Michael Ovchinnikoff 11/20/11
Mr.Katz True Education English 101
The need for educational reform has been a topic for debate for a while now from people such famous people such as Emerson, Sir Ken Robinson, to even the creators of Kahn Academy which has seen a boom in popularity in recent years. Each expresses their own ideas about how people should learn and be taught but is anyone of them have the correct views? How can they really know what needs to be changed if they themselves aren’t actually going through the system as of right now? I myself view something similar but completely different from many of these professionals who do these jobs for a living.
Sir Ken Robinson has the correct idea about the fact we need to change our educational system in that it is flawed but we do not need to demolish the whole entire system and rebuild from scratch. We need to reform the system because people contrary to his belief actually succeed through our educational system and create wealthy businesses and are believe it or not still creative. Yes the more we go through life the less creative we become but isn’t that more toward the theory of we kids just growing up? When we are younger we play with imaginary people and little toy trucks and pretend we are fireman, wouldn’t it be a ridiculous notion to see an older adolescent still doing these activities. It’s not the school that drains us of our creativity it’s the fact we have to grow up and with that entails responsibility and giving up these childish habits. I believe that if the school system changed we would still see creativity drop because that is just how our society works now a days. Maybe we should through school days have a creative class where kids are required to use these skills so not as much of it is lost but rather the creativity is being matured into an adult form. Then as they progress through the grades the children should have to take different forms of tests to try to figure out what forms of subjects they should focus on more intently.
The idea of not going to college struck me as an incredibly stupid but brilliant idea all at once. The fact that we waste so much time in college makes students waste so much of there money that right after exiting school we are forced to find any job to that will allow us to pay off our debts because they will not just go away all by themselves. What’s even worse is that even when declaring bankruptcy those still follow you and cannot be erased still forces a person to pursue some form of a job rather spending that time trying to build a business, or thinking of new inventions or innovations that can really improve our culture or society. Though imagine trying to enter a competitive job and during the interview explaining you don’t have a college degree because you decided to try to be creative and invent something but it turned out to be a failure. They would laugh in your face, call you unqualified, and trying to make up an excuse for not going through college. Realistically I cannot view this as a feasible idea to try an spur creativity with in people because the percentage of people that will actually be successful will be minimal and will more likely create more jobless people. In the economy we have it doesn’t seem like the best thing for the people of our current society to try. Rather then not go to college all together the time we spend there should be significantly cut down to cut tuition costs. Why do students have to sit through English classes, courses or science classes that have nothing to do with their major? Colleges force to take general education classes when instead we could more just focus upon the subject we really want to take. This could potentially cut college from 4 years-8 years to a much shorter 2-4 years depending upon the degree. Not only will this save us time and allow us to enter the field of our choice faster but it will also cut tuition costs significantly allowing students not to have to job into a career right away after college. Then the young adults of our society have the choice to either jump right off into the career of their choosing but also give them time to experiment with other ideas. This could allow for those people to try to and invent some new great thing but if they happen to fail the have a degree that allows them to still enter the job market in a career that they chose and actually have shown interest. If we allowed students to remain creativity through out their entire schooling it will help the children really focus on different topics they actually like and cause less of those students who enter college undecided and will save the student even more time and money.
Emerson believed that people should not only focus on one specific area but to rather focus more upon learning everything in a more broad sense. If we all focuses on learning everything around us and not what just interests us what makes us different from the next door neighbor or the guy down the street. We all need to rather focus on ideas that really interest our own personal selves to become whole. If we try to become more general knowledge this allows us less time for the stuff we truly love. People shouldn’t only be focused on themselves though but rather focus on how their role in society can better their surroundings rather then just better themselves. People can use their own wisdom and knowledge from school to pursue their own interests but use that to not only benefit themselves but the others around them. For example how a doctor helps anyone who is sick. They give their own knowledge from their lifetime to the patients they see and those people can later use that same knowledge to know if someone else is sick or if it seems to be the same illness they were previously diagnosed with based on the similar symptoms they were having. People need to learn from others around them, and take that knowledge they receive and spread it so the world can become more whole, not try to learn everything themselves to become a whole person because it just isn’t possible to know it all.
These other scholars have had their own idea’s but not actually pursued them into actual working ideas the creators of Kahn Academy did with their new innovative idea on how children should be taught and improving upon the classroom setting. Taking ideas and simplifying them down so that anyone can understand the ideas is brilliant this way kids that are struggling through school can turn to an alternative way to learn rather then either paying money for a tutor or trying to learn from the teacher you couldn’t understand in the first place. This innovative idea is the first real step forward in people actually trying to change something within our flawed educational system. If only his idea could branch out and focus on all the topics in school not only the easier concepts to demonstrate such as math and science. Half the problem in college is that students don’t have any clue what their professor’s are speaking of which causes them to not do well. Professor’s are not required to have any sort of teaching degree they only have to know about the field in which they will be lecturing the students on. If the professor can’t teach his students properly how can the student ever hope to do well or even pass the class? The school’s maybe should provide an online-based source to help students who are really struggling through the course. Even though office hours are available to the students, or they have TA’s available to the students for help many of the students including myself are too busy caught up in other school work or are just to tired to find the time to attend these such things. If there was this type of “Kahn Academy” accessible for students at anytime through the internet maybe students could learn and succeed what they were unable to learn in class. This could really cut back on struggles students have and save them precious time they never seem to have. Another step further is actually having this colleges such as our own have classes totally online available from the comfort of their own home. Students could pay the tuition of the school they desire, but take the classes at home and viewing the courses whenever they are free. This could potentially save people a lot of money; I would love to have this option it would really free up some of my time. Kahn has the right idea but needs to expand upon it take it to another level, try to get others involved on his projects other school’s to take advantage of this fairly new resource called the internet. Students could then spend that time being creative trying to pursue the impossible dream, or spend more time focusing on the new great invention of our time while at the same time attending college. This could truly be innovative because if they are not successful all of there time has not gone to waste they were pursuing other interests and will have a college degree if they don’t achieve success.
The educational system is clearly flawed and everyone with a pair of eyes, or who went through the system knows that as we see kids failing or struggling everyday and we know something must be done. The system should not be completely demolished nearly changed with varying degrees at each level. We must maintain our creativity through the stages of growing up, we must also find ways to push those creative minds out of the paradigm to give them time to actually achieve these new innovations with out the extraneous debt pushing them away from taking time off and not jumping off into careers right away. I believe its all possible we need to mix and match everyone’s ideas throwing in a few of our own and finding the people to push for this reform and it can maybe happen one day.
