The Problem With Traditional Education
The world operates in a vastly different way than a few years back. That is why you would notice that the traditional school system is gradually losing relevance. Many modern schools have tweaked their curriculum to incorporate new educational materials to cater to these new challenges.
Focus has shifted from degrees to skills. Work cultures around the world point out this change. Multimillion-dollar corporations like Google and Apple employ individuals based on their experience and skill, not degree. To fully understand the scale of this problem, here are five problems with traditional schools.
Lack of Personalised Educational Curriculum
The traditional educational curriculum is not structured to meet the learning needs of a specific individual. Curriculums are designed around the perceived needs of children in an age grade. While that might work, the learning needs of special kids who are faster or slower than the average learning pace are neglected. They have to learn slower or faster than their mates. This can stunt their mental and emotional growth, making the children dissatisfied with school.
The Threat of Exams
Several studies have shown that exams do not reflect a student’s intelligence. One of the many faults of traditional education is the way exams are structured. The system tests a student’s capacity based on how well they answer a set of questions chosen from a wide curriculum. Thus, students are more focused on getting the questions right, even without understanding the subject.
When students have to prepare for exams, rather than learn, the aim of education is defeated. While examination has its place, the world has shown that using it as the only yardstick to assess learning capacity is a poor strategy.
Lack of Skill-Based Education
Skill-based education teaches specific life skills. The traditional educational curriculum does not emphasize soft skills like communication, leadership, and interpersonal relationships. These skills are key requirements in today's work environment, and since they are hardly taught in schools, students transition to the work environment unprepared for the demands placed on them. The imbalance between soft skills and hard skills can hinder an individual's ability to succeed in the workplace.
Lack of Diversity in Learning Styles
People learn differently. Traditional education focuses on text-based learning. There is no learning diversity. Students that learn better with audiovisual materials are left out of the learning process. They are then considered dull because they cannot match the intellectual output of those driven by text-based learning. Over time, these students fall behind the learning curve and are embarrassed by their seeming incapacity. This harms their confidence and dampens their interest to learn. They start to think they can't learn the simplest things, while a simple edit to the curriculum could have helped them better.
Lack of Access to Quality Teachers and Education
Not all teachers are equally skilled to teach their students. Some students would get a good teacher, while others would not. The aim of education is defeated as a result. When it comes to skilled teaching, a teacher might not also possess the diverse tools needed to teach a student. They might use the one size fits all model that does no justice to teaching. Some students are carried along, while others are left behind.
What can be done?
Around the world, a lot of effort has been put into redesigning the educational curriculum. The pace of these changes remains very slow. A considerable effort is needed to turn around the traditional system.
As parents, you can still take advantage of out-of-class learning methods to boost your kids' education. There are also alternative schools that can help bridge some of these advantages. DABA Kids is one such school, and you can find all the information you need on www.dabakids.com