Once upon a time, there were no public schools. Once upon a time, it was not the job of the government to teach our young people. Once upon a time, it was the parents’ job to teach and train their children not only life skills (which many public schools insist on teaching) but career skills. The blacksmith would give his child on the job training in the art of blacksmithing. The baker the same to his child. The merchant the same to his.
But then man invented the factory.
Before the human race decided to sophisticate itself, there were only experts. Professional degree training began at age six and ended whenever they decided it was over. Now, I by no means disapprove of the good fruit the industrial revolution granted humanity, but some of the bad fruit is still laying around. Our current public schools system is designed to produce a factory worker, but society no longer is in need of factory workers. Many of the people who manage to escape the factory mindset of school are hard at work designing robotics to replace the need for others to work in a factory. While some may see this as a curse, I see it as a blessing. People have amazing creative potential, but factories do not appreciate this. Factories give people easy to follow instructions then scrupulously watch over them to ensure proper execution… much like the school system.
This is clearly not an easy problem to fix, however the solution is beginning to present itself. New technologies have caused the advent of classroom gamification, mass customized learning and countless other previously impossible learning models, all of which gives more power to the student to learn at a comfortable pace and in the best way for them. These technologies are more equipped to enable student success in the information age, where mastery and creativity are key and Google has removed the need to memorize formulas.
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