Persuasive Essay On Formal Education

Is it finally time to reinvert formal education in America? For centuries formal education in this country have been based on hierarchy, standardization and the system of “one-size-fits-all”. This form of education also prioritizes expertise and specialization while ignoring the obvious benefits of crowdsourcing. While this form of education might help some students, it also puts students who have difficult time with standardized tests at risk of failing or dropping out of school. Each human is unique in their own way and it’s time for society to gain the confidence to reinvent the education system that has failed many bright students who didn’t fit into the system. In the article “Project Classroom Makeover” by Cathy Davidson, the author

In every setting or sector of society, humans always feel obliged to set up standard structure or hierarchy. This often puts people in a box and limits them from reaching their full potential because they have to follow a certain path that society considers the norm. Creativity in this standard structured system is also often frowned upon because this structured system program humans to follow one path without exploring other options. Today 's education system is set up similarly to any other sector in society, the system prioritize standardized tests instead of allowing students to think critically and explore their individual learning skills.This limits students from reaching their full potential. As Davidson emphasized to her readers, “the biggest problem we face now is the increasing mismatch between curricular standards of content-based instruction and the new forms of thinking required by digital, distributed workplace”(60). The 20th century archaic curriculum and methods of learning often doesn’t coincide with the 21st century critical thinking and digital demanding workplace. Today’s 21st century “jobs require highly specialized and dextrous problem-solving abilities or interpersonal skills…..”(Davidson 60). Although some students graduate from public schools due to their ability to memorize and pass standardized tests, they sometimes

The use of textbooks and paper tests in classrooms was necessary in the past century because it prepared students for the use of the same materials in their future workplaces. However, in today’s workplace technological devices like the personal computer and ipads have replaced those form of materials making them irrelevant. Although today’s workplaces reinvented their traditional archaic method of working, same cannot be said about today’s school system. In our society, the decision to reinvert today’s education system should be prioritized due to the fall of the American Education system in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development rankings. A question today’s technological advance society needs to ask is “how do we make over the twentieth-century classroom to take advantage of all the remarkable digital benefits of the twentieth century”(Davidson 55). To reinvent our educational system teachers and leaders in our school system need to unlearn the traditional way of learning. “Instead of teaching we need to learn”(Davidson 50). Teachers need to learn from today’s technology savvy 21st century students and incorporate some ideas in their methods of teaching. Although this experiment breaks the educational institute patterns of learning, it also gives