Education

The basic format for modern education is in many places attributable to Plato. More academic disciplines have arisen over time and as more and more youths are educated the system has become further institutionalised. I wish to muse over how aligned the education system is with the current social climate. Having only really experienced the English school system I will be exclusively talking about it, however I am sure most countries education systems will share many attributes with it and so hopefully the essay will still make some valid points for readers anywhere in the world.

Education is a wonderful thing but we seem to now view it as something which must be applied to you by an institution and not something that just happens as people live their lives. Schools may teach most of us to read and write however we learn to speak just by interaction with other people who can already speak. The suggestion that education is wasted on the young has some truth to it but perhaps this may not be inherently due to their age and rather because of how society treats the young. We deem youths less capable of making their own choices and have made education compulsory for them. Forced learning is not as effective as passive learning or when an individual chooses to learn something themselves. The difficulty is creating an environment where passive learning is maximised and the desire to learn things is greatest. Education is most beneficial to the young as they have most time to make use of it and so regardless of how “wasted” it may be there is no suggestion of leaving it until it can be fully appreciated by more mature people. It simply makes it clear that the aim of an education system should be to offer as many useful life skills to youths that can be effectively and willingly learnt.

I doubt any would argue that the aim of any education system would be to create a skilled and productive work force that are well rounded and contented people who can easily get along with the rest of society. I am concerned that in order to regulate a vast nationwide system it has become too quantitative which has resulted in it deviating from the ideal aims. All subjects are graded on the same linear scale to represent some level of aptitude from the student. Employers use these gradings to assess potential employees and society scrutinises schools based on them too. My first criticism of this way of quantitatively comparing schools and people by a single grade in the subject they have taken is that is it a very ambiguous measure. Success in a subject is based on the basic aptitude of the student, the effort they then put into the exam/coursework and the relationship they have with the teacher. It also will be affected by things like how well the student takes exams and their state of mind around the time of the assessments. The information a grade offers might mean the student is very bright or it might mean they went to a good school or that they worked very hard. There are levels of qualification that are sufficiently demanding to prove that the student had good teachers, good aptitude and worked hard such as a PhD from a prestigious university but prior to this stage you still don't get very complete picture of a person from their grades.

The second issue I have with the grade system is that it creates false incentives within the education system. Exams were initially intended as a way of measuring someone's abilities in a subject however the failings of exams in their ability to really provide an accurate measure of all that much means that people prepare for the exam rather than learning or educating. Exam techniques are taught, the common questions are repeatedly covered, unsubtle clues are given as to what will be on the papers so those taking the exams may commit a few pieces of key information to memory rather than having to understand a concept. Exams are to the stage now where you will get marked down for using an alternate method to the syllabus standard for reaching an answer even if it is the correct one and your workings are clearly shown. Exams are very much a man made thing that are only really self serving. They do not prepare you for anything in the real world nor offer any useful skills to contribute to society. By using exams as the primary way to measure the effectiveness of education and students then we turn the who system into something that prepares you to do well in exams rather than educate you. Certainly there is overlap between the two but it will distort the efficiency much like trade barriers distort the efficiency of the global economy.

The next point for concern is the subjects themselves which seem to be aimed at providing skills for the highest earning jobs rather than offering skills more in proportion to the kinds of job available and required throughout society. Practical skills are taught less in schools than purely academic ones and the scope to vary what one studies is small for younger age groups. It seems to be the accepted view that those who don't get on well at school go off somewhere and learn a practical trade. It is almost as if the school system is weeding out the less academic people from the very start and not even bothering to cater for their needs, leaving it to independent bodies to offer certification for various tasks that are much more integral to the operation of society than most of the top jobs down the academic path. Token subjects like design and technology and home economics or whatever more politically correct name they have been given these days can be taken by those still in compulsory education but they take much the same format as the other more academic subjects with coursework and written exams.

