- Claire Dillon
- Evanston, IL
- United States
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What can be done to get the most out of one's schooling? What would you change about your education experience?
From other people's opinions and my experiences in the American Midwest, it seems most schools focus on their students' test performance and few classes prioritize true, authentic learning. I was disappointed when the classes I took during my first year of college -- or perhaps the aspirations of all but a fraction of my classmates -- were a continuation of this mindset.
I think I'm missing something and would love to hear your thoughts. What can students do to get the most out of their education? What do you wish you had done differently, if anything? Is this something I have to discover on my own? Thanks in advance for your insight.
John Bazalgette
In earlier days, when our contexts were comprehensible, that worked fine. The family, the school, the village ... were all obvious to the growing child. Obedience was the first thing one learned, mostly without acrimony. 'It takes a village to educate a child'. The skill of belonging just happened. But now where are the suitable 'villages'?
Teachers now need to attend to helping every child to learn to belong. What skills are about belonging that are needed to be able to feel that one belongs to these invisible groups, organisations, communities - the whole human race indeed. What organisational structure? What kind of leadership is needed? What activities help? And so on.
Africa has something to teach us. How do they enable children to learn to belong as a fundamental part of their learning? They have a concept of Ubuntu (look it up!): how do they use it?
When I don't feel I belong and the place I am in does not belong to me I'll rebel. And I have done lots of times - and never regretted it. I'll give everything I have when I feel I belong. I bet I'm not alone!
swami shailendra saraswati
Lucy Armitage
Obviously, they wanted the students to get the best grades so the school would be more desirable for prospective pupils therefore more money would come. Unfortunately, they were so driven to mould us into this ideal image they had in their mind they didn't regard how we felt or how we would react. They thought they could manipulate us into their "way".
What happened. We studied from 8:30am till 4:30pm and then we had to 2 hours of homework. We weren't allowed to play outside in our free time so majority of our day was spent inside. I was burnt out. In the end, I had to be removed but they were desperately negotiating with my parents to stay. There were many of my friends who went off the rails and eventually had to be removed too.
I went to a private day college for those who couldn't conform in a normal school environment for what ever reason; illness, expulsion etc. We didn't wear uniforms, we called our tutors by their first name, homework wasn't compulsory and we didn't have a full packed day of lessons. 2 hour lessons in our chosen subject without un-necessary rehearsals of the information given. I managed to study for my exams within 6 months (Usually it is 2 years) and I got A's and B's.
Now I think that proves the effects of letting a child grow and discover and find their own motivation. Some children are better in a disciplined environment and others are better in a relaxed, open environment. Schools need to vary their approach and attitudes.
Think about the kids and not the money.
Rebecca Cutts
-Stop treating children as though they are stupid
-Stop offering all students exactly the same education - consider their abilities and interests instead
-Stop teaching students skills and knowledge that they will never need and start giving them useful skills
And most importantly
-Stop telling schools what they have to teach and leave it up to them and their students!
Frans Kellner 100+
My first reaction was: you're right but the last line can never work.
On a second and deeper thought this could be right again.
I'm afraid it will not happen soon but a total restructuring of the school system would be what we need.
For any inspiration:
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/kiran_bir_sethi_teaches_kids_to_take_charge.html
http://www.ted.com/speakers/sugata_mitra.html
Ben Jarvis 50+
doubtless we wouldn't put an artist in charge of economic policy, nor a banker in charge of policy, nor a news anchor to head a comedy act, so why is this situation tolerated? as a student i think the best thing you can do is get your fellow student riled up and demand that these people with a load of opinions and not an ounce of actual experience are removed, and for actual teachers to be setting the curriculum and teaching methods, based on what they find works in their own classrooms.
Richard Knight
What is your intention in pursuing study?
Be very clear about this. Also be very clear about your path to employment afterwards - if the profession you are entering requires good grades and are uninterested in your varied interests then get back to the study program - and decide that that is what you need and want to study. I know that in the UK there are many students entering into degree courses who are going to emerge after three years with a good degree and still not find work. As you enter your studies I think it would be wise to start thinking about what you are going to do when you emerge. Go visit the kind of place you think will be your workplace and ensure that you like what you see. Test your chances of getting into that job. Find out how many other people are applying for that job. Find out what the winning candidate had that the others did not. Do not wait for them to come and find you - they might - but it is unlikely. If you need to be employed you need to find out what will make you employable.
