Education
Ever since I was in school I felt I was being forced to learn something that didn’t do much for me except prove to someone I could learn or memorize enough of it.
I remember being 10 years old and skipping science class to go to a museum alone instead of class. I was fascinated by other cultures and learning about them rather than knowing about photosynthesis. But I needed to know because someone, a long time before I was born, decided that everyone at 10 years old should learn about it.
Fast forward almost 30 years and I can tell you that photosynthesis is the process a plant uses to gather energy from the sun, yet I spent at least 2 weeks of my life learning about it. What use do I have for that information? Well it gave me a paragraph for this article and that’s about it.
School is great for learning but how they are teaching is not the best way, but we have accepted that is the way it is and do nothing about it. Teenagers in the USA are accepting the only chance they have to get a great job is by going to University and to go to University they need to acquire a big amount of debt. This should be the last burden they need to become someone of great value in a world wide society.
I remember I had school from 8am to 5pm when I was 10. After school I had homework from practically all of the subjects I had that day. Which did not gave me much time to socialize and do activities that I enjoy.
Also sometimes while doing my homework, particularly math, I had questions that could not get answered before the next class. Because of this I could not do my homework and I clearly remember feeling I failed while others did not…
So is homework really an important part of learning? Please see the video bellow for more on that subject.
As I see it, homework is good to evaluate your ability to take on chores and completing them, regardless of enjoying them or not.
But where should we go from here?
Although I am not yet a parent, every time I see a kid taking interest in something like reading a Geronimo Stilton book, doing some sort of sport, reading about dinosaurs or even looking at the stars I always ask them about it and see if what life has taught me can complement their interest to motivate them to learn more about that.
I strongly believe any kid should learn what his strengths are and have a teaching system that can build on that rather than teaching every one all the same things as if we are all the same and going to do the same things. Each individual is just that, an individual and should be nurtured as such.
This is where I find Elon Musk fascinating. He created a new concept of school and called is Ad Astra and regardless of having closed it’s doors due to the high costs, Elon provided Astra Nova for online learning.
Regardless of trusting or not in the current school system I believe we can all agree it has flaws that need to be address urgently.
At this point I can only question, how many people have lived an unhappy life or are currently unhappy because our teaching system didn’t nurture them to develop their potential based on what they enjoy and instead forced them to choose a career at a young age because it’s the one that provides good job with decent wages.
Wouldn’t be great if you get to work on something you truly enjoy instead of having to figure it out while you are stuck on a teaching system that doesn’t really allow you to have time off to figure things out?
What if when someone asked you what made you choose your career you could simply answer: “It’s what I enjoy the most!”.
