Education Part 2: Why Nothing Gets Done

#education#article#my take

Education Part 2: Why Nothing Gets Done

2021-03-04 · 4 min readHere I take a look at why the education system as a whole is doomed to repeat its cycle, and how we need a strong force of change.

So... the education system. Its a given fact that almost every person has some qualm with it, from the capitalistic colleges, to the uninspired highschool system. This has been a huge qualm that almost every student has gone through, so why hasn't it been solved already? You would think that if every single person in the US was forced to go through a system, it would be polished to perfection from the sheer magnitude of people that go through it. Today I'll try and explore how, and why its remained unchanged for so long, and give my 2 cents on how to fix it.

Teachers

Starting with the first reason, is the way education is taught. The fact of the matter is that it's always going to be easier to make people memorize, than learn. Since every kid learns a different way, if you just make them memorize and test, they won't learn, but you may see some short term results. Students never really learn anything that way. The way people learn, is by personal teaching, and idea based learning, which is intrinsically going to be very hard if you just try to stick by a "curriculum". Some teachers do manage to do this, but its multitudes harder than just sitting in the back and putting on a slide show. There is no incentive for teachers to be "good teachers", because as long as students pass, they get paid.

Competition

Secondly, for colleges and schools, there is no competition. Colleges know they can milk money from you for reputation, even if the actual learning experience is the same. If you ask a regular high schooler if they would go to MIT without learning, or community college with MIT courses, the obvious choice should be the community college. But at the end of the day, in our twisted world, people choose MIT, just for the prestige. Since people talented flock to colleges for the name, you can't really have any other competition, which makes the cost skyrocket. The fact of the matter is that almost any college could use endowments for tuition, or more, but they don't and they won't because they can make money off of you. The final reason for all of this, is the risk for students. Sure, I could try and drop out of high school, or I could take 0 AP classes and self study as much as possible outside of school, but that doesn't guarantee anything. I could take useless classes, pay thousands for college, and do good in life, or take the risky way and rely on myself. In an ideal world with more than one life, I might try and take the risky way, but since I'm good at academics, and seem to benefit from the system, I probably won't do anything.

Solutions

This type of system feeds into itself, because it's all built out, and trying to change it from the inside out is risky, and taking any other path is risky. When people leave the system, they see their success, and just take it as a "quirk of life". So my hope is sometime, someday, once I do make it out, I can change it from the outside in, and make sure no-one else has to choose between risk, and real education. So, the system is broken, and it's terribly hard to change. What do we do? First of all, I think we should invest way more into school, and specifically teachers. When you pay them too little, you end up getting unmotivated workers, and lose all the ones that love to teach, but can't live with the wage. Currently, if someone is a good teacher, they can most likely be paid better in another job outside of school. You can't get motivated, good teachers, that will deviate from curriculum and teach well, if you don't hire good teachers. And the only way to hire good teachers is with good pay. There is no real way around it, and people shouldn't have to choose between their passion and money. Another solution would be a decentralized way to rank colleges. This way, you can have something like critics for colleges, who are able to rank teachers and more. This means that if you can prove that a place like community college has a class on par with unmotivated teachers from a university, you're able to choose the community college. This would force colleges to lower tuition fees to attract students, as they know which places have good teachers. This could even be paired with a "standardized test" (not written, probably a test of real world skills), to judge someones skills without their degree. This would also make colleges provide quality education to stay on top.

The End.

Thats basically my 2 cents and rant on education, and I hope you were able to take something away from it! I believe that the tech industry can (hopefully) save education in some way or form.

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