Re-education

Most people are happy to lament about the state of their country's education but are usually more hesitant to offer a solution. The solution most of my countrymen can think of is learn more. This usually involves sending their children (or themselves) to tuition. I have nothing against tuition, but of course it's a telling sign - when you go to tuition, immediately you are saying that school isn't enough.

The problem is I don't have much experience with the public schools of my country. I've only tasted such a school for about 5 years, before leaving to my "own" school. Still, I do wonder what is the answer to the question of "How should we educate our children?".

I venture to offer a reply that quite a number of people would have a hard time with - there is no one right way. It's safe to say that every human is unique. I would carry on to say, ergo, no human can be taught (or more accurately, learns) in the same way.

But this is the whole idea of schools. To sit a group of people in a classroom and have them hear the exact same thing. I think this is untenable. So to this I offer a few suggestions:

Let people choose what they want to study - When it comes to college or university, this is a given (except, perhaps for those with pushy parents). For primary and secondary, lots of questions will be asked on this. I admit, there should be some "compulsory" subjects - I can think of basic arithmetic and languages. But every other subject should be optional.

In my experience, going without school allowed me to pick up subjects that I would not have otherwise learned - such as IT (a hobby which now happens to be my job), theology (hah), philosophy and many others. I studied those things because I wanted to.

Rethinking exams - For many their whole education builds up to a few days where they take a series of tests, supposedly determining their future. I dislike such an idea of exams - even as I think that exams are a necessary tool for evaluating students. We should not shape our education around examinations. Nor should we judge students entirely by those exams.

I think we can learn from the trend to assess students based on both the results from their assignments and examinations (the course I'm currently undertaking is almost entirely based on assignments alone). While some deride this as a lowering in standards, I think it's important to remember that the so called pinnacle in one's education, the PhD, is not gained by answering a series of objective and subjective questions.

Institutionalized education, I suspect, leads us to compartmentalize our learning. We go to school, come back, study a little and relax. Once school is over, learning is over. For me, I'm twenty years old and I'm not even started.