School is a common thing, isn’t it? It is the basis on which nearly all vocation is built on, or has come to be. It’s an essential institution, one that teaches students fundamental skills necessary for a decent life and further education. A general range of subjects are taught—mainly math, science, history, and language. These subjects are taught, modernly, to produce a “well rounded student,” one that avidly pursues a diverse range of interests. A student developed in a number of subjects and showing an interest in a great range of topics, is considered suited for a college education and a prospect for a college degree. A college degree is then heavily considered in job application. Ultimately, success in school correlates with college acceptance, which correlates with job availability and societal recognition.
This type of progression and way of thinking has been prevalent since the industrial era—in which factories and advanced technology made incremental advances that increased productivity to the extent that the amount of goods actually became excessive. The industrial way of thinking is still implemented in modern education. Students are fed the same factual knowledge and encouraged to be well rounded and similar. In fact, today there are too many well-rounded students. Well-rounded students are having difficulty adapting to a rapidly changing world and an uncertain future because they lack the specificity of knowledge required in a technological revolution is transforming society. Creativity and innovation are in supreme demand. The systematic, industrialized way of schooling is outdated and products of institutional education are incapable of coping with unprecedented problems. Conventional education systems curb creative capacity so crucial to reconciling an evolving world.
Commendable education programs throughout the world teach math, history, language, and science. For example, in China, Japan, United States, Australia, New Zealand, Finland, Canada, Netherlands, Switzerland, and South Korea the primary subjects are math, science, language, and history. Their curricula stress the importance of learning basic principles and background knowledge in these subjects for a foundation that students can build upon with further education. The United States, however, focus more intensely on these subjects, and even more so on reading and math. In the US from 1994 to 2004, as time spent on teaching core academics increased, percentage of time spent on teaching science decreased by 20% and the percentage of time spent on teaching social studies decreased by 16%, when compared to teaching of math and reading. These rates have ascended since then, which demonstrates the desperate need for transforming how subjects are taught and to what degree they are taught. U.S. Department of Education research shows that, despite an increased focus on these subjects, foreign countries still outperform the U.S. in these subjects. Clearly a narrow focus is not essential to performing well in science and math—or any core subject for that matter. This narrowness of focus, so prevalent in the U.S, is the most significant problem with modern education. Students are educated so exclusively in a hierarchy of subjects that they have a very small ground on which to build their interests and creativity.
It is safe to say the ultimate goal of education is a combination of these four things: to teach the learner tools needed to understand and communicate for his true potential, to create an interest and a willingness to learn, to show the reasons for learning, and to teach the learner how to pursue her own education. Einstein was remembered to say, “The aim [of education] must be the training of independently acting and thinking individuals who, however, can see in the service to the community their highest life achievement.” With a narrowness of focus it is impossible to accomplish each of these things. It is not uncommon to see a high school student reluctant to go to school. In fact, in 2009, roughly 1.2 million students did not graduate from high school. That’s 29% percent of high school students. Obviously, an overwhelming amount of high school students dislike being educated at school. A student must be interested in the subject she is learning in order to learn and retain information. This is an axiomatic truth. The problem with such an intense focus on core subjects is students losing interest in these subjects very quickly. Visit any high school and sit in on a history lecture. Pay attention to what kinds of questions students ask and the number of students answering questions. An astoundingly few questions are asked solely from curiosity. The few questions that are asked are only because the teacher expects it and are typically required for class points. Most students are virtually apathetic about the subject and inquire only to maintain a sufficient grade. To learn and to be innovative, a desire for knowledge is essential. A focus on a wider array of subjects is principal. It is principal because students having interests in subjects omitted from school-taught subjects have no place to cultivate their specific creative capacity.
A school in Long Eaton, Nottinghamshire called Grange Primary commits to having a structure for students to cultivate talent. They understand learning has to mean something for young people—they need to see a practical use for what they’re learning. The school has established what is called ‘Grangeton,’ which is a “scaled-down but fully-functioning model of a real society, complete with a political structure and working economy.” Each of the school’s enterprises is run for and by the pupils. “It’s about placing learner skills and behavior in context in order to try out the skills they are learning in context, to see how they will be useful when they go into the real world,” says Richard Gerver, the school’s headteacher. “Why should vocational study start at 14? Why not from the age of three?” The school began a new development program for teaching students. The pupil-run program implemented a new learning system. Three years into the program, test scores in the Key Stage Test taken every year improved drastically – from 50% at level four and above in all subjects, to 100% in science, 92% in literacy, and 87% in math. One of the key features of the development program included an interesting event on the calendar every Friday. Every Friday, students are able to choose from 40 different workshops to attend during the day completely outside the curriculum. These classes include subjects such as: rounders, money management, internet marketing, needlework, pop music history, cycling proficiency, cricket, French, football, journalism, contemporary dance, cookery, cheerleading, chess, PowerPoint and Spanish. A very wide range is available for students to immerse themselves in. Students at Grange get the opportunity to find their passion, a practical use for it, and a way to further it. All of which are fundamental process of learning. Every school should put this into practice, or at least put some kind of thought into their practice.
