How could you change the education system?

[BorgyDudeMan]

This is pretty self-explanatory. How would you change the education system?

In my case, it would be that you get to choose the subjects you want to participate in after kindergarten. That's because I feel like the education system today expects that every kid should be good in every subject rather than some of them...

 

[Zexy]

I believe that some basic elements of all subjects need to be around for all children.

What really needs to happen, however, is to find a way to make the students WANT to learn more, to make lessons interesting, instead of looking at it all like a chore. That's easier said than done, but I've seen some solid attempts at getting there over the years and hope it'll get better, albeit slowly...

 

[Scarlet Sky]

Hm. I'd want to put an end to "teaching to the test" and instead encourage more diverse subject material in core subjects like History and Science. I would like if Literature had a wider line-up of "designated classroom reading material" too. Maybe allow the teacher to submit possible books for review before the school year begins if they want to follow their own reading plan. Above all else, learning should be FUN. It should feel like there is incentive to pursue education and know more about your world and yourself. I would also try to improve Special Education as a whole. I'm not sure how it is in public schooling right now but I felt it was severely lacking when I was in school. Having schools available in more areas and being properly funded would do a great service to the community at large too. Finally, I'd up the wages of teachers because lord do they need to be paid more for what they do. They basically have to play babysitter to our kids in earlier levels of school and have to help get teenagers ready for college and the real world later in schooling. I think they deserve a bit more credit with that in mind. I guess maybe the pay of teachers doesn't TECHNICALLY go in line with "changing the education system" but I feel it's also important.

 

[Almonds]

I'd like the education system to teach practical subjects. The basics of parenting. How to pay taxes. What services you can expect from public health centers and how to use them. The basics of insurance. etc. Stuff that every human being is going to have to learn at some point in life - so why not teach it at school where teachers can help.

 

[Proxima Centauri B]

I feel like in High School there needs to be a class or classes on how to do various things adults need to do like job hunting, how to manage finances and other things like that. I think its really honestly horrible that this isnt a common high school class. There really is little education how to do it and you're expected to do it. Teach interviewing skills and how to make a proper Resume and Cover Lettter. Make sure people know what to do and what not to do. It will help young people a lot to be taught these things.

 

[noworry]

I'd like to have more choices when it comes to teaching methods. I had a hard time in grade school because I have a really short attention span, and had problems with keeping up to what the teachers were saying.

We had a history teacher that would go on for hours in the most monotone voice ever. I often ended up dozing of or doodling in my book. Then I'd read and take notes at my own pace at home, which saved my grades. The problem is that they wouldn't allow me to do that in class, because I was supposed to pay attention. I just don't get why? Everyone has a prefered method of learning, and yet most teachers seems to favour talking.

Even when they tried using other methods, it would be like a one-time project just to "spice things up". I get that kids needs someone to guide them, but I'm sure there's other ways to do it, without it being a special occation.

 

[ocelotlrama jaguar]

I'd like the education system to teach practical subjects. The basics of parenting. How to pay taxes. What services you can expect from public health centers and how to use them. The basics of insurance. etc. Stuff that every human being is going to have to learn at some point in life - so why not teach it at school where teachers can help.

When I was in junior high, I had to take a mandatory class on exactly what you wrote (minus the parenting). The name of that class was Life Skills. I don't know if it's still taught since then, but it was a very useful class. Taught us all how to budget, taught us about the basics in credit use, insurance, job hunting. My only problem with it is that it was a junior high class. The school should have had that class for high schoolers.

Anyways, my state's education system is so broken I don't know where to begin when it comes to fixing it. Texas wasn't always like this, but somewhere in the 2000s it all changed, and not for the better. Some schools have too many kids per teacher to the point where it can be overwhelming, and teachers are thrown under a bus whenever things go wrong (usually the administration is the one that is a complete trash fire when it comes to policy and they get off scott free), the state allocates thousands of dollars of resources to certain public schools over others- creating this large gap of education inequality (and most of it goes to stupid crap like high school football since the damn sport is king in this state), the state seems to care more about testing and less about student moral and encouraging them to be productive adults. Oof, don't even get me started on Texas rewriting history books to make the state look better than history suggests while also denying science. I don't know how it is in other states or even other countries, but Texas is woefully behind and there's heaps tons to fix.

