Is the education system broken?
By: Irina Nikolovska
Tags: Learning, Education System, Education, Learning And Development, Edtech

The world is a big game.

I see the world as a huge playground and our lives as being part of a game we can play on that playground. We are born into a world that has a set of rules and regulations that guide us through this so called game. There is a lot of expectation on top of that too. We are expected to go to school, to learn a set of generalised skills and to find a way to fit into the puzzle of working life with the hopes of ending with a steady and comfortable life. It’s all part of a system that humans have been establishing since the dawn of civilisation. One thing we’ve been forgetting though is that the system that guides the rules and regulations of how we should live our lives is made by people.

There have always been people that challenged it, that’s how we revolutionised how we move forward and aimed for innovation and progress.

Currently it feels like we’ve forgotten that it’s us who set the rules and that the current system is not set in stone. I’ve been hearing my family and friends say “but that’s the way things work” or “that’s not how things are done”, and I’m fed up with it. This type of mindset is what makes us fearful of taking a new path, of being different and of thinking out of the box. It’s one of the main causes why innovation is stagnating and why people feel stuck.

We’ve also forgotten that a game is supposed to be fun. We learned early on to substitute play with obedience and discipline. Weirdly enough we took it as an objective to aim for professionalism and seriousness instead of fun and enjoyment. We were told to follow our passions and be our authentic selves but at the same time to fear stepping out of the herd.

The education system is a huge machine designed in an industrial way: you get in, learn what you’re told to learn, year after year, until you comply with the set of standards that’s been decided by the government of the nation you were born in.

All in all, you’re just another brick in the wall!

Our current education system is designed to prepare us for adulthood. Most often, it looks something like this:

We are grouped in classes of 20 to 30 kids. We all sit in rows one behind the other facing a teacher. We are all taught the same things in the same order in the same way. We are expected to be able to understand the material and learn it in the same way every single student does as well.

To track our performance we are presented with grades which compose our GPA (grade point average) that is basically our ticket to university. The better GPA you have the higher your chances are of getting a higher education. It’s the perfect recipe for fuelling competition.

Are we given the chance to figure out what our natural predisposition for learning is? Of course not. Some kids are more hands on than others. Some kids are more physically active than others. Other kids can read all day long. There are kids that learn through art and music. But in the current education system, that doesn’t matter. You have to follow through with the class structure given. Kids that fit the system without too much effort are praised, whereas the rest are deemed a failure, regardless of what their other strengths might be. And play doesn’t necessarily fit into this system either. Kids are taught at a very young age to abandon silliness and work towards becoming serious and disciplined. School does one thing very well, it distinguishes between playing and working.

Even if we do get into university, we go again through a very similar process. Again a teacher stands in front and students sit in rows one behind the other. We are again given standardised tests and a final grade at the end, and it’s all based on what the system expects us to become rather than what we want to grow into.

And after all, why not? Aren’t schools products of logical necessity and scientific insight, meant to shape a better future for society? No they’re not. Schools are products of history.