Also job titles are not reliable - you may be given a great title - but find out what your duties are going to be - find out if what you are learning (and probably enjoying doing) is what you will actually be doing when you get a job. If it is not, then it may be that after you have been working for a while you will get the job you actually want - again find out what proportion of the people ever get to the job you are studying to achieve.
In my profession - architecture - we were taught to be architects - designers of great and wonderful buildings. Few of us ended up ever deigning what we had a chance to design at university - the discrepancy can be shocking when you only get to project manage or design window joints. Fine if you are happy - not so fine if your heart is still in designing great buildings. Time to get real!
Edison Mangilog
"I think attitude is a key element." - Richard
As per the above excerpt, attitude is one of the key for an outstanding educational experience may it be primary, high school, college, etc. How we view learning and the rewards it would be able to give us in the long term will give us a different perspective of education. I'm not saying that we should all be bookworms. What I'm saying is that there should be balance. I always tell myself (even way back my college years) that learning is not confined in the corners of the classroom. Up until now that I'm employed and working, I still continue to learn and educate myself. One lifetime is not long enough to learn all things but it certainly is enough to learn the tools that I'll be needing for my trade.
Rainey Shelly
When it comes to the school education, I think it's usual for most schools focus more on students' test performance though their primary arm isn't that. Teachers always tell us to enlight our eyes and learn more. However, the cruel competition of our society force us to drow all our attention to our study. My ideal school life is a mixture of interesting books interesting people and intersting travel. "Soul and body, there must be one on journy." A student should not only stay at school all the time, he should soak in the sociey, learn new people and new thing. He should read as much books as he can to develop his mind.
Priyabrat Pradhan
Richard Knight
Further to this is seems that knowing creates the end of the road.
Not knowing what to do blocks the road.
I was feeling very blocked the other day and took the dogs for a walk through the woods. I could not see out the woods as there were so many trees and yet I travelled through the woods without (obviously) hitting any one of them.
It occurred to me that there were thousands of trees in front of me and I did not walk into them. I wondered how many problems or "I don't, knows" I had in my life and realised that there could at very worst be only a few dozen - or if I got really down - maybe 100? And yet despite this I was walking headfirst into every one of them. It was time to start side stepping at least some of them and as I started doing this I saw that the problem - from another angle or looking back at it - was not that big of an issue.
The time had come to start sidestepping more problems. I do not mean avoid them - just stop walking into them. My headache has subsided a lot since this realisation!
A while later I walked up another woodland trail. It started to rain quite heavily and I soon met a trickle of water running down the path towards me and was delighted that I was witnessing a stream as it started to flow again. I walked on again and found that the stream ran out - I had gone past it's source. A couple of steps further and I found the leading edge of another stream flowing down to join the one I had just passed. It occurred to me that rivers and streams do not start from the source and flow to the sea. They start in many places and join each other to form the larger rivers. The same is true of learning. Your knowledge is starting in many places and flowing together to create a body of knowledge. Sometimes you can predict where it will all come together and re-inforce the flow - at other times you just have to let it flow.
I must head out to the woods again it teaches me a lot!
So Claire - I think attitude is a key element
Rainey Shelly
I am really agreed with you. I have many interests outside the class. Sometimes I have to spent more time to develop my intersts than others. It makes me confused that i don't seem sucessful than others. My classmates drow their all attention preparing for tests while i would rather wonder at many other areas.
I belive all i pay will pay me off someday, like all streams from different direction will certainly gather in sea.
Colleen Steen 500+
Thanks for sharing that lovely exploration and discovery! I also find peace and new discoveries while walking/hiking in the woods and mountains. If we suspend our thinking mind occasionally, while exploring nature, sometimes we get lots of information about the "flow" of life. It really is very simple, and yet complex...it is everything...and nothing...it flows with us...or not...depending on our willingness to learn...or not. I totally agree Richard...attitude is a very key element:>)
Thanks again for sharing your beautiful exploration:>)
Rainey,
When I was younger, I had a similar feeling of not being goal oriented enough. While most of my friend knew exactly what they wanted to do, and worked diligently toward that goal, it sometimes felt that I was wandering around exploring EVERYTHING! As I aged, I began to realize that while on one level, my explorations didn't seem connected, on another level, they were all VERY connected...just as everything in life is connected. We can take all of the information (flow from the little streams) and bring it together into the "river" of our lives...or not. It is about awareness of our "self" and the choices we make in life...or not:>)
Rainey Shelly
Colleen Steen 500+
A strong belief in ourselves is always helpful, in my perception:>)
Do you think/feel it depends on our definition and perception of "success"?
