Many of us (including me and some of my friends) have gone through high school and college, cursing the
way certain subjects were taught. It's not the fault of the teachers
but the fault of the system. And with the changing times and
technological advancement, the education system has to evolve too.
Given the fact that there is generally a lack of good teachers around
the whole world, we need to come up with something which will solve
the problem of education. So being an addicted internet user, I was
browsing through some YouTube videos when I came across a video about
some basic topics on physics by a channel MinutePhysics, and I was
fascinated with it! In the following days, I found few more channels
which had similar educational yet interesting videos. So while I was
getting more and more educational video recommendations, I bumped
into a few TED talks about changing the educational system, and this
post is about them. (Even if you don't read my commentary about the
videos, I strongly suggest you should watch all of them.)
What is really the
problem of the public education system?
The first one that I came
across was by Sir Ken Robinson on what is wrong with the current
education system (Do Schools Kill Creativity?)
in which he talks about how education destroys creativity. As he says
in the talk “Everybody is born as an artist, but we are educated out
of creativity.” Who does actually benefit from the current system?
As he points out, the education system was developed in the interest
of industrialization and in the image of it. Schools are organised
like factory lines, producing workers. We should stop teaching in
schools with the production line mentlity. In other video (Bring on the Learning Revolution – I especially love the part between 10-15 min) he talks about
reforming the education system to help kids to discover what they
love to do rather than standardising everything. (I should mention
here that I have become a great fan of Sir Robinson. He has such a
great sense of humour and a British accent! No wonder his talks are
so interesting!)
What can we do about
it?
The talks from Sir
Robinson summarize what is wrong with the education system. But what
can we do about it? There is a brilliant talk by Sugata Mitra (SugataMitra's new expetiments in self teaching)
on a radically new experiment and I don't want to take away any
surprises by talking about it so you should go ahead right away and
see it.
(Now assuming you have
seen the above mentioned video) That was one way to reform education.
What else can we do? Here is a talk by Salman Khan (No, not THAT
Salman Khan) about how he got the idea about creating small videos
about different topics which grew so much and went on to become one
of the largest online high-school and undergrad level learning
website. (Let's use video to reinvent education)
(My favourite line - “If Isaac Newton had done YouTube videos about
Calculus, I wouldn't have to!”) You can also go through this video
for Khan's motivation and ideas (Year 2060: EducationPredictions)
And
Salman Khan isn't the only one doing this, there are plenty of others
who are following the same tracks where they want to convolve
(YouTube like) videos to teach common things to students with
exercises on websites which will monitor their progress, while
teachers can focus on individual educational needs of children.
Another
interesting video that I came across was by John Green. (PaperTown Academy)
He talks about his thoughts as a student on growing up and getting a
job, how he became a learner, and how the online community encourages
students to get engaged into learning in a very entertaining way!
To
finish off this compilation, I would recommend you to watch the
following video (The Future of Learning, Networked Society
).
You
can see that we are on the verge of a significant change in the
educational system and it has already began and all of us should do
whatever possible to improve the lives of the next generations!
