The Ambition Problem

Whats wrong with the attitude in the educational system

When I remember back to my time in school, I think it could have been much worse: I went to a pretty average school and most of my teacher were okay (compare Las Vegas band Five Finger Death Punch song M.I.N.E.: ‘It could have been much worse, but it should have been better’). Looking back and having the information I have today, it appears that I had a kind of neutral environment. Of course I had to learn ridiculously boring and obviously useless stuff. But, if something fascinated me, I had the time and opportunity to go for it.

What puzzles me to some extent (and, I guess, most people being satisfied more or less with what they achieved so far): how much was my own drive and how much can be credited to the system?

Did I succeed because or in spite of how I was educated?

Being a physicist, mathematician and software developer today, it comes quite naturally for me to approach these questions from an analytic perspective. However, solving scientific problems for over a decade now, I have to confess that the essence for completing a difficult challenge, will always be attitude not analytics. In other words, the philosophy of how education is understood in a society counts much more than how many hours of math you’ll have.

Back in the time of the late 80s, when I went to a Viennese elementary school, these school were not really meant for learning. It was more a strategy to pass the time. The only thing that was really important was good grades at the final level to get to a better high school (a peculiarity of the Austrian educational system).

Though most phases in education are undoubtedly important, I view the high school years as particularly vital for everything that comes next. Why? Because at this age the first brink of the grown-up personality shines through (don’t pin me on this, I’m not an educational psychologist). In this crucial period, teenagers react especially sensitive on how information is presented to them. Most people will know someone with a story like: I did x later on because I had a good y teacher at high school/college (e.g. x = rocket engineer, y = physics).

During my time at high school, motivation was the biggest problem. I never had a problem with passing to the next level, and beyond that, there is not much to achieve for a student. The lack of achievements, beyond the simple wish to proceed to the next school level, was one of the major flaws of the educational system I was experiencing.

In an act of misery, mainly to escape the continuing boredom of mediocrity, I declared my own, personal achievements.

I consider the decision to invent my own ‘milestone’ agenda, one of the main reasons for my academic career. Especially, since the situation I was facing left at least one other option: refusing any participation and completely break with the system. I have seen this happening more than once and I think losing students like this is one of the major fears of many educators (because usually there is hardly a way to get them back).

So far so good. Creating my own achievements to circumvent the systematic failure had a down side though: Because I was not trotting with the normal procedure, I was implicitly declared an outcast by the majority of teachers and fellow students.

Since being ambitious is not required to proceed, ambition is considered a strange thing to have.

Among teenagers, success at school did and might still lead you directly to the nerds table. Thats acceptable and not always a bad thing. The peculiar thing is the attitude the whole educational ecosystem shows towards self-ambitious students (don’t mean helicopter parents here). This starts with lectures that are held de-facto unchanged for the last 20 years and any change or creative input is seen as a threat. And it ends with projects and exams that follow strict rules and boundaries, neither leaving room to breath, nor leading to a motivating approach to learning by the students.

There are some ideas how arrive at a new way of teaching step-by-step (e.g. in Finland). But my point here is not to list single details, but to say: Yes, there are good teachers and bad teachers, as well as good students and bad ones, but there is much more to education than curricula, subjects and exams. It’s the way we present information: experimental, flexible and, in a sense, chaotic, instead of monotonous, predictable and over-structured. We will only raise the ambition of students, when we honestly convey that the subject is interesting for us. There will only be as much excitement in students hearts as in the teachers attitude and presentation.