Day 17: Letting go.

What do you think is the most challenging issue in education today?

     Education today holds many challenges. This has always been the case, but nowadays we are so much more aware of them, because we are all living in an interconnected world and are constantly comparing our experiences to those of others. 
     This prompt does probably not want us to address the fact that the biggest challenge for today's governments and organizations is how to make sure that all those children who are not in school at all because of wars, poverty or other upheavals, would get an education. I suppose it wants to push us to examine more closely the "education" we deal with every day.
      For me one of the more challenging questions is whether we are teaching our students in the right way to prepare them for their future lives. Sadly, I believe we are not. Working mostly with High School students has thrown an interesting light on a few issues.
      First of all, it's still all about the grade. We may have switched to standards-based grading and are giving it our best effort to clarify to the kids why it's all about the learning, ultimately it doesn't make any difference. At the end of the day the only thing they want to know is what score they will get on their IB (or AP or Baccalaureate...) exams. There are two reasons for this. One is the IB diploma program (and its equivalents) and the other is the universities. The problems start, in my opinion at the top. Getting into a good university is a cutthroat business. Every year universities get pickier and pickier and demand higher and higher scores. The IB diploma program sees itself as the ideal preparation for university, so it becomes more restrictive and demanding and leaves less room for students with very different talents. 
     Students will not choose the subjects they would like to study, but those that will give them the best chance of getting into university. And for many of our students not going to university is not an option. This issue is maybe more prominent in international schools like ours, but society as a whole has certainly lost the appreciation for many jobs that do not require a university education, even though they may be, in essence, more valuable to society and more accessible to many students whose talents lie in less academic disciplines.
     The course offerings at most international schools remain extremely traditional. I am not sure whether this is the case in state schools in various countries around the world, but we are talking a standard fare of Math, English (or other mother tongue), the humanities in the most narrow sense of the word, the Sciences and one or two art electives. The arts always lose out, because they are not seen as useful and there is hardly any exploration into the newer disciplines.
    Where is the coding and programming? Where are the building, the caring, the cooking, the trading, the presenting, the multimedia education etc. Yesterday a story on the Belgian news alerted us to the fact that many High School graduates still hadn't registered for any form of higher education, because they were not sure what their interests and talents were. Why would his be so? Maybe because they were all molded by a uniform system that gave them little or no opportunities to find out what their real strengths could be.  
     This is the real challenge: to let go of the traditional model of education and to give students opportunities to discover who they are, what their talents are without the fear of failure or joblessness. Just getting a diploma does not make one happy, neither does a university education, but finding out what you truly want to do with your life and then following that dream will make you a happier person .