Intellect is a very difficult thing to describe and even harder to measure, it is comprised of many different elements including coordination, logic, linguistic, social, memory, creativity, speed, spacial awareness and visualisation, reasoning, experience and many more. Academic achievements only measure a couple of these properties of intelligence, which is already only a portion of what a grade represents. All the aspects of intellects are of great use to society and in performing jobs and enriching peoples lives but the education system chooses to focus on a few. This is certainly problematic in that it will be wasting good potential but it is also damaging to those who are not suited to the education system but are still by all accounts bright, skilled and capable people. I personally know some good examples of these people who have a chip on their shoulder because they think society views them as stupid resulting from their lack of academic achievement. These people have become blacksmiths at the very top of the trade, skilled plumbers at a young age or professional gamers, none of which are the trades of someone without intellect and ability. My feeling is that these people would be much happier had the school system nurtured their kinds of skill alongside nurturing academic skills in those others with more aptitude and interest in those subjects. Had they achieved the same level of grade as other students in school but in different areas that reward different things then they would have not been disenfranchised with the system and felt outcast by society. I suspect they would have had direction earlier in their lives and so wasted less time post school to find their feet and would be happier as a result.

Education increases knowledge and understanding which in turn increases the freedom of an individual. Compulsory education is somewhat ironic in that you remove a freedom in order to increase freedom. In an ideal world I think there is no need of compulsory education, people would appreciate the benefit of being educated, education would be of better quality and enjoyability (this is not anything against the teachers I have had in my life many of whom did remarkably well given the confines of the system they worked within and are, by all accounts, great teachers, this essay is about the problems inherent with the way society operates its education system and not those within it), and not being forced to go would make students appreciate it much more. I am not sure how viable it would be to make education non-compulsory in a country like the UK. I fear those who were disenfranchised, in bad schools, have disinterested guardians or who were not very academic

would suffer and end up with lower grades, higher conviction rates, lower employment rates and other such statistics. In effect non compulsory education would likely widen the wealth gap in the UK and similar countries. Before a society could make education optional it would need to boast an excellent school system and more importantly it would need to have all members of society above a certain level of poverty. This level of poverty I have discussed before in other essays and may be defined as the lowest income above where criminal activities are not a more economically viable alternative. This is easy to describe but very hard to measure or calculate as it not only depends on the financial returns of minimum wage employment verses crime but all of the externalities as well such as the risks, the time investments, the social status and so forth would need to be factored in. Assuming 99.99% of your society is above that theoretical level of poverty then you are in great position and could make it better still by making education non-compulsory.

Other improvements that could be made to the education system are much harder to clearly describe and are somewhat more ambiguous. I would like to see more choice of subjects and specialization at a younger age with the ability to completely drop all conventional academic studies after they have basic maths and the ability to read and write. I would like to see better measures of performance in subjects that are as close as possible to the students aptitude in that subject. I would like to see more things taught in schools that have no bearing on any subject and are purely for the benefit of living within a society such as how the political system works, how the economy works, some psychology so as to foster a greater understanding of self in people, how to gut a fish, change a tire and wire a plug. If I were to write a curriculum it would have only basic science, maths and English and then lots of more useful life skills such as those previously mentioned. It would then have a selection of options including all the present academic studies such as Biology and History as well as many more that are much more removed from writing and facts such as gardening. Things like music, art, drama, D&T and home economics would have very little in the way of examinations or academic portions and would rely on the performances and produce of the students to succeed. I would like to see teachers rated by ex student review and life achievements and I would like to see students rated most by their teachers who have had the most chance to observe their skills and potential. Certainly this brings with it new problems such as favouritism but it does align the incentives and information most closely.

Education is a great thing for society as a whole and for individuals as well. It increases the freedom of people and allows society to carry on with the skills, experience and understandings of our ancestors. There is no doubt that it is a useful and worthy endeavour nor that it is of most benefit to the young. Much of what is done in the aim of providing education is based on tradition and the kinds of education that were required historically. Not so long ago education was only available to the privileged few who would never need any trades or practical skills and so it is easier to see why the academic subjects formed as they did. Society has changed faster than the education system has evolved to suit it and now everyone goes to school yet we all still focus learnings on what only a few can end up making use of. The growth of population and the increase in school attendance on top of that has caused the need to standardize and institutionalise which has lead to the focus on examinations rather than education. History offers us a great explanation as to why there are problems in the system and is an extra confirmation that there is no important reason for it to be as it now is.

