thinking. In addition i believe it is equally important that education system should prepare us for life. Not just intellectually but also emotionally. I mean what it is we are seeking in life? At the end is it not finding some sort of joy? And is it not that our lives are run by emotions rather than intelligence, however we may refuse this? For Education system has focused so much on intellect that it has sidetracked the emotional nature of human beings.
    I don't think that schools are places where we find ourselves happy, joyful, and stress-free. Too much intelligence ruins joy. And no school prepares us so that we can deal with emotions in our lives. Instead we are told to mange them.
    Why cant we accept the emotional part of ourselves. As there are poor thinking processes so are there poor feelings. Shouldn't we prepare our children so that they can keep themselves from harm due to bad thinking, and bad feelings?
    I believe we as a society have lost sight of what we really want. And thus we have stuck to temporary things in fear. And this confusion has reflected in education system all our over the world. And if we do not want our children to be as confused and as miserable and as hopeless as we are today, we will have to give them the clarity which we do not have. And at least we should stop feeding them our confusion, and the same miserable ideas that we got as gift from education system. If they are joyful, only then they will be able to create a joyful education system.
    At least we should try that our educational system does not rob their joy.
  • Jul 17 2012: I believe that learning is a natural function of humanity and that it only stops when we make it do so. When we tell our children to stop what they're interested in and attend lessons about something else, we're arresting this natural tendency. We should instead be encouraging and feeding it. We could facilitate natural learning processes by introducing interesting elements into the child's environment while encouraging independent thought and questions. A learner should be encouraged and even guided (a word I use with reservation), but not drilled. I think our current approach is too pedantic. We are not teaching, we're programming.
  • Jul 13 2012: Schools should become privatized and all paper utilities taken out of the equation. It would get the tree huggers off of our backs and the tax cuts from public education funding would allow parents to send their children to better schools where the teachers could be fired and given raises like real employees.
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      Jul 19 2012: Reducing the massive paper expenditure would be a plus; the dinosaurs went their natural way and so can most of the paper mongering. But I see a slight problem with giving a lower-income family a tax break that certainly wouldn't approach the cost of private school. There should be universal background checks on teachers (or anyone who interacts with kids), but I believe they are mostly already "real employees."
  • Jul 12 2012: To continue,, I first must ask that you forgive my poor typing skills.
    If we want an education system that helps us to evolve as human beings as well as the disciplines of the corporate and scientific worlds, we need to place more emphasis on the humanities in the crriculum of our secondary schools. To be able to do that, I think we need to lenfthen the school day ( at least back to a full eight hours of learning), re-emphasie student participation in the learning process through a return to 'homework' requirements, and perhaps reconsider the tradition of two month summer holidays.
    I would see a return to a mandate for Universities and Colleges to provide a broad education to our young people. Educators need to re-focus their talents from churning out 'designer graduates' to satisfy the demands of the corporate world and to begin once again to nurture thinking that includes a broader focus on subjects that will help us to grow and improve as a species and as occupants of this planet. In short, I believe that our education systen needs to focus itself on producing more thinkers and dreamers.
    How that will be done, given the opposing pressures of our modern world demanding narrow-band thinkers, I don't have the answer for.
  • Jul 12 2012: An intersting and well posed question. I agree that the current education system in North America produces the kind of 'educated peopele' that corporations want it to. Corporations lobby governments and grant money to institutions in such a way as to control the 'output' of the system to meet their needs to increase their wealth and power' and for the most part, 'we the people' follow along happily so we can successfully join the consumer society they have created around us. The vast majority of us behave like sheep, relly, and that is something for another discussion.
    I'm not certain we are past the point where change to the educational focus of our Universities (Degree Factories) can be made in the way that I think you (and I), amonst many others, would like to see.
    But, your question asks specifically that. What changes should be made,
    First, I'm not sure that I agree with the 'nurturing' approach being taken in our pre-schools and elementary schools. Not that I disagree with finding ways to help and to guide less gifted learners, but,(and even though I am one of the less gifted), I truly believe that to a great extent, learning is an acquired discipline, and it needs to be taught at the entry level. I would support a revitalised focus on the 'three r's" in elementary and secondary schools. Kids today, though they may be exceedingly bright, no longer know how to read and write. How we'll overcome the influence of Facebook and 'texting' in that regard, I don't know.
    There's no question that our kids need to be prepared to enter our increasing technoliogical world, But I think there also needs to be a greater emphasis on the humanities. I've noticed in my own kid's education that school days have become significantly shorter than when I was in school, that 'homework' receives less emphasis, and ther are more 'hlidays' in the form of PD Days. I think this should change.
  • Jul 12 2012: Just coming out of the school system i believe that have not learn to my potential. the only class that i enjoyed and was able to formula my own ideas and be able to hear other peoples ideas. It was a class that i took my senior year it was a refections on life class now the it was the first time that the tacher was teaching that class and their was not lesson plan so every day he would give use a topic for us to wright about like what is the meaning to life and we would spend ten mins wrighing then every one would share their ideas and then the class would debate and combine their theories. I believe that this is the best way to expand a persons mind because the teacher would not talk that much and just let the students talk things out and for new ideas as a group. on other days we would watch ted videos and then discus them in class on how that impacts the world around us and how it effects us. this is how i believe the school system should be set up because it does not give a lesson plan on every think just like life you cant be ready for any thing so learn the basics then expand you mind just like that class. this should not be done by the government because they are to far out of touch on how people work now a days and they have failed with this generations education. this way induces creativity in witch every one need and most people lack now a days.