Experiential Learning is the Key
“Thank you for your interest, but you don’t have the right experience for the job.” — a random recruiter
You spent hours researching the company, practicing interview questions, and honing the perfect balance of sincerity, excitement, and information for your elevator speech. You had the perfect resume. You nailed the interview. You were confident that you could secure this position, but your experience held you back.
You need a job to get experience, but you need experience to get a job.
How’s that for unfair?
The United States Education: A Flawed System
You’ll have seen the headlines: efforts to increase our global education standing via standardized testing, the rise of (and rebellion against) common core, the arguments for and against charter schools. The education of our nation’s youth is essential to our future; these are the leaders, scientists, doctors, lawyers, and educators of tomorrow.
The common phrase “fit a square peg into a round hole” describes how the current education system often tries to fit its students into a prescribed box of standards. It makes students afraid to fail. When failing is an important skill to have in order to gain experience, the way we are teaching students today looks down on those who have a low GPA and praises those who do not. This is just one of the many metrics we use to qualify students and their potential.
Watch this video from Prince Ea for a closer look at the current state of the traditional education.
And for those who want to see a more animated version watch this version.
Surviving is Completely Different Than Playing a Game
Getting good grades and perfecting test scores are just like if you were to play a video game over and over again to get the perfect score possible. Only in real life, once you fail, you can’t restart.
“As with college-readiness assessments, perspectives differ on what is important to measure when it comes to career readiness. “(ASCD, 2014) (Source)
In a job, or at least an important job, if you don’t perform well, then you are practically fired. The difference here is that some students may be able to see the importance of both scenarios, school vs. job. But some may not. Many can either get a high score on exams and a good GPA, but when it comes to actually performing a job, the game is completely different. You can’t just get the perfect score in Mario then expect to also get the perfect score in Starcraft. One is a role-playing game and one is a real-time strategy game.
“For many years, low-achieving students were tracked into vocational programs that prepared them for low-wage positions with little-to-no room for career advancement, removing them from the academic courses needed for entry into college (Brand, Valent, & Browning, 2013).”(Source)
What I get from this is if students don’t have the resources to succeed or if the metrics fail to explore a student’s potential, they would continue to spiral further into oblivion. I personally don’t believe in “low achieving students”. It is nothing more than a label. These are just students who do not have the right support system or who the traditional system failed to help identify what they are truly capable of.
Experiential Learning Is The Key
Have you ever taken a class or read about public speaking? If the current way we are teaching students is so perfect, then, in theory, after reading and hearing lectures about public speaking 1000 times, we would all give the perfect Ted Talk on our first attempt. But this is generally not the case. Luckily, public speaking classes are not taught like this. As a human being, we have senses and feelings. The moment you take the stage, I don’t care if you are a veteran public speaker. You’ll still feel nervous no matter what; some people just have a knack for public speaking and never feel nervous. That’s something you can only experience rather than just think about.
“Experiential learning thus involves a, ‘direct encounter with the phenomena being studied rather than merely thinking about the encounter, or only considering the possibility of doing something about it.’ (Borzak 1981: 9 quoted in Brookfield 1983).“(Source)
This may be a bias, but I think that Northeastern University has done a great job with its co-op program in preparing its students for a job. A co-op is basically a fully paid internship for approximately 6 months, which is required in the education curriculum at the University. To learn more click here. They found that 90% of all employers prefer to hire candidates with work experience.
Another example is Olympic High School in Charlotte, N.C. They partnered with Siemens Corporation to provide students with hands-on and career readiness experience. (Alfeld, Charner, Johnson, & Watts, 2013). (Source) The results displayed the importance of placing responsibility on teens to define their own future. You can read more about it in an article from the WSJ, here.
Side Rant and Anecdote
Because I thought Iron Man was cool when I was a senior at Boston Latin Academy, I decided to pursue a degree in Mechanical Engineering. Oh boy, little did I know about how hard Mechanical Engineering was. I decided to power through anyway. When I got my first co-op as a manufacturing engineer at Axcelis Technologies, a semiconductor manufacturer, I realized how I hate working with machines and prefer working with humans instead. Not only did those 6 months of experience help me figure out what I really want to do with my life, it also showed me a glimpse into what my future WILL NOT BE LIKE. This is an example of how an actual work experience can shape your future.
