Make the Change

Make the Change

Learning and curiosity has been the pulse of all humans that push us to understand our surroundings. However the meaning of education has been warped the past few decades.

There is no denying that many of us, have an agenda about education that we may even call it a ‘personal conflict’. We all thoroughly understand that we have to ace grades to be on top and at the end secure a job for our future. But somehow many of us do feel that in the end, going through the learning process does ware us mentally, whether it’s during high school or college.

The constant pressure of keeping up with assignments and quizzes and test, just pushes most of us to just make it, and many students even at a very young age just desperately want to leave school once they get into it.

We all suffocate our self into memorising facts that will be tested for exams only and ignore the rest that of the information. Familiar with the words ‘What‘s coming out for exam teacher‘? In this process many students fall sick and for serious cases have mental breakdown, and later forget what they had learned the very second after writing the exam.

What had happened? Why the torture and torment?

First, let’s start off with how did this particular educating system popped up. How and why did everyone consider that lots of technical teaching and test will determine if you were smart? Well according to TED talk winner of 2013, he mentioned that the current educating system came about during the reign of the last greatest empires on earth , the British empire. The empire need to run smoothly, as it was a huge empire. The most effective way was to pass information and data were through ships. He puts this in an interesting way by saying that this giant system was like a machine that was made up of humans, called the bureaucratic administrative machine. Now the machine, as we all know will wear out , so to have its ‘parts ‘ fixed. The “part” that was to fit in this machine had to be exactly identical with the one before. Hence schools were created to create many identical copies of people, so that this system will continue to run smoothly and instantly functional, even if the new recruit came from far ends of the world .The empire is now gone , but we still choose to hold on to such obsolete way of learning.

This way of learning deprives students of the actual joy and thrill of learning. But when we do ask ourselves, ‘Well is there any other way of learning?’

We can’t think of any. However Education researcher , Sugata Mitra made an astounding research about the way we see education. His famous experiment called Hole in the Wall, is where he places a computer in a very rural village where none had ever seen a computer, and then leaves the children with the computer for several months. He found that this children figured out many things about the system and structure of the computer and even its internet wonders.

He has gone far and deep in his research, by going further in placing a computer in another part of India in a rural village and filling the computer with information of only the DNA replication in English. A language they did not understand. After coming back to the village in several months, the kids managed to figure out the processes of DNA all by themselves in a different language and were far ahead of their time. This is because genuine curiosity and verbal communication with all learning partners.

We can’t drastically change our education system, but it has been pretty clear that more cohesive involvement in learning should be practiced, rather than an ugly fight to race and be on top. Many students in Malaysia are used to memory based education and are not used to more hands on activity. Hands on activity are simulating, but we need to do them right. In UTP, having a lab for my Chemistry and Physics subjects were amazing. I personally liked holding the flasks and filling them with chemicals and usually fight to be the one filling up the flasks.

But all we do is actually, take orders from the instructors and be forced to finish the lab before the time is up and write a report on something we genuinely cannot understand. Then at the end of lab, you can ask all students of what they learnt, many can’t say much and will just briefly describe that they did in lab. It is pretty much a waste as students finish their lab work to make sure the marks are secured and nothing more.

I would really love to suggest that if it will be possible that one day, the lab instructors leave us with the necessary precautions and just guide us in our experiment finding, not to be desperate to fill up any tables or charts but to slowly understand the process and be allowed to go even further and adventurous if time permits. Students will actually have time to enjoy the playing out of their curiosity with the experiments they conduct with a much deeper understanding.

Other than the constant race to be on top, we also have strongly held to a flaw that kills the genius of all the young minds. The fear of losing and failing. It grips us all. We are all very familiar with the embarrassment of not getting good grades in class and have yourself being judged by other students and nosy parents. We have all heard Thomas Edison said” I haven’t failed. I just found ten thousand ways that won’t work’. We all get inspired by it for a moment.

But when reality hits, there is no time to take your own understanding and interest in the system, you have to catch up and force yourself to the top. We have all heard the devastating stories about young kids who commit suicide because they feel humiliated with their results which causes mental breakdown. We then have counsellors telling us that you have a lifetime to prove yourself and not to waste it by committing suicide is hilarious. These kids have their life intertwined in the system that just teaches them how to score a test and to figure out life by themselves. And the best advices from counsellors can say is to just ignore them?

In the end, we all must come to terms in creating a healthier environment for the development of true genius and creativity .We cannot continue a system that mostly causes stress and humiliation to all young learners .We need more researchers in the education department that will guide our nation to a better structure of education and not be afraid to take these steps.

I genuinely hope that this article could have ignited some spark to students to understand the true meaning of education, and to conduct their own research in the education system that we have and be bold to take a different paths of learning and embracing curiosity in their own terms for themselves or their future generation.

I leave a small challenge to all learners at heart that, you actually take some of your time to learn something that you have always wanted to learn and understand, because if you do, your natural tendency to figure things out will kick in and this time no matter how many times you fail, you and with all your natural animal instincts know that you will pursue and succeed.