{"id":12,"date":"2015-09-11T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-09-11T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/julie\/school-system\/"},"modified":"2015-09-11T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2015-09-11T00:00:00","slug":"school-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/julie\/school-system\/","title":{"rendered":"Does the school system work in this day and age?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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What is wrong with the present day\u00a0school system?<\/h3>\n
<\/div>\n

Sugata Mitra<\/strong>, the winner of the TED prize in 2013 explained that the present day school system was started by the British Empire to produce the bureaucrats needed to run the Empire. \u00a0These bureaucrats had to have the ability to read, write legibly and do math.\u00a0 They had to all have the same skills so if one couldn\u2019t work, another could take his place.\u00a0 There was no thought of creativity or innovation.<\/p>\n

Our schools today run pretty much the same way.<\/p>\n

    \n
  • Children are bored and then told they are hyper active and given Ritalin.<\/li>\n
  • Learning is done individually and students are tested alone.\u00a0 If they study together and make the same mistake, they will be accused of cheating, a fatal sin. In places of business, people need to work in teams.\u00a0 So why in school is teamwork considered cheating?<\/li>\n
  • Students are instilled with a fear of failing tests.\u00a0\u00a0They often\u00a0panic before taking tests, forget everything and \u00a0fail. \u00a0Since\u00a0panic causes all the creative parts of the brain to shut down, it is understandable that\u00a0so many students have test anxiety.<\/li>\n
  • Children are taught to learn facts that can easily be accessed on the internet.\u00a0 A month later, they forget most of them.\u00a0 If so much information is available at the click of the mouse, why do they have to memorize it?<\/li>\n
  • They are expected to answer the questions the way the teacher taught them.\u00a0 There is little room for creativity and independent learning.<\/li>\n
  • The good teachers are sent to the good schools as a prize and new inexperienced teachers go to the harder schools where they have trouble coping and then the gap between the good schools and bad schools becomes bigger.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    What is the solution?<\/h3>\n

    Mitra found a method to overcome most of these problems.\u00a0 He developed a system called \u201cschools in a cloud\u201d which is based on \u201cchild driven learning\u201d.<\/p>\n

    He discovered that if children have interest, learning will happen.\u00a0 They don\u2019t need a school or a teacher.\u00a0 Just a computer.<\/p>\n

    Computers in the Wall<\/h3>\n

    After hearing from friends how their children learned how to use a computer by themselves, he wanted to see if only children from good families can understand computers. He put a computer in a wall, at a level that children can reach, in a slum in India. He connected it to the internet and left it.\u00a0 The children in the area didn\u2019t even know English.\u00a0 When he returned 2 months later they had figured out how to use the computer.\u00a0 Older children, age 10, were teaching younger ones, who had to stand on tip toes to see the screen.<\/p>\n

    He continued his experiments and found out that children can learn almost anything if they have curiosity and are given access to the right tools.<\/p>\n

    He found out that by learning in groups, and talking between themselves about what they learn, they remember it better over time.\u00a0 Instead of forgetting most, if not all of what they learned after a few months, the children who learned together got the same scores 2 months later.\u00a0 They sometimes even got better scores because they continued to learn more.<\/p>\n

    He had the children work in groups of 4 with one computer per group. By letting them see what other groups were doing and then bring the information back to their group, all the children were able to find the answers that were posed to them and remember them. \u00a0Encouraging this kind of \u201ccheating\u201d during the learning process, was beneficial to all the children<\/p>\n

    Granny Cloud<\/h3>\n

    Another approach he used to encourage the children was what he called the \u201cGranny Cloud\u201d.\u00a0 What do grandmothers do?\u00a0 They applaud their grandchildren, tell them how smart they are and encourage them to do more.\u00a0 By having cyber grannies encourage the children, their performance improved.<\/p>\n

    What can we learn from this for the school system?\u00a0 Maybe the job of teachers isn\u2019t as much to teach as to spike curiosity about a subject, let the children find the answers themselves and encourage them when they are on the right track.<\/p>\n

    In my opinion, instead of tests, there should be evaluations so students can see what they already know and know what they still have to study.\u00a0 If there are no grades, there are no failures.\u00a0 The evaluation makes sure you know one level of learning and can move to the next.\u00a0 Students can advance at their own pace.\u00a0 Even better, they can work in groups of mixed levels, the faster students helping the slower ones and they will all advance together.<\/p>\n

    A good teacher is usually one who makes the subject they teach interesting.\u00a0 So that is the key to teaching. Instilling a desire to know.<\/p>\n

    What do you think?\u00a0 Is the educational system as it is today doing what it should?\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p>\n

    Could these ideas help improve it?\u00a0\u00a0 Do you have other ideas?<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \u00a0<\/p>\n

    \u00a0<\/p>\n

    \n
    Share this post and help spread the love!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
    \n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    What is wrong with the present day\u00a0school system? Sugata Mitra, the winner of the TED prize in 2013 explained that the present day school system was started by the British Empire to produce the bureaucrats needed to run the Empire. \u00a0These bureaucrats had to have the ability to read, write legibly and do math.\u00a0 They […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3314,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,8,3,4,9,16,19,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-21-day-blogging-challenge","category-boomers","category-empower-network","category-en_migrate","category-inspiration","category-internet-marketing","category-ipas2","category-my-21-day-blogging-challenge"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/julie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/julie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/julie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/julie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3314"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/julie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/julie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/julie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/julie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/julie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}