Education System: Does One Size Fit All?
Overview
People say the system opens our minds, but to me it seems that quite often it also closes our mind.
I am not implying here that we do not need our educational system, but we need to go beyond it. When we say yes to one thing, in doing so we are saying no to a number of different options that we do not even understand properly.
People say the education system opens our minds, but to me, it seems that quite often it also closes our minds and stops us from becoming who we truly are.
The biggest influence on our mind is from our parents, we unconsciously try to fulfill the unfulfilled wishes of our parents or do things to fulfill the deficiencies or solve the problems in our families, they may not be our own problems at all later in life. If we identify with our parents, we want to do the things they have done; and if we identify with them negatively, we want to do the opposite of what they have done.
The problems with our education system are that it is offered as – one size fits all.
The national curriculum teaches children English, maths, science, design and technology, history, geography, art and design music, physical education, computing, and ancient and modern foreign languages, etc. It is all about the content and there is very little talk about the format of education. There have been several experiments all over the world in trying to impart education through a number of different means/formats away from classrooms and textbooks, but none seems to have become a permanent feature sought after by many.
If we make a list of highly successful people from all walks of life across the globe, be it in Hollywood, politics, literature, art, music, etc, we find very few of them were bright students in their college or university days. Some of them were outright misfits who had to drop out of formal education.
From some account, not authenticated yet, the former Indian Prime minister of India Mrs Indira Gandhi was a misfit at Shanti Niketan and left it. The first president of America George Washington never went to college, Indian Prime minister Narendra Modi was an average student at school and by some accounts did not manage to get a college qualification. Marlo Brando was expelled twice from high school and was considered unfit for military training because of an injury. Hollywood stars Marilyn Munroe and Greta Garbo, and Bollywood stars Madhubala and Meena Kumari did not get a formal education and the time spent performing on stage and in cinema during their formative years was instrumental in their success. Had all these film personalities succeeded in academics, they would have missed the stardom for which they are known.
Another example, Gautam Adani, the second richest man in India, who had to drop out of formal education in the second year of college because of his family’s poverty. He started working in the shipyards of Ahmedabad in India learning business skills and working. Warren Buffet, the second richest man in the world, started his stock investment at the age of twelve and he reluctantly acquired a graduate qualification following pressures from his father.
The central message from numerous life histories of very successful persons is that they started working in their chosen trade in their teens and kept working very hard without worrying about what their fellow students were learning in the national curriculum and higher education. This applies to many great musicians, sports personalities, artists, musicians, philosophers, etc.
Conclusion
Coming back to school education, perhaps what can help children more is acquiring living skills, interpersonal skills, emotional regulation skills, how to manage money, etc, and not just cerebral skills.
Children in Japan, during their lunch break, are taken to the kitchen and asked to cook their meals, have them there, clean up, and tidy the place when they are finished. Children can be taught how to handle money, how to control their emotions and build harmonious relationships, be street smart, and acquire independent living skills. Before we teach them how to succeed, we should teach them how to cope with failures, as, if you do the count, in life the number of our wishes granted is going to be less than the number of our wishes not granted, of course, it also depends upon how many wishes we are harboring.
Howard Gardner had identified eight different types of intelligence, and children should be assessed along those lines early in life. These are:
- Visual-spatial
- Linguistic-verbal
- Logical-mathematical
- Bodily-kinaesthetic
- Musical
- Interpersonal
- Intrapersonal
- Naturalistic intelligence
Successful parents, if they can afford, keep their children away from their trade until they have acquired formal qualifications. They must choose between the two, why cannot they do both? If we have a quick look at the film industry, the children of famous film stars and politicians who were sent away to remote boarding schools abroad have struggled after returning home. Abhishek Bachchan, Benazir Bhutto, Rajiv Gandhi, and Rahul Gandhi are all examples. Whereas those who started working early in the family trade, e.g., Ranbir Kapoor, all sons of Raj Kapoor, Salman Khan, although performing very poorly in formal education have become successful in the film industry. Similarly, Karishma Kapoor and Kareena Kapoor were both college dropouts. The list can be endless if we start exploring the educational background of very successful people in our society. Even if we look at academics, we find that toppers in our class did not turn out to be the most successful professionals in real life.
