DTC375 - Journal Entry 10

 Is Education Broken?

    That is the question that I will be answering today. And in my opinion, education has been broken for a while; We have what is essentially the same education system for at least 30 years, and if were to use technology as a reference, we went from having dial-up phones to modern smartphones in that period of time, now doesn't that seem weird how our tech has evolved so much, yet education stays the same?

    I will give credit where it's due, the implementation of different types of classes, or the usage of new technology in certain levels of education does try to remedy this solution, but the major problem lies in how the whole system is structured. I'll first go though some of the stuff I've been told to describe as a basis, and have my arguments put throughout the paragraphs.

1) What is missing from my day-to-day experience at a university?

    To put this one very simply, most of the time is proper education - I learn more from watching YouTube videos on a subject or reading short summaries of a subject than the actual classes I'm paying for, but I still need a degree to function within this society, so I am required to take it. A lot of classes involves a lecturer just reading information of preprepared slideshows, granted that is less of an issue in higher level classes, as those concepts are harder to grasp, but it still does happen. I would rather have classes like one of the ones I took previously - Where the reading and such was relegated to "homework", and the class time was spent doing meaningful discussions and the lecturer guiding us along and helping us deepen our understanding regarding the topics.

2) What I feel the role of education is?

    I feel like the main role of education is to be able to prepare a student to be a functioning member of society within a field of their liking. Which most fail at due to certain factors, such as requirements of taking unrelated classes, to not having classes that should be taught/not being taught the actual skills required within classes. Classes that still have a majority of their score based off examinations is a big offender of this, as not everyone is able to take exams well, some have exam anxiety and some people have worse memory. Having all students take the same exam with the same restrictions under the same conditions cannot work with what we understand about how people learn in the modern age.

3) How technology might play more (or less) of a role?

    In my opinion, technology should play more of a role within education. Using different forms of media - such as videos or audiobooks are a good way to help accommodate students who learn different, and using technology we can also incorporate different interactive elements for different students who learn better in different ways. 

4) What a 21st century education should be?

    Here is where I put my final thoughts in. A 21st century education should be one that accommodates all students, regardless of what disabilities, challenges or problems one may have. Different students learn at different speeds, so why should all of them take the same classes? We already have "special" classes for those who are deemed to be learning too slow or too fast, so why can't we change the system to judge a student based off their progress rather than their grade, both in terms of examination results and level of education. We should also have more "updated" information within education, technology is constantly evolving, so is society, so why isn't education?