This is a video about his opinion on institutional education, and I think people should watch it because it makes a good point.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-P2PGGeTOA4
I think this video makes a good point on education. To me a lot of the times school just feels like I get graded on how much I can memorize. Before, this was valuable because you could only learn these facts at school, but now you could look up any fact you wanted instantly all on your own. I am not saying that schools should stop teaching us facts and just teach us about the real world, but they need to change their approach.
One problem I have with the school system are the regents. I feel like the majority of teachers are concerned with just making sure we know what is going to be on the test, and that's it. I feel like preparing us for these tests takes away from us actually learning things. I have had several instances where when a student doesn't understand something, a teacher will shrug it off and say that it's okay because it doesn't really show up on the regents. By doing this, they have made it seem like that piece of information is unimportant because it does not show up on a exam.
Also, in the work field, many businesses require you to have a degree, which I can understand, but having a degree does not necessarily mean you know what you are doing, and not having a degree doesn't mean you don't know your stuff. Just by not having a degree with something, you can make less than people who do, when you're degree usually signifies that you sat in a class and memorized what the professor told you and passed the classes. I am not saying every class and teacher is like this, but I think it is unfair that someone without a degree is looked at as not as knowledgeable in that field, especially in an age where you could learn anything in an instant. That self taught person could know more than the person with the degree because they taught themselves, and had time to explore certain topics more because they didn't have as strict deadlines.
I agree with him that if institutional education keeps going the way it is, it will one day be worthless. Information is not as valuable as it once was because of the fact that it is available to anyone at any time.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I was just thinking about this today. A major part of school is memorizing, and I feel like that doesn't show a students full potential. As for the regents, I think most people feel that way including myself. This is why sometimes I wish I lived in another state, this way we could take classes that are interesting to us instead of being of interest to the state.
ReplyDeleteI definetly agree with you on this situation. I wont mention names but there has been times when I havent understood something and the teacher sort of just put it to the side and was like "oh its ok ill get back to it" as if it was nothing. Meanwhile, the stuff that we dont understand is the stuff that we would will most likely need in the future. The main reason why teachers overlook all the other things is because they feel that with the amount of time that we have they wont be able to teach us everything that we would need to know for the regent. However if someone dont understand something they should take out a moment to explian it quickly because its very likely that other kids in the class dont understand the same thing either.
ReplyDelete