Education Re-Think

Hey Everyone,

When I was growing up I had a really hard time getting to my classes due to being sick most of the time and I also had an underlying social anxiety which didn't help either. There were a few good teachers during the time I was there but there was a large number of them who didn't really care at all about me or my education and would usually assume I was faking it. The days when I was home I would watch all the science shows that were on TV and learn through a path I built for myself; that worked for me because I was learning things of my own interest and at my own pace. I remember the things I learnt to this day because the information was important to me and I cared about it. I can barely remember a thing from the school's educational process and most of my memories are from the traumatic events caused from the teachers or students; a good example was when I was in year six and the teacher had the class stay in waiting for me to answer a question about fractions that I hadn't learnt yet due to my absence, I just sat there feeling like shit while all the kids looked at each other and at me. It wasn't until one of the kids whispered the answer to me like 30mins later before he allowed the students to leave for lunch, not only that he basically hated me because I wasn't that much into sports but I also had medical reasons too; I had flat feet so my feet had no arch and in turn no support so whenever I did any running or sports my feet would kill me and it wasn't for another year or two before I even got orthotics for my shoes. This same teacher had the nerve to try and hold me back for another year; another year of hell with him as my teacher, thankfully my parents knew better and said no but they had to put up a fight. My parents actually called up during that year and asked for him to set up homework for me but apparently he had "enough on his plate than to worry about 1 student". Thankfully most of the majority of my teachers were really nice to me and did the best they could in the current system, I actually preferred talking to them than the students as I liked more mature conversation. I had further problems at high school; getting a condition similar to Osgood-Schlatter or at least that's what the doctor referred to it as but essentially I damaged a tendon somehow in my knee which prevented me from going up and down stairs due to the amount of pain I would get from it and not only ended up on crutches but I had to move schools to one that had an elevator too, but before I left I was an A+ student in both mathematics and mandarin. The elevator which periodically broke down, sometimes while I was inside it too caused havoc on my further education; usually ending up having me go home while they wrote up homework for me. The days when I could get to class I was so disconnected from the current learning path since the students were at an entirely different point, the teachers would get annoyed with me too and wonder why I was doing so bad getting D's which didn't help me one bit. The whole time I was doing the best I could but all I could think of was how much better I learned when I simply stayed home, researching stuff on the internet and reading topics that I actually cared about. The last year of high school I ended up getting placed in a room on the ground level that they called the GAP or "alternative program" room which was essentially built to harbour all the kids who get into detention so they could learn while not bothering the other students. I'd always giggle when they asked what I had done to be in the room since they found me quiet and always working on my education; not the properties of a kid who gets in trouble. What amazed me was how nice they were and friendly and I too wondered why they were in the GAP class; I knew they must have done something that put them in detention a lot but my instincts told me that they were the same victims of a system that failed me. I worked in that class like I was In heaven; it was quiet and I could hear my own thoughts, hear the birds and I worked so much each day that my hands were covered in pencil carbon and my mind swimming in mathematics that I did that same day. A room designed for the worst of the worst students; my peace and harmony. By the end of the year I was in the top 10 students of the entire school with around 14 A+'s and received a special medal for it too which I had no idea I was going to receive until I was asked to go up onto the stage with the others, a student that barely saw 2 and a half school days a week until GAP.

My path to this point has been so unnecessarily bumpy, demoralising and painful that I knew from all my experience what the fault was; the "modern" educational system. I have never seen a more disgraceful, screwed up and flawed system in my life, the brute force method, the blind targeting of education that doesn't even care about the likes and dislikes of each individual student. None of the stuff I have learned through school has helped me in life and it's only because of my self teaching method that I know anything at all or have a career.  My pathway to becoming a technical designer; aka an artistic programmer started after I got to college. I stayed a term still battling my pain then left for the Academy of Interactive Entertainment to get an advanced diploma in computer science but sadly I had to wait 4 years due to an illness I got that gave me chronic fatigue before I managed to work my way through and got my certificate by the end of 2011.

