As a teacher there is one goal I desire to do to help improve the conformist, lazy direction education is heading in. I want to bring reality to the class room. What I mean by this, is not only just bringing real world examples into my science classroom, but also breaking the typical social setting: adult teacher lectures and ignorant students listen and learn. That is not how people learn in the real world. They must experience. They must learn it on their own.
Furthermore while the social and technological world has changed, education has not changed to match it. With a world wide internet, the access to information is unlimited. SO why spend all our time forcing memorization of irrelevant facts when students really need to learn to apply the information they gather to real life situations.
Lastly we need to encourage students to try lots of subjects, etc. until they find what they enjoying learning and doing. THEN we must provide enough flexibility within our school systems to allow students to pursue those goals to see if its really what they are interested. This needs to happen before kids go to college so they are getting an idea of themselves sooner.
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I like the idea of students being exposed to a variety of subjects... this is the very premise of education - students getting to choose what they are good at, and enhancing their skills in that particular area. However, unfortunately the complete opposite of that is happening today - the standards are funneling students into designated areas, and it's more like students are 'being trained' rather than 'opting' to do what they like.
ReplyDeleteWhat do y'all think? - Is there a practical solution to give students freedom of choice and at the same test them too?
I think that it is a hard line to walk. We are so busy trying to give everyone the same opportunities that we don't care what they want. It is hard though, because I had no idea what I wanted to do when I was in high school. How early would you consider allowing students to have more elective freedom? I think it is a good idea, but I worry that it would be hard to change your focus once you picked one.
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