Education is the need of hour, we hear it all the time. Firstly we need to understand, what is education? Let’s go by the dictionary definition – “It is the process of receiving or giving systematic instruction, especially at a school or university.” So it is basically a system that we have developed to provide instructions at a learning centre (school or university). It means education is supposed to ease learning.
How it is done?
By making us memorize things, today almost in every school memorization is mistaken for learning. What is remembered (not learned) here is remembered for a short time and then is quickly forgotten. For example – how many of us remember, how to calculate the square root? Or ever required to do so? Even the young children know it for a fact that most of what is expected of them in schools can be done by machines easily. Try to remember the last time you used a dictionary (traditional paperback) to search the meaning of a word, how many of us does it now? The children who are brought up in this changing world can make out only one thing i.e. they are treated as the poor substitutes of a machine or an instrument. Why should anyone be asked to do something computers and related equipment can do better than them? The education needs to focus on what humans can do better than the machines and instruments they create?
The world is changing and the education needs to change. Today, I can be in any part of the world and with internet access, take any course from any of the world’s most renowned schools with several thousand others from around the world. This is the changing world of education. Today Wikipedia is larger than any of the encyclopaedias that ever existed. The knowledge base that exists through various online sources is great, and it is all available at any point of time and you are not even required to click a button.
Traditional education focuses on teaching, not learning. It assumes that for everything that is taught has some learning attached to it. However, the most we learn in our lives before, after and while attending schools or colleges is learned without it being taught to us. Every child learns fundamental things as walk, talk, eat, and the other non-fundamental things like playing with a toy, operating a smart phone or may be a computer and many more things, that too without being taught. Even the grown-ups learn most of what they use at work or at leisure, while at work or leisure. Most of what is taught in classroom settings is forgotten, and much or what is remembered is irrelevant.
Despite of all this we learn a lot at schools, the question is who is learning?
When those who have taught others are asked who in the classes learned most, almost all agree to a common answer, “The teacher.” It is evident to those who have taught, that teaching is a better way to learn than being taught. Teaching enables the teacher to understand what one thinks about the subject being taught. The point here is schools should be designed the other way round (students teaching and faculty learning). Most of us know and it can be confirmed by any of teachers, that what they teach today is not what they were taught. What we are taught or what we teach, just act as the examples for understanding the world. These examples become the world to us, and that is our problem. We focus too much on examples.
How do we learn?
There are many different ways of learning; teaching is only one of them. We learn the most on our own, consider thinking of an independent study or project. Also, a great deal interacting with others informally, by sharing what we know and vice versa. We learn by doing things on our own, through experimentation. Before there were schools as we know them today, there was apprenticeship – learning how to do something by trying it under the guidance of one who knows how. Experience is a key to learning, that’s why there is no substitute to experience. When a professional is asked where they learned more i.e. in classroom or internship, definitely the answer is “internship”.
The objective of education should be learning and not teaching.
The education system should be developed to offer a wide variety of ways to learn, among which the students can choose or with which they could experiment. They do not have to learn different things the same way. At a very early stage students have to understand that learning how to “learn” is largely their responsibility, which is not imposed on them. It is rightly said that the education is the need of hour, but it need reforms across the world, learning from the good, introspecting the requirements, understanding the culture and finally making learning the integral part of it. We need to understand that the system needs to be upgraded with the changing scenarios. We need to change it, You need to change it.
P.S. The views are personal and are not intended to hurt anyone. Please feel free to comment or contact us , your views are important.
