Essay Sample on Why Modern Education is Outdated
Since the dawn of time, humanity has placed the utmost importance on properly educating the next generation. Although the first known true educational system wasn’t created until around the 2050’s BCE, humanity had been teaching its’ youth for as long as they’ve existed. Since then, the ways of education and the content of said education have changed drastically. We’ve gone from teaching the best kinds of food to forage and how to hunt properly, to learning the proper way to read and write and memorizing math equations. This focus on memorization and giving each student a non-personalized education has single-handedly begun to kill off the most important and unique traits we have, our creativity, critical thinking, and social skills.
The modern public education system heavily focuses on giving each student an identical education with almost no room for variation. There is no room for specialization that allows students to flourish in what they are good at. That specialization is relegated to underfunded elective classes or expensive after-school activities. As Sir Ken Robinson said, “There isn’t a school system, actually anywhere, that teaches dance every day, systematically, to every child in the way that we require them to learn mathematics” (9:12). This act of forcing every student into a cookie-cutter curriculum has been killing off creativity, critical thinking, and social skills since the beginning of public education.
Public education in the U.S. has been around for quite a long time. The first case of education being mandatory goes back to 1852 in Massachusetts. Most states followed in Massachusetts steps in the following years until finally in 1917, where Mississippi became the final state to make basic education mandatory. Although it’s been over 100 years since the last state made education mandatory, our teaching style and curriculum have barely changed. Their form of education mainly focused on memorization and quite literally beating knowledge into students. Although thankfully, physical discipline is no longer allowed in public education, we still heavily focus on memorization. This idea that people need to memorize everything that they learn is extremely outdated, especially since the creation of the internet. Almost every person around the world has access to an unprecedented amount of information. It is a waste of time to make students memorize a formula when they can easily find the information, they need in under 10 seconds. Students aren’t taught the importance of collaboration, instead, it is labeled as cheating even though collaboration is often the most important social skill in the working world (Monbiot Ln 6-7).
Instead of memorization, students need to be taught how to function in the real world. As Jack Trapp put it in his article, “In grammar school, the emphasis shouldn’t be on the three R’s, but rather on the four C’s: Critical thinking, Collaboration, Creativity and Communication”. Instead of focusing on outdated practices, we need our educational system to step into the future and allow students to truly flourish. Students need to be taught the importance of social skills that are necessary to succeed later in life. Encouraging students to collaborate on exams would be an extremely helpful lesson to learn. Projects in the real world are rarely a non-collaborative event, teaching children early about how much farther collaboration will get you should be of utmost importance alongside allowing students to pursue their true passions rather than forcing them to endure subjects they find boring.
Students who are allowed to specialize earlier in their educational career would likely find more satisfaction in their schooling. Our current method of giving each student a “cookie-cutter” style of education is outdated and leads students to be burnt out and bored during their classes. As Aaliyah Alexander says in his article “Let them decide what they are naturally drawn to and build off of that in their next few years of education. This would encourage students to be curious and explore their interests instead of putting them in dusty boxes that tell them to follow the status quo laid out by our predecessors”. If we allowed students to learn what is necessary for the career they want to pursue, they would likely find far more satisfaction in schooling and would better prepare them for the future. Giving students the ability to truly flourish is what school should be about.
For as long as we as a species have existed, teaching our youth has been the most important task given to the previous generations. Teaching our youth the necessary skills to survive is what allowed humanity to make it as far as we have so why should we be doing things differently now? Instead of the current system that focuses on memorization, we need to allow our children to develop their social skills, creativity, and their critical thinking. We also need to start specializing their education path earlier in life. Allowing students the opportunity to flourish should be the most important part of our education system, every student deserves the opportunity to enjoy their schooling and to feel passionate about what they are learning.