I listed many of the changes I would make to improve the system yet gave no real justifications for those changes or how they could be sensibly implemented. Some may be more obvious than others but I shall take this opportunity to expand on a few so as to pain a more colourful picture. I discussed a lack of choice of subject matter that increases as age decreases in students. The only purely academic skills that seem important to operate within society are basic maths, literacy and a grasp of some of the fundamental aspects of the physical sciences. Even these are not essential for all lines of work although would still likely be helpful. Most of these skills could be covered by quite an early age and then dropped all together should the student wish. Other subjects would make use of the skills and reinforce them from different perspectives and English, maths and the sciences would still be subject options for those that take interest in them. Education is about engaging minds and the best way to do that is by being interesting. Students are forced to take subjects they find dull and teachers are forced to teach within strict guidelines (largely to get uniformity for examinations). This makes the experience less fun for both groups of people but is a problem that can be approached at two ends. By giving students a wide choice of subjects to choose from that could include plenty of seemingly non-educational, non-useful or low demand topics such as game strategy, soap opera study or costume design, then you increase the chances of having interested students. By relaxing curriculum guidelines the teachers themselves can cherry pick the bits they find most interesting, the enthusiastic teacher is far easier to learn from and engage with. At younger ages attention spans are shorter but there is much more scope to learn ancillary skills alongside the intended ones. Simply by having a group of youths engaged and involved in a new task they will be learning a great deal of different things. You learn through experience and so schools should offer a wealth of experience, sadly much of my memories of school involve being bored sat in a selection of repetitive classrooms.

Roughly speaking I would group those within compulsory school age into three categories based on age. The first would be very much as it is now and ideally would end when the basic maths and literacy was achieved. In this period I would not offer any optional subjects nor aptitude testing or grading. The middle group would suddenly have lots of options as to their studies and these would be the most relaxed and fun seeming ones although a mild form of performance/aptitude grading would start to be given for subjects that the students have chosen. The only subjects I would presently think wise to maintain as compulsory are those which encourage physical activity such as PE. I would however like to offer a much wider range of ways in which students could be physically active and so those people who were no good at things like football could do horse riding or hiking or military style training. A light restriction on choice could be something like a minimum of two physical subjects to be included within a students selection. The third and final group would also have only their chosen subjects however these would be a little more restricted than the middle group. Likely there would be less subjects as the detail to which they were taught would be increased and thus require more time. A requirement to maintain some physical studies seems sensible but an additional requirement to do a minimum number of “useful” subjects would also be included. These useful subjects would be aimed specifically at providing the skills required by specific industries or groups of industry. An example could be a course on electrics that would obviously lead to the role of electrician, or chemistry which could lead to a selection of roles in the chemical, oil (sadly arms) and pharmaceutical industries. This group would be from around thirteen years to around sixteen.

After this point education would still be offered and would continue to narrow down subjects allowing people to specialise. Some might have all they need by this point and enter the working world instead of further education however external qualifications would be brought in house as much as possible. This is very similar to present non compulsory education however I would focus more on trying to keep the institutions highly linked. An example of this would be those doing practical intern-ships and those doing an academic degree would share the university experience and have the option to move to a different place from the family home and live in student accommodation cheaply together. This would help to stop alienating portions of society and break down the English class system a little further as well as some of the other suggestions.

Even these few changes I have suggested and described in slightly more detail would be very hard to implement in one sweeping change and as with everything in society would offer the best results if it were gradually moved towards with incremental adjustments. The relaxing of the curriculum could be quite easily accomplished without too much upset. More subjects could be offered slowly and compulsory ones could be made optional. A number of subjects are slowly changing how they are examined with increasing weight given to coursework. There are plenty of drawbacks to coursework as the only real alternative to exams however it is a step in the right direction giving options to how people can have themselves assessed and play to their strengths. These changes are all practical with our current system in place and would pave the way for the more complex changes suggested. One of the biggest requirements to improve the education system is funding. Ideally teachers would be paid a comparable wage to doctors and have a lower burden of bureaucracy to attract the best candidates and allow them to focus on the purpose of their job. Offering loads of subjects that are interesting to youths is also going to be both expensive and logistically more challenging. It may be the case that teachers of the more fringe subjects are based at more than one school. Society needs to alter its economy in order to channel enough funds at the education system to make most of these suggestions sensible in state schools. The perfect education system requires the perfect society so as to have sufficient funding, the appropriate incentives to achieve , the best learning environment, high levels of social trust and so forth. Many would likely argue that education is the way towards a perfect society but at least it doesn't need to be perfect to point you in the right direction. We should improve society for the sake of improving education and at the same time we should improve education to improve society.