Thursday, February 12, 2015

What public school systems and their schools are doing wrong

Many schools advertise "doing what is best" for their students, or that their school district is "one of the best" schools in their area.  They say that they are "committed to academic excellence" or announce some other benefit along that line.  What many people and students don't know is that schools are teaching students the wrong things about life and the real world.  In many ways, they are lying to their students about what life is and how it should be handled.

Classes in schools are set up in such a way as to teach students the "right" way to do things or the "correct" facts and information.  Lessons are usually taught and arranged in this order:
  1. The teacher stands up in front of the class and talks about or shows how to do something and presents information and facts.
  2. The students are given time in class to learn more about that subject or topic, according to how the teacher arranges it or tells the students how to do it.
  3. The students are assigned homework or projects to "test" them on their knowledge, which they have not had time to explore.
  4. The assignment is to be turned in the next day or within a few days.
  5. Students who do not turn in assignments on time, answer a question wrong, or do not complete a project to the specifications of the teacher are given a lower grade, or points are taken off.
Students are punished for trying to do something that they have only been told how to do, but never actually tried experimenting with to see if they can understand it.  If too many of these "mistakes" or "errors" in work are made, the student may not pass the class.  

This is only teaching them that they need to get everything right and perfect so that they can "pass" important parts of their life.  This is setting students up to believe that everything must be perfect for them to be successful in later life.  To "pass" life.

Life is not arranged on a pass-or-fail basis.  What happens in life happens and cannot be reversed.  Schools point out to students that you need the skills you are learning in class to get a job and be successful.  To be successful, you have to "pass" courses, and turn in many, many assignments.  If those assignments are not "perfect", then points are docked, and grades are lowered.  The problem with this thinking is that it has been rooted in our minds for many years, making us believe that jobs and life work just like school assignments do.

Many jobs do require perfection - such as in engineering - to gain clients for their company, or just to make people happy.  To fully complete the project that has been assigned to them, engineers must complete the project to the best of their ability - and also must complete it on time.  But many is not all.  There are some jobs in which experimenting is important.  Going out on a limb and risking something may contribute to society in a positive way.  That is how inventing works.  Scientists use experimentation for many things, and science is a wide job area.  Not everything in life conforms to the "perfection" rule, and yet students learn this every day.  Every day it is ingrained more deeply into their thoughts and work.

Clearly, the way classes are taught needs to change.  Students should be allowed to try things in school - and experiment in their education - to learn in a hands-on experience.  One change that can occur is in the way topics are presented to students.  

Instead of teaching the subject, then letting students try it, teachers should allow students to experiment with the subject and try it themselves first.  They may do horribly, but at least they learned what they did wrong.  Then teachers would be able to teach them the right way and let them do it again.  This is the learning process.  Students would be able to figure things out faster if they got to try it once before and something went wrong.  They know how to fix it.

The problem many people - and school staff - may point out is that this method will take longer, and thus teachers may not be able to accomplish everything during the school year.  This is a logical problem.  Trial-and-error has been known to take longer.  But one advantage that trial-and error has is that the more options that you investigate, the faster you can eliminate the next options you have.

What is also interesting is how this connects to why some students hate school and love video games.  Video games allow people (mainly kids) to take risks and be able to start the level over or try again.
"A Game Over is an event which occurs whenever Link [the main character] is killed...Typically, the player will get the option to continue, save, or continue from a certain location such as the origin," states an entry on Zeldapedia, a video gaming information website.

Most video games follow this standard, and kids and adults like that they can always try again when they fail.  They've even learned that whatever they did that caused them to fail is not an option they should try.  When students are allowed to take risks in school and not be punished for it, they actually want to learn.  

If school is a precursor to life, then students should be allowed to figure it out and take risks to learn what not to do when they are older - when it really counts toward their personal success.  If we give students the chance to be wrong in school, then they don't have any reason to be wrong in life.  They can be more successful, knowing what the risks are and how to handle them.

This subject also applies to how students learn.  "...I said in that interview that the only way we learn is by doing-" explains Roger C. Schank, an expert in many fields and a professor at Northwester University.  "-and to do that we must practice constantly.  Schools rarely teach doing."  To learn something, you have to try it.  Trying involves risk.  Risk can lead to failure, but at least you learned something.

You have to be wrong to be right.  "If we’re inventing a new business model or writing a new piece of music or experimenting with new ways to increase the yield of an email campaign, of course we have to be willing to be wrong," says Seth Godin.  Earlier on in this writing, Godin also pointed out that in some workplaces, perfection is required, but perfection is different for everyone.  Even if employees don't get it completely perfect, that doesn't mean that they have "failed" life.  If they lose their job, they can start again at a different job.  Life is not over.

What should be taught in schools is how to get into doing things.  Taking risks and trying things out before the "real world".  If schools want to teach students the truth about life, all that is required is a reversal of the way we think about failure and risks.

-bookhouse4

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