“The whole art of education is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds with a view to gratifying them thereafter.” – Anatole France
The purpose of education is to create responsible, productive, and socially contributing citizens—people who can provide for their families as well as contribute to their communities. As Toffler says, education in the 21st century should allow people to learn, unlearn and re-learn. But I’m not sure our schools and colleges are committed to that.
Education is one of the most unscientific human endeavors. You are doing well in school to get into a good college and get a good grade. A good degree is supposed to be a passport to a good job. Depending on your educational qualifications, you can rise to a reasonably high position without having to show any exceptional ability.
Beyond that, however, you may have problems. There is no consistent correlation between your performance in school and your performance on the job. And most importantly, there is no link between your performance on the job and your performance in life.
To be true to the goal, education must support the child to develop three basic abilities:
1. Discover, develop and continually develop a vision to become a useful member of society:
Many of us have an advantage – our parents envision our future for us, which drives us to work toward that vision. However, this is not common among the poor. The education system must step in to help everyone create this vision, and build the confidence of even a poor child to follow through on this vision.
Balaji Sampath, who runs Eureka Child – an NGO committed to improving literacy and maths ability in public schools, told us a poignant story in this context. After returning from the United States to do something meaningful in the field of education, he immersed himself in local issues by spending a few months in a village. He was in a village class when a teacher’s kid asked if it was possible to travel to the moon. The teacher replied: “You and I cannot fly to the moon.” “But scientists in the United States can…” We must stop taking away our children’s goals and dreams.
2. Understand that questions are more important than answers.
Our education system is unduly focused on providing answers – often to questions that children are not asking. In other words, we frequently teach children concepts without context; We need to show them why learning is important. We need to focus on awakening children’s natural curiosity and teaching them to love learning. A good way to do this is to put children through natural experiments or games in which they can ask questions. In these places, the learning is immediate and powerful. Learning can be a structured process of discovery, offering students diverse learning outcomes—just as our attitudes and decisions later in life provide different outcomes.
For example, an NGO in Mumbai went to schools to conduct an experiment to teach students about water conservation. Pupils measured the amount of water consumed while brushing their teeth with the tap open, and then again with the tap on. Imagine, if we all learned this kind of lesson in school, how we could apply the principles to many other aspects of our home and work later in life.
3. Learning to learn:
The world is evolving too fast for schools and colleges to keep up. What is taught is inadequate and outdated, or soon will be. It is important that children are encouraged to discover the answers themselves – through the Internet, through experience and through access to experts at the forefront of each field.
It is important for students to learn the scientific method –
(a) Create a hypothesis based on observations,
(b) Design and conduct experiments to prove or disprove these hypotheses
(c) Draw conclusions recognizing that conclusions may be changed by additional information.
With the level of knowledge available in the world today, it is also important to exercise judgment on what needs to be learned and how and when you need to learn it. We need to teach children when to rely on their own judgment, and when to rely on the experience of others. Our children must learn that even when you outsource efforts, you take responsibility for the outcome.
what do you think? Do you agree with these ideas about the vital abilities our children need? Is our education system addressing this? Share your thoughts and experiences with us all.