Knowledge Society: Education
In the Knowledge society, education is the most important factor but current education system is based on an outmoded methods and concepts deeply rooted in the middle-age. Even when teachers realize that knowledge transfer by lecturing and assigning books to read are not the best way, they do not know what else to do, so they continue to teach in this manner. When students have to sit for hours in class, listening to a lot of lectures, they get bored and sometime misbehave then they are disciplined. This will make some of them fear of school and eventually fear of learning.
Today society is getting complicated with so many things interfering in the life of college students but university system has not be able to adjusted to accommodate these changes, at least not yet. Without improvement to current needs, education does not achieve its goal and purposes of educate students to become adults, who can think for themselves and determine what careers that they can pursue. Traditionally, education is considered to be a process whereby some academic knowledge is transmitted to students by well trained teachers. Schools are places where learning officially takes place and students are grouped based on their ability to pass exams. It could be a rational idea but have we ever thought about whether creating exams to assess students is the goal of education? For a knowledge society, should knowledge be assessed by users of that knowledge, by those who could benefit by that knowledge, by the industry or by the society? Should schools concentrate on learning and teaching but not testing and comparing? Why are we comparing and teaching students to compete for the top places? If everyone compete to be number one then who will be second? Are we trying to eliminate our students based on a ranking system? When students did not do well in exams, they believe that they have failed; they become discouraged and eventually dropped out. Are they really failing or the education system has failed them? The way of using exams to select best students is deeply rooted in the dynasty era where passing students are granted certain positions and where there are very few positions from the emperor to give. That time has long passed. Today university must focus on training more educated people to build our society, to keep up with current global trends, and elimination by exams is not the best solution. As a professor, I found that in every university, there is a small group of matured students; they know what they want to study as well as their goals, so teachers only have to spend minimum efforts to guide them since they are very much on their way. There is a larger group of students who need help, some may not know why they are there, some are confused, some are not matured enough, and some may not have the right skills, at least not yet. This should be the focus of every teacher to help them to be successful in obtaining an education so they can contribute to the development of our country.
With the information revolution, today college students are saturated by information from newspapers, TV, movies, books, internet, games, and chat rooms and they do know a lot, more than before, so why should they all have to learn the same material and not allow to choose what they want to learn for their career? Should teachers help students figure out how to do things that they actually want to do? If teachers spend time helping students to apply the knowledge by practicing rather than memorizing than we make progress already. No one ever remembers all the things they memorize few days before the exam so why do it? By actually practicing them, they learn the skills and actually know how to perform and is it what learning all about? Students must have the knowledge and skills to perform things that benefit them in their careers and in their life but the development of these practical skills has not been the primary consideration of academic community. Is it because teachers do not know how to apply it? (Have they ever worked outside the academic area?) or is it because teachers are too busy? (Conduct research and writing papers to be published in academic journals) Should “Practical skills” be taught as a major focus in university instead of the current academic program? By practical skills, I mean the skills that are in high demand by the society, not pure academic knowledge that is irrelevant to what society needs. I believe students learn best when they are pursuing a goal that they really care about. Students will put more efforts to achieve their goals so career guidance must be a key factor in the teaching and learning at university level. Education must be a journey that does not end with degrees but must be lifelong so knowing where you are on the journey, what you need, what obstacles, and how to overcome, are essential things that teachers can guide.
Today in both developed and developing countries, the level of dissatisfaction with the traditional educational system is high. There are many debates about the failure of schools, about falling test scores, and about obsolete education. A variety of solutions have been discussed but it seems that there is no agreement has been reached. Clearly, the current university education system is being challenged because it is organized around yesterday’s ideas, yesterday’s needs, and yesterday’s methods. Consider the most common classroom approach: one teacher standing in front of hundreds students trying to get each one to learn the same thing, at the same place, at the same time. This approach has the advantage of being relatively easy but it does not work because today students are not the same as yesterday. What they want to know, they can find it via many channels such as newspapers, TV, from friends, books, movies, newspapers, internet, chat rooms, etc. So they do not need more lectures but they do need more guidance to apply them, to use them for their careers, and become contributors to the benefit of society. I believe proper guidance is the ultimate goal of education and the mission of every teacher.
What do I mean by proper guidance? Let us look at situation in many universities today. Regardless where you live, in the U.S, Europe or Asia, you will see that many tertiary education systems are on the verge of being bankrupt because students refuse to learn, drop out of schools, using drugs, or take pleasure seeking as their goals. Why students do not want to learn? Because schools do not teach them what they are interested in but force them to learn what the academic believe is the right knowledge. University training should be open for more choices, more diverse so if the students want to learn mathematics, we should teach them mathematics. If students want to learn music then allow them to learn music because if we let them choose what they want to learn, where they want to go, what career they want to achieve and properly guide them, they will choose well and create a diverse knowledge society.
The mission of teachers should be helping students to figure out what they actually really want to do in their lifelong career. As teacher, we must get over the idea that something is worth knowing even you never do anything with it. No one remember things that serve no purpose so why make them learn something they do not like? By finding out why certain student would want to learn something before you teach it would be a better way rather than what you think they should know. Students must strive for higher ideas than some material goal like making more money. Using profit to motivate students to study is not the purpose of education and should not be encouraged. The purpose of education is to help students to think for themselves, to understand the needs of society, to aware of the global trends, to broaden their knowledge and skills, and to contribute to the common benefits of society. They must learn about moral obligations such as respect parents, teachers, the elders, as well as the principles of humaneness, righteousness, and become a good citizen. If students really learn these well, their personalities will definitely be wholesome and that is the ultimate goal of education, to have the necessary skills to build a knowledge society, to truly defense our country in this globalization and highly competitive world.
Sources
- Blogs of Prof. John Vu, Carnegie Mellon University