Rebecca Cutts
Trenton Willman
A'ndrea Jones 500+
Also require that all student get involved in an extra-curricular activity...this can actually be online for some...
tj devided
It takes 6 hrs a day for everyday for a thousand years too truly master anything or you can do is go on the journey and hope that what you learnt makes your path.... easier.....
when i was at school i never tried, never once did a peice of homework. i mean i payed attention in class but anything above that i didnt do, never failed a test under 60%. I couldn't commit myself when i was a teenager there was too much external factors that cause to much havoc on my soul. when school finished. i realized it doesn't matter what you learn at school its just the commitment any employer cares about. but still everyday i study. to reach enlightenment.
The journey is the most important thing a peice of paper at the end that most people dont even use properly.
i wish i was in a military school just dedicated to learning so i couldnt be distracted. discipline is what i needed. but kids now days take discipline at a insult to them and think its unfair. Life is fair thats the problem.
if your education isnt doing it for you then stop and learn something else.
Richard Knight
I was attempting to advise a young person about to start a university degree course just two days ago. I failed to come up with a simple piece of advice. Your question here and the advice given below has prompted me to look again.
When I "know" I have stopped looking. When I recognise that I do not know the adventure starts again.
My University tuition insisted that I acquire a number of "knowns". I would have been better nurturing and cherishing the ability to recognise that I did not know and willingly going out to explore these areas of life.
If I am learning for or to please or to impress anyone other than myself I may as well stop.
I think that if you learn in order to get a piece of paper you have missed the point. Learn because there is so much to find out about and explore - take the duration of your course to study all that you can - it is a unique period of life.
Colleen Steen 500+
All of life is a "unique period", and always an opportunity to learn, grow and evolve. Life for me has always been and will continue to be an exploration. I would not deny myself that opportunity:>)
Estela Estela 10+
Bakul Valambhiya (Mistry)
Bakul Valambhiya (Mistry)
Thomas Brucia
Education is etymologically based on the Latin "to draw out", but the word has come to encompass a lot of distinct meanings in everyday life. I can't help but wonder if all the confusion about the "purpose of education" isn't due to this conflation. One type of learning is that involved in perfecting a golf swing or riding a bicycle and is based on drill and a model (ideal). Another type of learning is mastering abstract logical thinking, best seen in 'higher math'. A third is kind of learning is the mastery of verbal skills. I could go on and on and on. The word "education" is so full of unrelated meanings as to be meaningless.
A lot of the educational regimentation characteristic of formal education involves *precisely* what society demands of humans: mindless obedience to norms. Who wants a worker who sees some pretty flowers on the way to work and sits down at his/her computer for an hour to find out the Latin names for them -- and arrives on the job site an hour late? Point: Part of education is making the pieces work together, and we are (in part) cogs in large social organizations.
Creativity is of some social value -- but its value is created by those who consume it. The mindless worship of 'creativity' overlooks this. Drawing out the creativity of people can be negative in lots of contexts (e.g. how many people admire 'creativity' among torturers or murderers?).
Finally (running out of characters, not ideas ), a guiding light regarding education: "If you don't know where you're going, all roads lead there." Though quoted as if it had only one meaning, it actually has two. Sometimes the only way to know where you are going is to go down a road and see where one ends up. This is called exploration. Yes, it's also something to which those in the "education industry" give lip service, but hate. If involves deviance and those creating plans hate deviance.
Comments?
Adora Svitak 500+
I see a lot of students treating school as more a social experience than a learning one (i.e., switching electives just to be in class with their friends) so I think we really need to highlight the value of school as a learning experience, strange as it may seem that we need to emphasize that. :) We try to get kids interested in school by emphasizing activities like football games or senior proms when maybe we should try going for the value of learning itself--one of the most powerful motivators there is.
What I would change about my education experience:
Currently I'm both an online and brick-and-mortar student (I take the majority of my classes through a public online high school and will be taking Biology and AP Art History at my local school). I've been frustrated by the amount of paperwork and red tape around creating a "blended learning environment" for yourself (taking both online and physical courses); I think schools need to make it easier for families and students to select learning options that fit for them. Whether that's all online, blended, in-person, etc. Right now it's just too much on the extremes. I would really love it if there were more learning networks--a lot of students feel that the classroom is a really insular place where they're isolated as opposed to connecting.
