A couple of weeks ago, my friend Paul Hillsdon launched Frustrated Students. Unfortunately, it has remained silent ever since. With so much boring, tedious work from school, the students (including me) who would have plenty to say cannot find the time to worry about the education system. Therefore, the meme Paul created got only one response - from the successful David Wilkinson. Well, now the unsuccessful Arthus can tell what 3 changes need to be made in the U.S education system.
- Leverage Modern Technology - there are thousands of awesome, free opportunities available for social publishing and collaboration. Meanwhile, my school (yes, that is a frame) still insists upon hiring inadequate, overpaid staff and paying for pathetic services. Basically, if the school would stop blocking social media and would embrace it they would save the taxpayers money.
- In schools across the U.S, I believe the focus needs to be taken off tests. Currently, over 50% of the school year is spent on studying for the numerous tests. Some of the changes need to be made on a national basis. Mandatory standardized testing requires students to memorizing useless, repetitive information just so that their school can receive funding. Meanwhile, with more and more time spent on memorizing and less upon learning, students come out into the work force and are surprised when most employers don’t give a damn that they know every county in the world if they can’t write decent essay upon any subject. However, some changes also need to be made on a local level by improving education style. As the ultimate example, my French class averages 3 tests a week. Meanwhile, the rest of the time is spent putting the information in our short term memory. We spend about 2 days on a subject, then we are slapped with a test. Therefor, we are forced to memorize information in the short term so we can pass the test. However, I can honestly not remember any of the lessons we learned five months ago - since we are only given 2 days to get the information in our temporary memory. How is that going to help me when I have to pass another exam of all the information we learned over the past two years? To improve our education system, the focus needs to be taken off tests - both nationally and locally.
- Schools should adopt some similar policy to Google’s 20% time. If this were to be implemented, it might be one period a week where students are given an opportunity to investigate what they chose. If they want a teacher to help them, then they can have that help. If they want to blow things up in a laboratory, then they can try (within safety). The important part of this is that it is not another study hall and that teachers make none of the decisions in the class during this period. Another way this could be implemented is tied in to something that Charles Leadbeater said at TED:
Imagine you could take all the children in education in Britian and 1% of them were co-developers of education.
What would happen to the education model then? Or, on a local basis, what if you actually gave the student council power? What if they were no longer thestudent council
but were instead welcomed into administration and faculty meetings - with a full vote?
I tag Christian and Will Richardson so they can tell me why I am a lunatic. I also tag all my fellow students so they can keep the conversation going. Let’s get this conversation flowing!
I’m succesful?
Glad somebody else wrote an article - I was starting to get worried. If we really want to get serious about changing the state our governments have got us into, we need to take appropriate action.
We can start by leavering the visitors to our blogs to think our way, then encourage them to go on and write their own views, hence getting even more people involved.
David Wilkinson
Everything in perspective.
Indeed, our blogs can be very powerful tools if we leverage them correctly (and I get some decent marketing skills) The more people who write, the sooner change will come. Like a pyramid scheme, each one of us who writes about it will reach their readers and hopefully encourage them to write about it on their own blogs… You gotta love the ‘net
The focus does not necessarily need to be taken off of tests, but instead shift the result of tests: instead of being a test of memorization it instead needs to become a quantitative method for proving that the subject has been learned. Typically this involves switching from multiple choice and short answer to paragraph questions and answers, which most kids hate.
In the end, the most valuable thing that children need to be taught is that learning is a good thing.
Although most of my peers hate them, I think the best measure of a student is a short essay response. This gives you an opportunity to truly prove that you understand a subject and have not simply memorized the textbook. Also, I feel that tests aren’t so bad as long as they are used to improve learning, rather than simply cutting funding. If at the end of each unit we had an essay response test, I think that would be the perfect method do gauge students understanding. If the majority of the class seems to understand the subject, you can move on. Or, if the majority doesn’t, continued instruction is needed. Plus, essay style questions build writing and communication skills - not proper shading technique.
Just in response to both Bartoneus and Arthus here.
I truly believe in the benefits of project-based learning. It encourages not only deep research and true understanding of a subject, but also encourages collaboration (when it’s a group project), creativity, presentation/design, and communication skills. That’s a bag load of things that you certainly don’t gain from weekly testing.
As for short form essays. It’s true they could work. However, not all students are great writers, and this could basically be engulfed into a project. Projects don’t necessarily need to be poster-boards or Powerpoints… It allows for flexibility depending on the desired learning outcomes and student’s strengths.
The other problem with short form essays relates to the curriculum. The curriculum is currently far too expansive to ever make it possible to shift from multiple choice testing to essay base testing. It would simply be far too much work for the teacher, and that’s why multiple choice is currently used. So, if you even want essay writing to be anywhere near a more viable option, you have to start cutting down what you are trying to stuff into the kids heads.
I mean, is it better to fill them up with 100 years worth of history in 5 months, and have them retain about a dozen disparate facts. Or, should we be focusing on a dozen major themes (societal issues), and doing intensive study and work on them? (That didn’t quite turn out how I wanted it to sound, but I think you got the point)
Discussion like this is why we need it be centralized eventually, to round up all these ideas… *sigh*
Most impressed by the back-n-forth here, which pulled me out of a self-imposed blogging hiatus as of late for a quick comment before returning to spending time with my 7 month old son.
Have to say that the 20% Google model is a wonderful premise for exploring the positive benefits of testing big ideas without fearing ‘failure’, and also the underlying principles of project-based learning (which I am also a proponent of).
Continue the conversational adventure, gentlemen! While I’m enjoying my blog-fast as of late (with many more weeks to come to fully recharge the batteries), it was a pleasure to come back out of hibernation to hear what you’re all talking about.
Hope the spring (and call of summer) treats you well!
Cheers,
Christian
Thanks for the comment, Christian. I was wondering if you’d ever appear…
Anyways, I probably need a break too. After all, school can be very stressful (particularly when it’s bureaucratic). Still, me and Paul are working on some project planning for new websites.
Yes, the Google 20% model is a very useful, effective method of testing new ideas. Hopefully, the more enterprising of schools will realize that giving students power will improve morale and climate within the school. (With a corresponding increase in the ever important test scores.