A Call for Educational Reform, Part One
By Steven Hoelscher, Contributor
6/19/2008
The current education system instructs children based on capricious systems of ideals and standards, which will inevitably become obsolete, as seen through any systems that have gone through reform in the development of the human race. The school systems and the teachers do not teach with this fact in mind. They teach as if everything is immutable, always remaining the absolute truth. They brush the surface of the material, merely relaying the facts and formulas derived from abstract, underlying principles. Yet, the pivotal part is absent: the conceptual reasoning upon which these systems were built.
This would not mean much if we were to simply forget all the research and cultural development that our society strives on. We would never need to alter formulas and facts, for everything would remain static. However, this is not the case: our world constantly changes, redeveloping outdated information and reevaluating the systems in place. We do all of this in order to survive, in order to keeping living.
I am not saying that the current, accepted theories should not be taught; instead, they should be taught conceptually rather than practically. If one understands the methodology of the current system, then change becomes more acceptable. Computers are programmed to perform certain tasks, yet if a user tries to make his computer execute a task unknown to the computer, then an error will follow. Human beings differ from computers, for we can reprogram ourselves and perform new tasks that are novel to us.
Unfortunately, with our current education system, we are turning into the computers, only carrying out tasks written into our mind. We need to be taught how to think rather than what to think.