the first essay

Time to Lead Our Education on the Way

While we are watching some videos about the current education, and read lots of materials about the education, we all talk about that the system is wrong, and we need to change it. Most people said the education is mess, and did do nothing with our current situation, or did not help us to find a good job in future. Most of them said that we need to change the system. But I do not find anyone said that there is nothing wrong with our education itself, we just need to admen it, not to change it. So in my opinion, I think we just need to lead our education back on the way, on the original purpose of the education.

We judge the education by its result, because it is easy to be seen. This is why most of us focus on the result of the education. Just as a data shows, the average year to receive education for the adults who are over 15 years old is 12 (http://www.nationmaster.com/country info/stats/Education/Average-years-of-schooling-of-adults).  But most of us have been in school since we are three or four years old.  It means we spent almost 20 years in school, but what we have got from school?  When we are graduated from school, most of us will have to learn either skills or the related knowledge in order to get a job, or start a new life.  Too many years’s education just does not help us in the field we will be. Such as an accounting job, we need to master the basic skills and get the CPA, and we have to begin with internship in order to be a qualified accountant.  What we learned in school just focus on the theory, but not reality.  Then we have to think about the reason to be in school and what’s the purpose of our education. To start to think this, we have to be back on the goal of our school.  This goal is that we need try our best to go into a good university, then we can get a good job, then start a better life.  Our parents, our teacher and our society set this goal to us.  So what we need to do is just go into the school and then follow the teacher’s instruction. When we talk about our education, actually we don’t have much power to change it, it is already there and set by the related department.  But we still need to pay attention to it and try our best to make it works.  Think about what it really does for the students, how it related to our society.  When we find there is a deep gap between the education and the reality, it means there are something wrong with our current education system.  At the very first we should think about the goal of the education.  If the goal is right, it will be fine, but if the goal is wrong, then the education will be totally on a wrong way.

On this point, we need to know the definition of the education first.  According to the website of wiki, the education in its general sense is a form of learning in which the knowledge, skills, values, beliefs and habits of a group of people are transferred from one generation to the next through storytelling, discussion, teaching, training, and or research(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education).  But the problem is that the goal of our education system seems to be specialized just in knowledge.  The way of the education is just through the teacher who will send the knowledge to us, no matter we understand or not.  Another problem is the content of the education, and who decide what to teach.

For the goal of the education, it is said that we should be educated the knowledge, skills, values, beliefs and habits.  But in fact, we are educated more in knowledge. So when we are graduated, we will find we still need to learn some skills to find a job, cause it has some distance form the reality.  We are taught the knowledge itself, but don’t know how to use our knowledge.  Why, and how it happens? It seems that the teacher or the system has changed its goal.  The purpose of the education is to prepare students for the society’s work or to fulfill the position. Everything is about this, teaching, homework and test.  We have to be good at our major. If not, then we can not go into that field.  “The teacher is satisfied if he succeeds in furthering the student” (684, Disobedience as a Psychological and Moral Problem).  Our beliefs, our values are not formed in school, so we can always see the news that some students are suicide.  Cause we don’t have right values of our life, and apparently no one teach us.  We start to go to school since we are young, beginning with preschool, primary school, secondary school and then college. The fact is that not every one can jump into the highest step, so not every one can become so rich or get the best life.  “This rule was made necessary by the fact that there was only enough of the good things of life for the few, and only the crumbs remained for the many” (686, Disobedience as a Psychological and Moral Problem).  This goal is set only for the few people, not for the most of us. And it is so competitive, every one wants to get into the field, we kind of busy on purchasing this goal, at the mean time, we will ignore to purchase our values, our beliefs.  “It’s so competitive you kind of lose the enjoyment of just learning” (Recycling the Gift: The Passion Project II).  So the first step to change our education system is to amend our goal of the education.  We need to teach our children, our students the knowledge, also include the values, the beliefs, the skills and the good habits.  As the teachers, they should be encouraged to explore the student’s talent, not just think he will be a doctor in future and then lead him on the way.  They need to encourage the student to purchase the life he wants, and teach them how to enjoy the life.  Also they need to teach student skills, and let them have creative thinking, so when they are graduated, they can have a rich mind to adapt to this world.

