What is education? Is it teaching facts and information? Well, if the purpose of the education is to make a person, or a kid, capable of establishing logical and scientific thinking or expressing the aesthetic sense, giving information can never be education. Unfortunately, a large part of current society adopts such method; the schools inject information into the students' heads. Teachers tend to give lectures, in which they just read what's on the text book, for an hour. They tend to do this more especially in some nations where public education has short history. They never ask "what do you think?" Instead, they ask "is this right or wrong?" They try to keep their students focused on the class, and they don't care how : corporal disciplines, verbal violence, and mostly, system of public education. This system, so tangled and so stagnant, never actually changed, and it constantly directs students, mostly mandatorily, to university. So, when we look at this system, we can see that it is not for making a student intellectually refined person, but a university student.
Let's look back in the history. Is there any great man who made his or her achievement with the help of public education? Not even a single person. Some did learn from public education,but mostly when they had grown up, and more felt, and was blamed that they were inadequate. All those people who brought great renovation to human society were not made from public education. Rather they had studied and cogitated themselves, or at most they had a tutor, who chose educational methods far, far different from what public education has chosen. History shows us that public education never gives birth to great mind.
Public education can be a great way to keep a society working, just like a waterwheel which rotates constantly, but without any change. It will produce a loyal component of the machine called stable society. Still, it lacks the ability to inspire the kids, make them try new things, encourage them to invent something, and to reveal the innate creativity of them.
Oh, the motions.
1. Public education must be optional for those over 13.
2. Firing public school teachers should be allowed.
3. High schools in Korea do more harm than benefit to students.
Good writing with some interesting observations. I like your "inject information" and "water wheel" metaphors - very visual and effective means of persuasion. If schools don't have time to ask "what do you think," let's hope parents do. Parents, thankfully, often supply their children with the things public education lacks -- no where on earth more so than Korea (for better or worse). If Ken Robinson was every kid's dad, we wouldn't be having these discussions. Right? That's an interesting thought. What would be doing instead?
답글삭제One last thing - please avoid absolute, general statements that only God himself, if he's real, could make. I'm sure public education has helped many great men, and definitely more than one. This isn't "always" the case and nor should we say it's "never" the case. If and when you write an SAT or any kind of essay, carefully chose your qualifiers. They "often" help.;)