Our school is trying to force down knowledge on students pretty much like shoving down pre-gained information; should it not be more about letting out the inherent talent or passion of the individual?
Are our schools guilty of ignoring the latter aspect and focussing very much on the former domain?
Your thoughts?
Students are connected to the Internet everywhere except in school. Regardless of their income bracket, most kids carry around a world o
Your wail of display echoes worries about an over-emphasis upon knowledge transmission and rote learning (for recapitulation in examinations) around the world and across time. Aptly summarised and critiqued by Paolo Freire as a 'Banking Method' of education. Charles Dickens also satirised the problem in his 1854 text 'Hard Times'. His headteacher, Thomas Gradgrind opines: ‘Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them’.
Dicken's plea, too, was for an unleashing of imagination and creativity.
So - of course we should be teaching for values and a wide gamut of (what are perhaps overly glibly delineated as) twenty-first century skills to young people....Which is not to say that knowledge and discipline areas don't matter ......
In India, students are bombarded with information and considering the current situation it is not the right approach. The right approach is to identify the passion of the students, their strength & weakness and identify individual learning path. Currently marks obtained by the students is taken as a measure of strength, passion and aspiration but it is not always true!
Thankyou all for your thoughtful points Shirshendu Roy Peter Brett and Ahmed Hasan What is your school doing to implement or focus on latter aspect? In bringing out the hidden quality of the student?
Ahmed Hasan I agree to your point that students when not in school can explore on their own; but then what role does school take? Are you implying we may abandon them or do not need them? Is purpose of school 'schooling' or creating conditions for 'blossoming' of the individual?
Thank you for your reflections and personal effort in your educational work. I am grateful for reading them.
As per my experience, I would like to say that the current school system is forcing for rote learning and cramming the facts. But, in reality school system should provide scope for the children for knowledge construction, exploration and experimentation. These will lead the children to understand and apply in education, job and life too.
It should be predicated to what society needs right now like amplifying virtues instilling more on health and communication linkages system and transmission. It is understanding the way to the right path and taking it , even though the journey will have a little bumpy.
I agree that education has historically placed far too great an emphasis on memorizing masses of facts. Given the impact of social media on virtually every aspect of contemporary life, I think teaching critical thinking and sound research skills are of paramount importance. Misinformation and conspiracy theories are now rampant and it is clear that millions of people lack the tools to identify credible sources of information and dismiss all of the rubbish that clutters the internet. THE most useful course that I took in my entire university education was a Philosophy course on contemporary issues. Rather than bombarding us with multiple textbooks and stacks of supplementary readings, Dr. Bela Szabados had us focus on a few relevant readings which we were expected to have understood thoroughly. We were then required to critique these materials in seminars and in written form. The class was a revelation, but sadly it occurred in my LAST semester of university.
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