 

[Hector]

I'd like the education system to teach practical subjects. The basics of parenting. How to pay taxes. What services you can expect from public health centers and how to use them. The basics of insurance. etc. Stuff that every human being is going to have to learn at some point in life - so why not teach it at school where teachers can help.

This was going to be my answer as well. A lot of subjects are... outdated due to the information age. The math that 99.9% of us ever have to do in our lives is done with calculators and cellphone apps. History can easily be accessed on Wikipedia.

If I were to change the education system, here's how I'd do it.

1. Practical subjects. Money management, economics, civics etc. Things that are helpful to everyone, no matter what they end up doing for a profession.

2. Focusing on teaching students how to think, rather than on book learning. I don't use 99.999999% of anything I ever learned at school at my job. Hell most of the programming and database stuff I do on a daily basis I taught myself. But teaching students critical thinking, debate skills, how to spot fake news, these kinds of things... we should be teaching students how to think for themselves, rather than worrying about memorizing facts from a book.

 

[omahanime]

1. Practical subjects. Money management, economics, civics etc. Things that are helpful to everyone, no matter what they end up doing for a profession.

I worked in auto body repair industry for over 27 years. It was sad/scary/depressing the number of people that didn't understand what a deductible is and how it works.

 

[Slife]

2. Focusing on teaching students how to think, rather than on book learning. I don't use 99.999999% of anything I ever learned at school at my job. Hell most of the programming and database stuff I do on a daily basis I taught myself. But teaching students critical thinking, debate skills, how to spot fake news, these kinds of things... we should be teaching students how to think for themselves, rather than worrying about memorizing facts from a book.

And this was going to be my answer.

I definitely think epistemology classes should be a standard part of the curriculum. It's important for students to be able to formulate their own opinions after careful consideration and research, explore topics from multiple viewpoints, and assess the validity/merit of claims presented in front of them. Arm them with the tools they need to be a strong, independent thinker when they go out into the real world, which is probably one of the most valuable skills they can have to be honest.

In addition to teaching them how to think, I feel like the education system should be more focused on teaching students how to learn instead of what to learn. For example, orient classes more around discussions instead of lectures. Promote curiosity and introspection by showing them how to ask lots of questions, and subsequently how to find the answers to those questions. It's shown that students are able to absorb information better when they have an interest in learning about it. Help them foster a love for learning so that they are motivated to learn about the things they are interested in, which in turn leads to more opportunities for the students. A professor once told me that a teacher's job isn't to teach the material, but to share the material in a way that compels students to continue the pursuit of knowledge outside of the classroom. Of course, this isn't applicable to all subjects, but the point is that a successful pedagogical method would motivate the student to take initiative of their own education and allow them the freedom to explore their interests while learning.

 

[ArvAl]

Here's my specks of dusts:

Currently I'm in my last level of high school and will soon enroll to college. Three years there and what I saw is nothing but piled up stress pains. If you're somehow educated and wants to go to school, I recommend to be mentally careful. In my country, education's system is like shit--both teachers and pupils. One time, we had an empty class without lecturers in sight and the whole class almost went absolutely nuts, ignoring tasks they've being given.

I'm sorry, did I say one? I mean every fucking time!

We didn't preserve any kind of knowledge at all. While we've got ourselves situations where we would be forced to mesmerize existing materials, those so-called teachers are sitting at front and that's it, paying no attentions towards us students. The only time they did care (read: torture) about is during tiny tests and exams, which most of the questions were copypasted from internet. We tried so hard to resolve this cancerous matters for long, long time.

Yet nobody did a thing.