The second problem of our education system is the way of teaching.  Most of teachers just treat the students like a machine, they input the information, and the students just follow, memorize and repeat.  We have to follow the teacher’s instruction in order to be good at school.  As the very beginning of our school, we are told to listen to teachers.  As the teacher, their responsibility is to teach us, but not communicate with us.  So they don’t know our needs, they just gave the knowledge to us, from one generation to another generation.  And it will be no surprise that the content of the course may keep same after couple years.  The teacher just need to show the lecture to the students, arrange some assignments and then everything will be done.  So sometimes we will feel it is so boring to stay in the class. As mentioned above, the teacher should educate us through storytelling, discussion, teaching, training, and or research.  There are so many methods in education, but most of teachers focus on just teaching.  For example, I experienced a teacher who just uses the power point to give the lecture. Every time he just reads from the power point which is given by the author of our textbook. When we have some questions, he will say this is not related by this course.  His class is just lack of creativity and enthusiasm. Also he always called our names before the class, so it makes me feel the only think I feel valuable is to be here, and get the full credit for the attendance, but not the content of the course itself.  Also we can tell he did not prepare much about his course. It seems he only knows what he will give to us until he went into the class and open his computer. Then read from that.  While some teachers really do a great job.  They try to make a relaxed community, let students share their values and their thought. We learned so much more than we supposed to learn. And also we can make some friends and learn how to listen to others, respect other’s opinion, take care other’s feelings and so on. We learn not the knowledge itself, but other more valuable things I think.  Also another important thing is that for some teachers they just want to make money, or get paid, so they come to school to make it as a career.  They don’t spend lots of time to think about this special job, they don’t realize that it is a great job which maybe can change a person’s life, change a family, even change a nation.  They don’t value this job so much, just think it is a job, do not consider it is a career, because no one will pay for them if they work for extra hours.  They don’t want to spend their private time to do this, to think about this wonderful job.  So when we have questions, it is so hard to solve it when we are outside the school.  There is also no connection with teachers after school.  We don’t have so much communication and don’t share our life or our story so much.  This is none of business with them.  They don’t care about this.  According to a data, U.S. teachers spend more time in the classroom and less time planning and working with one another than do teachers in countries with higher-performing schools (http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/139113/jal-mehta/why-american-education-fails).  So it is time to change our education system. We need to educate the teachers first, because they will directly influence the students, they will directly decide the outcomes of the education.  At first we need to change people’s values, let them feel to be a teacher is really a great thing, both for them, and for the rest of the country.  We need to respect teachers, and give them rewards for their excellent job. We need to encourage them to try different methods of teaching, and make much more connection with students, know what they want, what they think, try to help students find out their interest and their talent. “Just like one people said, like a gardener of human potential, the teacher tends to these moments, nurtures these moments, so that that blossoming of learning can occur” (Recycling the Gift: The Passion Project II).  So the teacher needs to spend some time to think how to encourage students, and how to praise the students. In that way, we can be confident to deal with our life. “ If we have been told we are stupid and worthless and have been treated as if we were all our lives, then it is not surprising that we would come to believe it” (THE FOUR “I’s” OF OPPRESSION).  Also the teachers should create a relaxed atmosphere, try to make much discussion in class, and let the students learn to share their thought, their ideas and their values.

The third problem is the content of the education, and who decide what to teach.  We go to school, but what we learn from here.  The content is just there, and we don’t know who decide this, why they choose this, and how long will this content last.  We only know, it is there when we go into the school.  Though it is not what we want to learn, we have to go there.  Because the school is open to most of people, not just few of them.  So you can’t choose the thing you like, it is not like a buffet that you can choose what you want. Even when you go to the college, and get a major, you still can’t decide the thing you are learning.  But for most of us, we still go to school and to learn those things, which we think useless.  Why? Because we are taught to be obedience when we are born.  “For centuries, kings, priests, feudal lords, industrial bosses, and parents have insisted that obedience is a virtue and that disobedience is a vice” (683, Disobedience as a Psychological and Moral Problem).  So we learnt to be obedience, to listen to the teachers and to follow them.  When it is disobey our will, we are oppressed.  “But for the more the oppressed can be led to adapt to that situation, the more easily they can be dominated” (2,Philosophy of Education).  So we are oppressed, but we don’t have ways to express, the only way is to obey.  When it happened, we lost our freedom.  We can’t think freely, can’t do what we want.  “It attempts to control thinking and action, leads women and men to adjust to the world, and inhibits their creative power” (5,Philosophy of Education).  So we can’t form our creative thinking, can’t explore our talent.  Because we have to obey the system, it does not allow us to behave different, we need to keep up the school, follow the teachers.  When we do this, we don’t have so much time to think about ourselves, to think what we want.  Our life is controlled, and our dream is dead.  When we are different, we are supposed to disobey.  So we have to follow this system.  No one will think it is a good thing to disobey the education system.  Another thing is the content it self, we can find sometimes the content is so old, and not related with the reality.  After we graduated from school, we have to learn new technique, or new knowledge.  So we are confused why we learn these things when they will not help us so much in reality.  “While our mathematics, astronomy, and the natural sciences are of the twentieth century, most of our ideas about politics, the state, and society lag far behind the age of science” (Disobedience as a Psychological and Moral Problem).   Another thing is that what we learn is far from what we can do in the reality.  Such as mathematics, we spend lots of time to learn it, but if we don’t want to do any thing related with math, what is the meaning to learn the math, and same things as chemistry or biology.  Another example is the communication or the speech, we just learn how to communicate with people, but when we really need to make a communication, we find it did not help us a lot. We still have to use our ways to communicate.  The theory doesn’t work well, we can only know what is communication, but how to communicate is still a problem need to solve.  When we need to change our education system, we also need to pay attention to the content of the education itself, to find out what we want to learn, what will help us a lot, either for ourselves, or for our society. Maybe we need to make some research to find out what subjects will be interesting for our kids, for our students.  Not according to the adults, but for those people who are to be educated.  Also we need to follow the reality much more closely.

            So when we talk about our education, we need to know the education itself, analyze it a little bit, then we can find there is nothing wrong with the education itself, but the problem is on the system. We change the system by ourselves, make it much more commercial, while ignoring other unvalued things, just like belief, values, life. So need to lead our current education system back to its way, let it play the important role for our human, not only just think it is kind of instrument to be at a better level of society.