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What you learned from economics classes
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The Prevailing School System
Schools are instituitions that help us learn things passed on from generations to generations which is now part of our daily routine. Schools really do teach too much, in terms of the quantity of material taught. Many schools in this part of the world concentrate on teaching students to memorise large quantities of information. Later on comes the phenomena called "examination". Much of this is concentrated on the students' abilities to memorize and remember the information that has been taught to them. Most students merely memorise large amounts of knowledge and when it comes to examination, those with good memories do well, those whose memories are not good fail. This goes on until they get into Universities. The effect of which is seen when students join the workforce. What happens then is a re-education process to prepare them for the work world. What became of all that memory they were dumping in their big brains?
In the world of work what is often demanded from a person is the ability to analyse situations and make quick decisions. This the student is not prepared for. Many look with distress at their superiors like they used to at their parents and teachers for guidance. It takes them ages to get out of the trap. From what I study a good example is the subject of 'Accounting'. They know all the rules of Accounting and how to apply them to examination questions. But if they are asked to apply all those rules of Accounting in a real life problem, they woudn't know where to take off. Another example would be 'Economics'. All the students memorising everything there is to know about the subject, but when it comes to applying the knowledge in real life business, they fail. Quite often, the totally unschooled persons using their non-tutioned brains alone do well in business, and they know nothing about Adam Smith (Father of Economics). I've seen perfect examples of such cases in UAE & Pakistan. Even some of my relatives although un-educated are very sucessfull in business. As I said it's the skills, effective communication & experience that is important rather than junks of unused information. In a recent survey in USA, 78% of the millionaires weren't at the top 50% of their class, infact they were told by their teachers that they'd never succeed in life.
In an article I read written on July 13, 2014 by Ken Bain “Flummoxed by Failure-or Focused?” he discussed how there are two types of students the “helpless” student who think they aren 't smart enough and the “mastery” or “growth” students who will try everything before they cave in and how students the “hopeless” students think their intelligence is fixed. Also in an interview with Ken Bain conducted by the Project Information Literacy on October 10, 2012 , Mr. Bain discussed more of his view on learning like that you don 't learn from your experiences, but about thinking about your experience which is a process he called “deep learning”. He also discusses issues with strategic learner who basically only perform for the high grade and don 't ask questions after they get their answer. Many students have this notion that learning is all about getting a high grade and once they have it they are done, But if they do it just for the grade it can cause some serious problems, they won’t learn how to deep learn, and it can maybe affect their career.
Recent high school graduates are not well prepared to face society as it really is cruel, confusing, and tough. In school students are not taught skills they will need out of the classroom, what they are taught is memorization, and multiple choice test taking in which they can guess their way through or just simply cheat. In the article “For Once, Blame the Students” by the author Patrick Welsh he states that “Failure in the classroom is often tied to lack of funding, poor teachers or other skills. Here 's a thought: Maybe it 's the failed work ethic of today’s kids” (Welsh). When teachers teach a new lesson they make students take notes on their textbook and then, they give them multiple choice tests to see if they learned anything. Learning
The American school system is no stranger to criticism, but everybody seems to have a distinct idea of what should be done to improve it. It was not too long ago that we had no public schooling system at all. A man would change that forever, immortalizing himself as the “father” of American education. It was surprising to me that I had never heard of this man, especially considering I had finished my journey through free and compulsory education two years ago. The man who went on to change American education, was Horace Mann, the first Secretary of the Board of Education in Massachusetts. Horace Mann tirelessly campaigned for the public to be educated, heralding it as a “great equalizer.” So why is the gap between social classes rising exponentially? There are fundamental issues holding us back from fulfilling Horace Mann’s dream of an education system which empowers citizens by leveling the playing field for everyone, including pedantic policies, a limited curriculum, and standardized testing.
A child’s first day of school is often viewed as a rite of passage; the first step on the road to a happy and successful life. This is true for most children from affluent families who live in the best school districts or can afford expensive private schools. But what if a child’s first day of school is nothing more than the first step on the road to poverty and possibly even illiteracy? The documentary Waiting for “Superman” addresses many issues in a failing school system and the innocent children that system leaves behind. Although the documentary spends little time suggesting parents’ roles in their children’s education, it clearly shows that we must make changes to help children from low-income families and improve the teacher’s unions.
face demanding work at school. The most important is they only have limited knowledge in
The Ontario school system dedicates a great deal of the high school curriculum towards preparing students for University. Ontario high schools provide students with many courses that will help prepare the students that decide to go on to post secondary education. However, the Ontario School System lacks in preparing them for the most prominent aspect of University, stress. The Ontario school system does not prepare students for any of the on coming stresses which will be the number one factor in a students success or failure at University.
