Education vital resource for both people individually as well as society as a whole. But with the advent of technology the world has begun to shape with it. But yet in education the focus on memorization to score on standardized tests seems to be overriding critical thinking and providing quality education instead of quality education in term of mental health and long term learning. Furthermore, we can learn from other countries such as Finland and observe how adopting their methods of getting rid of standardized testing to allow teacher to focus on teaching the class at the pace that fits best, and leave room to experiment in new teaching styles.
Before the arrival of written word facts and stories were passed down orally from generation to the next, sometimes have the speaker tweak the story that was told before them to fit their image. But with the invention of the written word we were able to take those stories and write them down on paper that can remain constant. But the amount of people it was able to reach depended on where it was locational as well as the durability to text in terms of withstanding wear and tear, water, damage and other occurrences that can destroy the text. And still the text it was impossible for it to be read by millions of people.
And if you weren’t carrying around a math textbook to solve a equation you would have to depend on what you memorized. Making it more logical to just memorize the formulas so you don’t have to depend on carry around books. But now, with the advent of technology as long as you are in an area that has access to wifi and you have a device you can have access to almost every book or text there is. Plus, with flash drives and the fact that devices such as phones, computers offer data bases where you can download full texts as long as you have access to a charger you can carry around millions of books in your back pocket. Now information that used to take days or even years to be processed can be shared to the world in a matter of seconds. With this brings to question why that the American education system is so focused on learning techniques of memorization when we have access to it.
The problem with how the US education system is because of how much we value scores students feel pressured to only try to get good scores leading to cramming the night before and hold on to that info until they take their test to then immediately forget it so they can move on to the next assignment they must cram for. Cramming cuts into sleep which has shown that lack of sleep impairs mental function. (Hejbutki para 1). Furthermore it is also explained to “Lead to a general slowing of response speed and increased variability in performance, particularly for simple measures of alertness, attention and vigilance” ( Elsevier B.V.). Overall causing a more negative effect than positive. it is estimated that in 2022 the jobs that will be in demand primarily involve either technology or health. So why are we so adamant on having children memorize when the civil war occurred when I can just look it up in my phone in seconds. With facts we are drilled in memorization. But with this I am not claiming that we should discard the importance of educating students in skills of memorization, it is just suggested that we aim to use the facts learn and teach students to use critical thinking and explore more into the subject.
For test we are expected to memorize the significance of events in history but never told to question on why it is significant. Drilling students into a factory like system where the main focus is on if they are able to score high on standardized test turns them into robots that stop questioning on why things are or aren’t vital making them in good student but not good learners. In ranking the countries in education, Finland was ranked first in science, and second in math and reading (Shepard para 2). The main key element is that fact that Finland does not have a mandatory standardized testing until the end of their senior year in high school. This also lets teachers experiment with their teaching methods and set the pace that they deem to best fit the class.
Say for example if a teacher is noticing that the class seems to be struggling on a math concept they can take their time to explain it without the worry that the class must move forward so they will learn all the material for the standardized test. With this it allows the pressure the be relieved from the students to allow them to not be as afraid to fail and learn from their mistakes, as well as see education not as something that is seen to only be used for getting good test grades. One Finnish principle stated, “we have no hurry, children learn better when they are ready, why need to stress them out?” (@TopTenz 0:7:55-00:8:00). Overall compared to the US Finland has shorter school time, little next to no homework and yet scores higher in math, reading and science. This is vital to note that it shows that the method of American process of long school hours designed to drill in information with the follow up of homework does not prove any beneficial benefits.
There will always be people drawn to education,so we should take that excitment and have faith that we are capable of receiving and having a proper education and in turn replace our old model of education consisting on the focus of memorization and reguritatation, when it is no longer needed thanks to technology revealing that we can now acess all the information in a matter of seconds. And replace it with teaching of how to best utilize these tools to the best of their abilites. The way our current education system in america is formatted it is extremly outdated shown by the fact that we are lowly ranked compared to other deveoping coutries such as switzerland who has adopted a more lose and free formate where standarized testing is nearly elmiminated allowing teachers to go at the pace that suits them best and be able to evaluate student at a more indivdual level verses America that aims to score high on exams which doesn’t even seem to be working. With this America should evaluate the facts and learn to update the cirriculium to better fit their students that will eventaully help create a better society.