During this technological age distractions are everywhere. Social contact between persons is virtually available all of the time, along with entertainment, news, and knowledge. Children and teenagers grow up with information everywhere they look. Opportunities are abundant and there is a great number of things to be explored and exploited. Math, science, history, and language are extremely important subjects. However, this is a huge gamut of new territories to pioneer and conceive. Psychology is advancing rapidly, brain research is gaining ground, mathematic discoveries and scientific phenomena are ubiquitous, medicine is advancing in to unanticipated synthetics, natural marvels are endangering, and technology is developing faster than society can grasp. With these conditions come a new set of required skills, which we cannot anticipate without nourishing the mindset and thought processes that develop them. With an extensive focus on a hierarchy of subjects, rather than a balance between interests and a base for development of critical thinking skills and innovation, this isn’t possible.
When placing a focus on producing a well-rounded student, certain things are left unseen, or never discovered. Most importantly, a student’s highest potential can be left out of the mix. Isn’t it tacitly understood that those who have completely mastered what they do are working at their highest potential? Famous people, such as Beethoven, Mozart, Einstein, Napoleon, Paul McCartney, Elvis, and Henry Ford—to list only a few—all worked in their profession vigorously and earnestly for years and years. They certainly found their talent and a road to their highest potential. Beethoven received musical training from three different teachers—one being his father—before he was seven, when he played his first performance. At age nine he began his formal studies, was taught composition, and wrote his first published composition. Mozart started playing at the age of four and composed his first piece at the age of five, with the help of his first teacher, his father. Einstein had a personal teacher at the age of ten who taught him about philosophy, mathematics, and science for six years. Napoleon Bonaparte started military school when he was ten years old and pursued it as a career. McCartney and Elvis were both inspired by music and pursued it fervently at very young ages. Henry Ford became fascinated with machinery and moved at the age of seventeen to become an apprentice.
These people have a raft of things in common. They were all introduced to their passions at very young ages, and cultivated them for a long period of time. It’s easily concluded that discovering your talents, passions, and creativity is beneficial and many times very lucrative. A very broad and generalized way of teaching only makes this discovery more burdensome. An avenue for discovery must be established in order to advance any student into his full potential—which is one of the ultimate goals of education.
Research by a sociologist named Malcolm Gladwell suggests a very enlightening rule that further asserts the notion that discovering talents, passions, and creativity early is beneficial. This rule is called the 10,000 hour rule. Basically, one must spend 10,000 hours doing a certain thing to achieve mastery. The study was based on detailed analyses of a number of renowned masters of their fields, including Bill Gates, J. Robert Oppenheimer, The Beatles, and Mozart, who had all reached a 10,000 hour mark. A correlation is incontestable here. The more time spent on a certain job, activity or interest, the more successful one is at that particular thing. This seems self-evident, but has lost significance in conventional education. If systems were organized allowing for a kind of dedication like this, then people would be able to take the time and effort and effort to achieve mastery.
Conventional education systems are, and have been, pushing the importance of finding the “right” answer. Tests are given to high school students every week. Assessing knowledge has become an obsession among educators. College acceptance relies heavily upon standardized tests and school is now based on measurement. This huge reliance on testing eliminates the unique personal pursuit that education must be. It also limits the scope of interest and the curiosity of the student.
Although a measuring knowledge is necessary, standardized testing emphasizing on a certain “right” answer isn’t productive and doesn’t accurately assess a student’s real aptitude. Experiments by social physiological professor, Claude Steele, and his colleague, Joshua Aronson, at Stanford University build upon this notion. They looked at how certain groups perform under pressure. They found that when they gave a group of Stanford undergraduates a standardized test and told them it was a measure of their intellectual ability, the white students did much better than their black counterparts. But when the same test was presented as a laboratory tool—with no relevance to ability—the scores of blacks and whites were virtually identical. Steele and Aronson attributed this to what they call stereotype threat. When black students are confronted directly with a stereotype about their group, the resulting pressure causes their performance to suffer. This kind of situation not only suggests that confrontation with stereotypes play a role in performance on standardized tests, but that pressure to do better than another group of people can actually stifle one’s ability to perform at his highest potential.
Scores on standardized tests determine a number of things. They determine a pupil’s reputation among his peers, what classes he is permitted to take, and frequently, where he ends up in vocationally and in college. Standardized testing is not a bad thing; it is very necessary in determining one’s competency in evaluable subjects. If one were to test a student on their grasp of Spanish vocabulary and grammar, there is no dispute of their ability to memorize the material. Still, this kind of testing is only one way to get an idea of a student’s capacity. It measures only one kind of thing, but fails to measure one thing that everyone knows to work—personal development. Instead of testing kids like we test computer components to see if they work properly, we should make education relevant to each child. Assessments contain two things: description of ability and comparison of ability. The description is a statement of what the student can do. The comparison entails comparing what they can do to what other people can do. Most standardized tests are too heavily weighted on comparison, and lightly weighted on description. Because of this, students come out from school with a letter grade, but it’s unclear what it really means. If a diagnosis were attached to this intangible letter grade, then it would be of more use. These heavily comparative tests are judgmental and uninformative, and offer little practical use to the test taker. Systems based on measurements like this are disparaging of doing practical things. It’s centered on theoretical things and thinking about doing things, rather than actually doing them. Because of a central idea like this, practical skills are in an increasing demand.
If I built a house and had it inspected, the inspector’s detailed, labor-specific, report would be helpful. The feedback would be helpful. But if I were to get a B for my work, what would I do with that? Education is a personal thing and should be treated as one. Undeniably, every student has a unique creative ability. The solution, then, is to provide the student an opportunity to develop his talents while giving him a clear view of vocational opportunity, actionable feedback, and an internal incentive to learn. Currently, far too much focus is placed upon a student’s level of intellectuality, while the focus should placed upon improving it.
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