What can I say? Almost all of these "teachers" were just civil servants who had their shit certificates in average points that has no passion for teaching and doing it because the governments appointed them. Money once again is what they cared about. I saw them very, very overjoyed when they had invitations for teacher's parties or formal meetings, and thus, they decided, "Fuck it. Let these students home early and we can go take ourselves drinking our morning martinis." Yeah, no kidding. They are worst kinds of hell. Us here? Dying and blinded by those retards. In my point of view, I can only respect some few of them, for reasons that they really wanted to teach us seriously so we can be a better person in real life, unlike "them".

Fine, not every school has the same idiotic systems. However, this case was the majority.

Example : English lessons (I mean it).
Three levels, three teachers in one subject, but they all have the common ground.
Grammars and types of texts. The method? MESMERIZING!

Like what? I ain't signing up this shit just to remember everything related to English's crappy rule of thumb. Not bragging but I swear, my English is much better than their horrible pronunciations. If I may, I would teach these kiddos real action by active events without sticking to any curriculum instructions. But of course, you cannot defy "high" authorities and they said that they have more "experiences" than I do. Hella no. That's why I started to resent my own favorite lesson. You can't teach someone by force educating people without knowing their characters.

Ironically, the cancer is also began to corrupt students and drove them to such thoughts. I cried when I heard they just want to finish schools just to get jobs and marriage for rest of their lives. What makes them different from a NEET anyway?

Relax, I'm not the same as they are. I had more interesting plans to look forward. For now, I probably gonna follow the law.

I hope I don't become one of them.

 

[Anime Psyclone]

I had to go to an online school since traditional wasn’t working well. Online has set weekly lessons allowing me to work ahead or plan my own day out, ect. If I’m having a bad day I could just do less that day and more the day after. And I take breaks. It’s much better for people like me

 

[Nicolas721]

I don't plan to be a teacher at this point of my life, but I have thought a lot about it...

-The grading system shouldn't be based about tests, but about learning the contents of the course. I think a small talk with your teacher about the topic would be more productive than an exam. Teachers must be sure that all of his/her students can learn the contents in the assigned time and that the difference between the students who perform well and the ones who had difficulties isn't enormous. They should push students to investigate more about topics and things they like and to choose how to do their homework, and the time should be used mostly on getting feedback about those investigations.

-Maths must be taught with an applications approach. A high school teacher shouldn't know it all about topics in civil engineering, but he/she should at least mention than formulas have applications on the real world.

-The classes should be as less predictable as possible. Having a plan is nice and all but the unpredictability gives students a sense of awe.

 

[Almonds]

teaching students critical thinking, debate skills, how to spot fake news, these kinds of things... we should be teaching students how to think for themselves, rather than worrying about memorizing facts from a book.

I agree with this. There's so many fake/exaggerated/edited/politically-one-sided news shown on various media . Teaching students critical thinking would help them gain a more objective and broader perspective on diverse issues.

 

[indigohex]

-The grading system shouldn't be based about tests, but about learning the contents of the course. I think a small talk with your teacher about the topic would be more productive than an exam. Teachers must be sure that all of his/her students can learn the contents in the assigned time and that the difference between the students who perform well and the ones who had difficulties isn't enormous. They should push students to investigate more about topics and things they like and to choose how to do their homework, and the time should be used mostly on getting feedback about those investigations.

I agree, but unfortunately politicians around the world think that we need to teach to the test. Here in Australia, we have something called NAPLAN for Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 (which came in after I completed Year 12 in 2003), and many teachers are teaching to the NAPLAN test at the expense of other things that are important (such as SOSE, which was one of my favourite subjects at school), and it influenced my subjects at VCE (Victorian Certificate of Education), which included International Studies and History, plus English (which was compulsory), Information Technology, Media and Mathematics. I think it is the same with the No Child Left Behind in the United States, which is teach to the test instead of learning about Civics. I personally think that this teach to the test mentality is sadly dumbing down children, in which test scores are more important than understanding how government work. Like, how many American children can name the three branches of government in the US? I don't think we should teach to the test, but instead look at important things such as Civics or Geography and do what students find interesting, but teach important stuff such as Civics, History and Geography.