Improving the education system
Today a college education in specific areas is needed to get a good job, but a college degree is no longer a guarantee for anything. Currently, many parents and students begin to question the value of a traditional college education. Of course, people always have opinions, but I believe that a good college education should support the development of a prosperous society and help grow the economy of a country. A good education system must produce knowledgeable people who can contribute to the society and defend the country.
As the world is changing rapidly because of the advancement of technology, the challenge of every country is how to improve the education system to meet the need of a complex global economy. Many countries invested a lot of money to improve their education system, some work but most did not because many education leaders often wasted their money on something unnecessary. I have seen countries build more classrooms with modern computer equipment, it looked good on newspapers and TV, but the number of unemployment of their graduates was still high. I have seen the explosion of private schools because the government believed the private schools may be better than the state schools in producing skilled graduates, but the fact was many private schools were created to make money for the owners, but their quality was low, and most of their graduates had degrees but no skills. The fact is every country needs skilled workers but their education systems still failed to produce skilled graduates.
According to several studies, the world will need over 5 million of science and technology skilled workers by 2020, but current education systems can produce less than 3 million technology graduates. Therefore education systems must change quickly to educate the needed number of students in the next few years, and it must deliver higher quality education demanded by the market. Unless some changes are happening, many college graduates will not succeed in this competitive world. The question remains on how to change the education system?
I believe education issues cannot be solved without qualified teachers. Only teachers can change the education system, and all changes must start with the teachers. But to do that, the training of teacher must start with having the best students to enter the teaching field. The dilemma is the best students do not want to work in obsoleted education systems with low salary because they could get a better job elsewhere. Unless we can solve this problem, the education system will not change, and the long-term economic improvement will not happen.
Good teachers are the foundation of a good education system, and improving teachers' skills is the most important investments that any country can make. Traditional teacher training is focusing on teaching skills such as lecturing, managing class time, assessing student understanding, planning curriculum and lessons plan following a policy and program defined by an education board. However, as the society's needs are changing, teachers' training is changing into understanding how student learn, how to help them solve problems, and how to encourage active learning rather than the basic teaching skills. To improve the quality of education, training materials must be designed to a particular subject and focus on how students understand it rather than memorize it. The training also must be relevant to specific career development. If students learn certain skills because they NEED them, then they will study hard to develop that skills. Memorization to pass tests, while an "easy way to assess students" are ineffective, because some will only learn enough to pass the test but not develop the skills. The fact is there are students who graduate but cannot remember anything they learned after passing the test to get the degree.
Students will do well when they have some choices about their study and when they feel some control over their learning. Most teachers lecture, assign work, and grade student work as pass or fail. These teachers will get a different level of effort from their students than teachers who focus on asking questions, encourage class discussion, and allow students to identify their strengths and weaknesses so they can improve themselves. Students learn more from their friends when they share ideas and study together. Group study encourages students to listen to others, to think for themselves and to explain their thinking processes and after graduate, students will have the teamwork skill to succeed in industry. Current education insists upon testing each student individually and encourages them to compete rather than collaborate and it need to change.
Last year when teaching in Asia, an education leader asked me about my view on education, I told him: “In improving the education system, everything begins with the teacher. A good teacher will develop good students because they KNOW that students are capable of learning much more than they think they can. As long as the system allows the teacher to devote all their time and efforts to teach without have to worry about other things than we can expect the education system to improve. A good teacher will allow their students not just learn the skills, but also develop the motivation to learn more from other sources and be lifelong learners. To improve, we stop all the talk about fixing this or that, buying this equipment or modernize that classroom. If we do not start with the teacher first and take care of them, then nothing will happen. The best investment in education is invest in the teacher. A good teacher will find a way to help their student to learn, even they have to work harder to make their student succeed.”
Sources
- Blogs of Prof. John Vu, Carnegie Mellon University
