A look into the current system’s benefits and drawbacks in the context of the modern world.

Most of us are familiar with the daily routine of our modern education system. We sit in organised and pre planned lessons, memorise information and are expected to excel in exams. Surprisingly, this style of education has been in use for the past hundred years or so, without much significant change, and can be traced back to the industrial age.

The education system of the era was chiefly concerned with the production of workers for the booming number of factories caused by the industrial revolution. Children were taught to be obedient and to carry out tasks to the letter, skills which were valued on a factory line. The era also introduced the concept of mass education, where batches of students would be taught the same lesson at the same time.

Although the industrial revolution has long passed, students are still subjected to the same education processes of that age, leading some to question the current system’s viability in the modern world.

Current Benefits:

The current system is efficient, easy to regulate and has been tried and tested for over a century. Lessons are pre-planned according to a set curriculum, allowing for the standardisation of education and ensuring educational equality in the classroom. Classes are organised and disciplined, allowing for pure focus on the concepts and tasks at hand, thus increasing class productivity. The current system’s benefits are mainly that it’s quick, organised and produces consistent student results. Teachers are able to sort out students who excel and those who require additional tutoring, helping to ensure that those students in need of extra assistance are identified.

Current Drawbacks:

Many of us are familiar with grades, be it the glorified A’s or the dreaded C’s, we’ve all experienced getting our report cards that tell us how academically capable weare. Since most of our grades are based on a series of final papers, one could argue that we are fostering a study  culture of memorisation and regurgitation.

Educational reformists point out that this style of learning is not authentic learning, as the use of examinations to grade a student encourages them to develop their memorisation skills and not “actual” learning. We as students often focus on cramming information into our brains so as to paste it back on to the exam paper.How many times have we finished the final exam and have already begun to forget most of the syllabus soon after? This is called the Rote Cycle of learning, which is a cycle consisting of learning, examinations and forgetting. This is viable for some subjects but has often been used as a standard method for many educational institutions.

What can be done?

To help improve the negative aspects of our current education system, we can start with integrating values of authentic learning. This would include giving students the freedom to involve the abstract concepts taught in class with real world perspectives and issues that are relevant to their lives. By giving students practical applications of the concepts they learn, we are preparing them for the future.

Another improvement would be the use of more evidence-focused grading components. This would include the greater use of research projects and tests of practical skills which would allow for educators to determine, to a more accurate degree, a student’s actual understanding of the subject.

In conclusion, the issues that persist in the current education system hinder its ability

to effectively educate and uplift students. I do concede that such a complex topic cannot be discussed fully in this article, I believe it is sufficient to say that as the world changes, so must the way we prepare the future generations for their futures.