Education: The New Way

Of all the jobs I’ve had, teaching was by far the most rewarding of them all.  Seeing that spark of “I get it” in the student’s eyes is something to behold.  But that was always private teaching or in small groups.  In the public sector teachers have become the discarded asswipes of any child with a computer because of the “Everything I read on the internet must be true because the internet said it was” attitude. 

Educational institutes have begun to fail because they can’t get the staff they need to keep the doors open.  Since there’s no staff they can’t get students.  No students means no money, no money means no school, no school means no jobs, no jobs no teachers.  A leads to B leads to C leads to A.  It’s a bad cycle and a sad truth. 

Computers (marvelous things that they are) can’t offer guidance.  A machine can’t get you excited about Shakespeare, offer insight and share experience.  It can’t help you achieve a dream and it won’t champion with you your ideas and ideals.

Learning should by all rights be a fun and interesting experience.  Students get bored quickly and unfortunately a lot of the blame lies with the teacher.  While I say the blame lies with them it doesn’t mean it’s their fault.  They have to teach the same standard syllabus year after year after year and children are fickle creatures.  In the age of the machine we expect everything to happen quickly.  If we see something and it isn’t happening at the same pace as a Michael Bay film then we lose interest.  

The teacher’s position of educator should be respected.  They are there to share the child’s journey to understanding life and the world around them.  But they are being dismissed as over paid babysitters that couldn’t possibly have anything of importance to share.  Classrooms get overcrowded and unmanageable

School grounds have become a political warzone where classic works have been reduced to a few lines of txting.  Teachers now need to master multicultural idealism, suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous criticism, be able to navigate through a mob of dissatisfied herd of parents, deal with double talk and overall negativity.  They have to work with outdated and irrelevant material assigned by committee that has absolutely no idea of the difficulties that the teacher faces.

Trying to explain the eloquence of Shakespeare to a hormonal teenager is like trying to have a staring contest with God.  Chances are you’re gonna lose.  Forcing a child to understand what the book means instead of learning what it means to them puts most students off the idea of reading and you have therefore done them a great disservice.  Putting a well crafted work of fiction under the microscope takes away the adventure it was trying to share with you.  The reader never gets to lose themselves in the wonderful storyworld limited only by their imagination.

Mathematics, geography, history, science, biology, languages all these subjects are a part of a larger whole and when we bring these pieces together the world bursts open in vibrant colours of possibility. 

I personally didn’t grasp the importance of school until I was finished with it.  Smaller classes.  Better pay.  Modern recourses and a syllabus designed with the child in mind is possibly the only way to fix the dilemma. 

“Don’t we already have that?” you ask.  Well yes it’s called Private School.  But the problem with private schools is the fact that they are expensive…very.  The classes are also too big.  30 to 1 ratio is too much for any teacher.  The curriculum is also many years old.

Students should possibly also have a say in what they wish to learn about.  When you mix what they want with what they need better results can be obtained.