I know I am only one person with one story but I know there are others which the education system fails each and everyday and I know there's a better way. I still can't believe that the archaic teaching system hasn't been thrown away into a garbage compactor years ago where it belongs. At the moment there's only a few schools right now trying out a new system spotted around the world but at that speed we will still be waiting for a better system for decades.

The flaws are so obvious and they're just chain reactions for further problems that make everything worse; like stress of teachers for example will and does effect how they teach, how they talk to students etc and this as well as the forced education that they might not be interested in will cause kids to misbehave and end up in detention.

One of the worst parts of school for me was the ignorant notion that all students must be in a brute forced social environment and in rooms of about 30 all together; some are even bigger, with groups of students facing each other. This design comes from an arrogant stereotyping I've seen in many an extroverted leader who blame the students who sit by themselves reading a book of having social disorders or even a mental condition because they are simply ignorant of anything different than themselves. Believe it or not, some of the most important and world renown revolutionaries were introverted; they changed the world for the better, getting up and talking which pulled them out of their comfort zone, not for their ego: because it mattered and would help others. There's statistical evidence that shows less social environments create higher quality work as a result due to the fact that people get to hear their own thoughts and don't get distracted. They also discovered that when you have constant social gatherings, people end up emulating the other people and stop thinking freely about their own tastes and likes to try and be more one with the group. It's always good to have a brainstorming session but only here and there like meetings at a cafe. There's a myriad of combinations of introversion and extroversion; it's not just one or the other: there's a whole gradient. To truly create a modern curriculum we can not and will not stereotype students based on their social interactions, some students just need their own space so let them be and you will be surprised. Schools need more private spaces for these students who prefer to read than to talk as well as large social rooms for the more extroverted social goers.

The principle of a proper educational system is a learning process founded on shown example, not the "work it out for yourself" the reinvent the wheel paradigm. I have learned 10,000x's the amount of information simply because someone bothered to show the answer on the internet or just told me and it's simply because I care that I will remember it forever, the reason why I care is because it's on the exact subject I am interested in; my interests, not the school's. You might think that having all the answers will prevent the student from learning but you will be surprised what a little curiosity can do when you show them a topic of their own interest. What we need to do is to get a professional from every field, every career path to build a new fun and enjoyable curriculum, including the fun hands on stuff like making goo in science class, not just the current fields of today either; we need to spur creativity to invent new paths and careers, the current system DESTROYS creativity and destroys what's best in each and everyone of us because it doesn't care about you: your talents, likes and tastes. We need a system that teaches each and every student based on what makes them happy as well as a variation subset where things are worded differently; I've found that simply how something is said can mean all the difference and each student may have a different version they need in order to learn from it: this includes visual vs textual examples. One of the problems with the current system is a disgraceful lack of support for students who can't get to school for medical or other reasons and since we now live in an age where most people can find an access point to the internet we should be implementing it into the system as well; this will encourage exploration and creativity but we will also have to make sure that even students without internet can still get a comforting experience, there's also local libraries with public internet access along with books that they can read. Other advantages of the internet will allow for a website to be designed for this new curriculum and allow students to log in to evaluate their current educational progress as well as gain feedback from the teachers, such a system would allow each individual student to learn at their own speed. Not only will this take a massive strain off the teachers which will only improve the educational process but the student will be more willing to learn too since it's more fun and not brute forced onto them. Who cares if a student is bad at maths; maybe they are an artist? so put them in front of MS-Paint or even Photoshop, maybe they are a musician? give them access to musical equipment, we can not stereotype like the current system does, we must encourage them to do the best they can at the speed at which they learn, on the subjects they care about, praise them for it and make them smile.

I know this might sound like something out of a book of fiction but one day I hope the word school sounds like a place everyone would want to go to each day, a place where you can learn and have fun doing so.

Thanks for reading,
Ashton.