Perhaps there is an x-factor, a spark, a unique brightness different from the IQ score that does not get assessed in formal exams and it needs to be identified, given direction, and developed through concerted efforts early in the lives of young people by the elders of our society.
The biggest influence on our mind is from our parents, we unconsciously try to fulfill the unfulfilled wishes of our parents or do things to fulfill the deficiencies or solve the problems in our families, they may not be our own problems at all later in life. If we identify with our parents, we want to do the things they have done; and if we identify with them negatively, we want to do the opposite of what they have done.
The problems with our education system are that it is offered as – one size fits all.
The national curriculum teaches children English, maths, science, design and technology, history, geography, art and design music, physical education, computing, and ancient and modern foreign languages, etc. It is all about the content and there is very little talk about the format of education. There have been several experiments all over the world in trying to impart education through a number of different means/formats away from classrooms and textbooks, but none seems to have become a permanent feature sought after by many.
If we make a list of highly successful people from all walks of life across the globe, be it in Hollywood, politics, literature, art, music, etc, we find very few of them were bright students in their college or university days. Some of them were outright misfits who had to drop out of formal education.
From some account, not authenticated yet, the former Indian Prime minister of India Mrs Indira Gandhi was a misfit at Shanti Niketan and left it. The first president of America George Washington never went to college, Indian Prime minister Narendra Modi was an average student at school and by some accounts did not manage to get a college qualification. Marlo Brando was expelled twice from high school and was considered unfit for military training because of an injury. Hollywood stars Marilyn Munroe and Greta Garbo, and Bollywood stars Madhubala and Meena Kumari did not get a formal education and the time spent performing on stage and in cinema during their formative years was instrumental in their success. Had all these film personalities succeeded in academics, they would have missed the stardom for which they are known.
Another example, Gautam Adani, the second richest man in India, who had to drop out of formal education in the second year of college because of his family’s poverty. He started working in the shipyards of Ahmedabad in India learning business skills and working. Warren Buffet, the second richest man in the world, started his stock investment at the age of twelve and he reluctantly acquired a graduate qualification following pressures from his father.
The central message from numerous life histories of very successful persons is that they started working in their chosen trade in their teens and kept working very hard without worrying about what their fellow students were learning in the national curriculum and higher education. This applies to many great musicians, sports personalities, artists, musicians, philosophers, etc.
Conclusion
Coming back to school education, perhaps what can help children more is acquiring living skills, interpersonal skills, emotional regulation skills, how to manage money, etc, and not just cerebral skills.
Children in Japan, during their lunch break, are taken to the kitchen and asked to cook their meals, have them there, clean up, and tidy the place when they are finished. Children can be taught how to handle money, how to control their emotions and build harmonious relationships, be street smart, and acquire independent living skills. Before we teach them how to succeed, we should teach them how to cope with failures, as, if you do the count, in life the number of our wishes granted is going to be less than the number of our wishes not granted, of course, it also depends upon how many wishes we are harboring.
Howard Gardner had identified eight different types of intelligence, and children should be assessed along those lines early in life. These are:
- Visual-spatial
- Linguistic-verbal
- Logical-mathematical
- Bodily-kinaesthetic
- Musical
- Interpersonal
- Intrapersonal
- Naturalistic intelligence
Successful parents, if they can afford, keep their children away from their trade until they have acquired formal qualifications. They must choose between the two, why cannot they do both? If we have a quick look at the film industry, the children of famous film stars and politicians who were sent away to remote boarding schools abroad have struggled after returning home. Abhishek Bachchan, Benazir Bhutto, Rajiv Gandhi, and Rahul Gandhi are all examples. Whereas those who started working early in the family trade, e.g., Ranbir Kapoor, all sons of Raj Kapoor, Salman Khan, although performing very poorly in formal education have become successful in the film industry. Similarly, Karishma Kapoor and Kareena Kapoor were both college dropouts. The list can be endless if we start exploring the educational background of very successful people in our society. Even if we look at academics, we find that toppers in our class did not turn out to be the most successful professionals in real life.
Perhaps there is an x-factor, a spark, a unique brightness different from the IQ score that does not get assessed in formal exams and it needs to be identified, given direction, and developed through concerted efforts early in the lives of young people by the elders of our society.