America’s school system and student population remains segregated, by race and class. The inequalities that exist in schools today result from more than just poorly managed schools; they reflect the racial and socioeconomic inequities of society as a whole. Most of the problems of schools boil down to either racism in and outside the school or financial disparity between wealthy and poor school districts. Because schools receive funding through local property taxes, low-income communities start at an economic disadvantage. Less funding means fewer resources, lower quality instruction and curricula, and little to no community involvement. Even when low-income schools manage to find adequate funding, the money doesn’t solve all the school’s problems. Most important, money cannot influence student, parent, teacher, and administrator perceptions of class and race. Nor can money improve test scores and make education relevant and practical in the lives of minority students.
The article “What True Education Should Do” written by Sydney Harris caught my attention the most out of all of the readings we were given. In his article, Sydney J. Harris, a writer for major Chicago newspapers, is defining what he thinks true education is. There are two different ways of being educated according to Harris. One of those is that students are stuffed with information and the other is eliciting information from inside of the students’ minds. He gives us a quite honest analogy to support his ideas. He states that students are like empty sausage casings and are being “stuffed” with information by our educators.
The education system has been a controversial issue among educators. Requirements of school do not let student choose what they want to study for their future. It’s a big issue to force student study specific curriculums, which don’t help them improve, and what they like to create something. Educators choose a general system for education to all students which based on general knowledge. Intelligent or genius students have to be in that system of education, which doesn’t let them improve their creativity. Educators attempt to change that system to make it better, but their changing was not that great to be an example for the world. Also, did that change qualify education system to compete other systems or not? In some examples and reasons have been made me agree with some of points from Gatto’s and Edmunson’s and disagree them.
Students also begin to lose the sense of responsibility when they have other people do their work. They don't feel that they have to do anything to pass a class, only that as long as they turn in a paper, their thoughts or not, they will receive credit for the assignment along with a passing grade. This creates the feeling that life will always be a handed to them on a silver platter. This type of thinking is what is going into the work environment when these people leave the education system.
Russell(1932/2013:107-108) knew however that one of the difficulties in large educational facilities is that the administrators, the people in charge, are not generally teachers; so they do not have the knowledge of what is possible to be learnt and what is not during a time frame the teachers have to impart the knowledge they are expected to, thus they put too much into the curriculum, and the result is that nothing is learnt thoroughly. Russell stated that “the problem of over-education is both important and difficult” (Russell, 1932/2013:109). Important because over-education can lead to loss of self-confidence, spontaneity, and health which leads to them being a less useful member of society than he may have been; and difficult because as the amount of knowledge there is in the world grows, it becomes more difficult to know what is relevant. However; Russell(1932/2013:109) acknowledges that merely letting children not learn will not work as society depends on trained and well-informed intelligent
“Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school” this quote by Albert Einstein states the importance of education, its influence on our daily lives and its power over all other devices. My teacher once asked me what’s easier, to remember or to forget? I answered confidently “to forget” but he made me realize I was wrong, I can never forget the alphabet “a” for example even if I try erasing it from my memory; moral of the story is that education will stay with you for the rest of your life.
Education is a very important aspect of the lives of all people all over the world. What we learn, not just in the classroom, shapes who we are. We take our education everywhere we go. We use it when talking to our buddies about sports or music, we use it while solving a math problem, we use our education while debating with our family whether or not we should watch TV or go to the movies. Our education is the foundation of who we are, since every decision we make and every thought we think is dependent on what we know. Imagine how different the world would be if everyone craved learning to such a degree that at lunch tables all over the world the topic of conversation isn't who likes who, or how drunk someone got over the weekend, but it would be what books were read over the weekend, and what new ideas were thought of. This crave for learning would be an ideal but still suggests need for improvement with the current educational system. It seems that the problem with education is that somewhere along the lines the human race forgot (assuming they, at one point, understood how valuable information is) that learning is not just a mandatory process, but also an opportunity to transcend and open the gateway to a better understanding.
Schools exist to produce well educated youth that society will benefit from. From personal experience, ill-informed adults make for an unstable, rotten community. Schools hold a big responsibility. They should create a safe haven for students that creates a love for learning, and then also nurtures that same admiration for learning. Schools that students don’t feel safe in usually house students that aren’t interested in subjects that are being taught. They should maintain a well-educated faculty who is all passionate about what they do. If there is a lazy faculty, it will influence the students to become lazy. Schools need to produce the change that this world needs- well rounded, creative, knowledgeable individuals. An effective school in today’s society would have a strong basis on the common core, but make it so that the information is fun to learn. From experience, once the information fun to learn, the rest goes by
At the beginning of one’s journey of gaining more knowledge, most children don’t mind school, for it is a change of environment for them. The majority of elementary school adolescents even enjoy school to some degree. As time wears on, we usually, and sadly, begin to see a change of heart. Children become fatigued from school and therefore don’t take pleasure in going anymore. Maybe their teachers didn’t teach them in the way that they learn most efficiently, or maybe students just become bored with the whole “school scene” itself. Whatever the case, it is apparent that by the time they reach high school, their interest for learning alone has died out.