Monday, September 3, 2018

How schools can prepare today’s kids for tomorrow



Throughout history, change has come slowly. For centuries, farmers’ sons learnt farming. They spent their early years acquiring skills and knowledge, and the rest of their life using them. Life tended to be stable. Nobody went back to school at the age of 40 or 50, or 80. But today’s schoolkids will never know such stability. Forget work skills and relationships, even gender has lost its permanence.

Schools today pride themselves on the use of computers and smart-boards but teaching itself has not changed fundamentally. It’s still about cramming information into minds. Every weekday you sit in a room, where every 45 minutes a different person arrives to teach you math’s, history, science, geography and language. Is this education preparing children for the future? No.

For instance, what is the point of teaching Spanish to Indian school students when a program can translate better in real-time? A programming language you learn today might be irrelevant in five years. Why torture your child in a Kota coaching shop when the future of engineering is uncertain?

Today’s schoolkids will not hold one job for life. So, the emphasis on specialized skills is pointless. Instead, what is needed is an education based on the four C’s — critical thinking, communication, collaboration and creativity — that can enable a person to reinvent themselves repeatedly.

When the emphasis shifts to these four capabilities, it won’t matter if a student cannot recall the date of the First Battle of Panipat, or the formula for calculating acceleration. If you know which formula to apply, you can dig it out of a book, or google it, and then run it on a computer.

Source | Times of India | 2nd September 2018

Regards

Mr. Pralhad Jadhav  
Master of Library & Information Science (NET Qualified) 
Research Scholar (IGNOU)
Senior Manager @ Knowledge Repository  
Khaitan & Co 
Twitter Handle | @Pralhad161978
Mobile @ 9665911593

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