So: getting students interested in school based on the learning, not the social, experience; giving more choice in how students "go to class" (online, blended, in-person); connecting classrooms to the world and showing that what you learn in school can actually help you make an impact in the "real world." Those are my ideas. :)
Claire Dillon
I'm excited to experience a "blended learning environment" this fall; I signed up for Stanford's free online artificial intelligence class. It might be of interest to you if you haven't looked into it already!
Unfortunately you're right that the classroom often feels isolated -- students aren't just separate from the "real world;" in my opinion they're often separated from each other because of competition. Very few classes I know of interact with the community, and I think we'd all benefit if that were to change!
Colleen Steen 500+
I agree that "going off the beaten track" and daring to do something different is a good place to start. In order to do that, students need to have confidence in themselves. It is sometimes easier to follow the crowd and do what everyone else is doing, or take courses to be with your friends, as you point out.
I love your idea of many learning options and to make that successful, we need to look at each and every student as an individual to help them determine what works best for him/her. It seems like our educational systems are becoming more like assembly lines, where students are expected to produce the same results (grades) in the same way. We KNOW that people learn in different ways, and it would be helpful for us to use that knowledge in cooperation with students, teachers, parents, and all of society:>)
You keep talking about it Adora, because you ARE making a difference. In addition to making an impact in the world, we can do it with joy, as you so wonderfully demonstrate:>)
Gordon Barker 10+
How you approach university (or any post secondary school education) is how you are going to approach life in general (after all, university is just a microcosm of society). If you just to the normal stuff and don't try to stand out, you will never stand out in life either.
In my university days, I had to retake first year math (the wanted me to go mon/wed/fri at 4:30 in the afternoon...I mean really!) but I also took a graduate level course off my major, switched majors (in to honours geology with out taking the prerequisites), retook math and to some graduate level geology courses out of sequence. I'm not actually sure I took all the prerequisites to graduate but after four years they were happy to see me go.
I rarely did the labs and assignments in a straightforward manner, I did them my way. I took on a shit load of extra work and found a way to include math and computer into a field that at the time, did not recognize the potential.
You have to decide how YOU learn and force the system to work on your terms. The system will flex, but not without some passion on your part.
Ashish Jain
Sharon Turner 500+
gale kooser 20+
As time went on the students became very adapted at making objects out of paper & the angle numbers had seeped into their brains as a matter of course. Summer vacation the students were given paper to take home withe the angle numbers on them which they used & had fun with. Once these same students were in first grade, this same teacher wrote the angle numbers on the board in order of a folded object, the students were all able to create a paper object just by seeing the numbers (Numbers were not on the paper this time).
Knowing perspective, shapes, percentages, shading amts. & angles helps to create a painting that is pleasing to the eye.
Look at any work of art & you can see the math involved (even old masters). The artist may not have been a good hard math student but when you check out a good artists work, you can see they had a great eye, not only for the work in general but math too.
I happen to be an artist & know from where I speak even if I can't explain it too well.
An artist also takes a dreamer's idea & draws it. Look around you & everything you see (developed by humans) was created by an artist.
Claire Dillon
Walter Radtke
Lesley Henry
Additional life skills would also be useful like budget management , positive attitude , presentation skills and group dynamics illustrating things like negotiation skills and body language .Just a few things I wish I knew when I started work. Last thought we should all get a good grounding in politics to prepare us for corporate environment should we find ourselves in one.
Lee Miller 10+
2. Have a course in self-development/reflection (most definitely including a learning styles test). I think many of the mistakes we make in life are caused by not knowing ourselves well enough.
Claire Dillon
joseph wilkins
Claire Dillon
I can relate; it's definitely frustrating at times. Oh the other hand, being required to take certain courses is beneficial in the sense that students can discover they have interests they weren't aware of before. Based on my school's system, it seems the best compromise would be to lessen the requirement -- rather than take two classes in each area, students could take one and have more time to explore their interests or take electives (or take up another major -- I know I'll have to stay in school a little longer to get my second one). That's what I wish they'd do, anyway! Thanks for your comment.
Michael Williams
Mr. Anony mouse