Modern Education Isnt Modern
[Applause]
modern education isn’t modern
this is what a car looked like 100 years
ago and this is what cars look like
today
this is what fashion looked like 100
years ago and this is what fashion looks
like today
this is one of the first ever computers
and these are what computers look like
today
now take a look at a classroom 100 years
ago
and take a look at a classroom today i
think that makes my point pretty clearly
most conventional educational models
haven’t changed significantly in over a
century
put simply modern education just isn’t
modern
now i think this is well put by stephen
king in a little quote of his
which eloquently underlines the need for
change sooner or rather than later
but in high school the business of
irrevocable choices began
doors slipped shut with a faint locking
click that was only heard clearly in the
dreams of later years
so i’ve broken it down into three main
sub issues
the wrong content is being taught it’s
being taught the wrong way and it’s
being tested the wrong way
now i’d like to quickly note that while
you may disagree with some of my ideas
on this topic i’m fairly hopeful
that at least one of these three pillars
so to speak may resonate with you and
indicate the change the need for change
in our educational systems
now firstly i think the content we’re
being taught is to an extent
not the right content and that’s for
various reasons
firstly there’s a lack of intrinsic
motivation in typical
conventional models to validate my ideas
i went ahead and spoke to
some of my own educators and i tried to
evaluate whether it was a legitimate
problem and to no surprise
they agreed that it was see most
conventional models follow an exam based
system
and because they’re so similar they have
similar detriments however
the finished school system is slightly
different and that they typically try to
spend the early education years
and building motivation and interest in
the subjects themselves
and this produces visible benefits as
can be seen when finnish schools
consistently perform above average in
numerous studies done by the program for
international student assessment or pisa
for short
done over the years they are
consistently performing above
average without exerting enormous
pressure on students or having excessive
exams
their system is known for being
particularly laid back and they give the
students the time
and resources to pursue their own
interests
rather than being overworked another
issue that i feel is often under
addressed is that sometimes the
relevancy of much of what we’re taught
could be questioned
there are some almost universally
applicable subjects that could be taught
but aren’t actually present in virtually
any curriculum
the best possible example of this is the
need for bureaucratic and financial
literacy
financial literacy is everything from
money management to doing taxes
and while not everyone may use history
in their career and others may never use
any of the arts
almost everyone is going to have to
eventually manage their money
and do their taxes this is evidently
lacking in school systems
just very recently this year the
organization for economic cooperation
and development
carried out a survey in partnership with
the previously mentioned program for
international student assessment pisa
where they engaged roughly 117 000 15
year olds across the globe
and found some fairly distressing
results while i won’t go into the
details of the report
i would recommend reading the short
summary if you find some time
funnily enough finland actually ranked
second on average
and that further backs my earlier point
about their more laid-back systems where
they focus on motivation
now personally however i feel the huge
lack of emphasis on soft skills is the
biggest fault in what isn’t being taught
in most conventional educational models
soft skills are a mix of intangible
skills like working well with people
having a good work ethic integrity
adaptability communication
problem solving etc and these soft
skills make you hugely invaluable to
employers
and are key to the success in the labor
market i went ahead and spoke
to the head of an apac outbound sales
team at google
and she told me a little bit about the
process of hiring people
and i quote her we look for the soft
skills
what people can do with their knowledge
makes them much more valuable
than the sheer volume of knowledge that
they actually have
this is best put by jack ma the way we
teach things
the things we teach today are going to
make our kids lose jobs in the next 30
years because all the things we learn
about
remembering knowledge calculations all
these machines can do better
a few years ago ibm actually carried out
a study investigating the most important
leadership qualities
and it was the largest sample of
one-on-one ceo interviews
involving over 1500 corporate heads and
public sector leaders
across 60 nations in 33 industries and
they found that creativity
was the most important leadership
quality amongst a series of other soft
skills
if the ibm study didn’t convince you the
world economic forum
wrote a report titled the future of jobs
back in 2016
where they attempted to evaluate the
most important qualities for employment
and they made their predictions for the
year 2020. in both lists they’re all key
soft skills often neglected in education
systems
the next big issue with our current
education i think is teaching the way
that we’re taught and this isn’t always
the educator’s fault as often
they can be forced to teach like this
due to the conditions of the system
one issue that i think is often
overlooked is the duration of class
marty lobdell a psychology professor
with over 40 years of experience did
a lecture on how long a student can
actually remain focused
and learning and he and he referenced
the study that found that
students can only typically retain new
information when doing an activity like
reading for example
during the first 25 to 30 minutes yet
despite this most schools have classes
that are 45 to 75 minutes long
next there’s the question of habit
formation students are often told to
revise to obtain good grades
practice specific habits to obtain
particular benefits
but this is a terribly inefficient way
of changing students behavior
as is noted by numerous psychologists
david ash the behavioral economist did a
ted talk
where he mentions there’s a fundamental
flaw in the way through which we try to
change people’s behavior
nearly everything and i quote is based
on the premise
that we behave rationally according to
him
everything is based on this premise if
you give me information i will process
that information in my head
and my behavior will change as a result
and he goes on to explain
how this is a false assumption this is
further backed again
by psychologist dan ariely who also did
a ted talk
on how to change people’s behavior and
he mentions giving information to people
is just not a good recipe to change
behavior yet we continue to give
information to students telling them to
revise to get better grades
or to practice a particular habit to
obtain a specific benefit
but that won’t change their behavior
better
research-backed practices should be
further investigated
and then implemented in system
furthermore in this day and age
information on virtually any subject has
become readily available through the
internet
tools like google quizlet and khan
academy have made this process
ever more efficient what this means is
that teachers roles as
educators must adapt accordingly to the
seismic shift and the availability of
information
i would even consider myself a case
study at this point
see i’ve taught myself programming and
i’ve managed to become a proper
front-end developer having worked on
real projects for
real companies in singapore and i
created a website for myself to generate
some credibility for myself which i
designed
using professional software all of which
i learn online
for absolutely no cost it’s not about
programming though because
at this day and age at this point in
time we can learn about virtually any
subject online for virtually no cost
i could spend my time learning more
professional skills like graphic design
and social media management or i could
go deeper into more academic subjects
like machine learning
and neurology the point here is that
there
is a huge availability of information on
the internet
and educators roles need to adapt to
this change and that hasn’t happened yet
i think most crucially and fundamentally
wrong though is that currently
testing is dictating the way that we
teach
the time spent in the classroom learning
exam technique is concerning and
unjustified and i think it should be the
other way around
what makes one successful is what they
can do with their knowledge
not the sheer volume of it and i touched
on this point earlier on
we should be taught how to think for
ourselves not what to think
using our brain as a processor not a
hard disk
moving on i think the way through which
students are tested is one of the most
largest
and recognized flaws in the system
personally i feel that it’s an
incredibly ineffective method
of measuring one’s capacities in most
orthodox exams
it doesn’t accurately reflect a
student’s intellectual capacity
nor their potential productivity in the
labor market it’s also been previously
noted by experts on the topic
that it may play a contributing role in
the disparity of performance between
genders
frederick j kelly was one of the
original inventors of standardized
testing in america
and that was a time when america had a
rapid influx of students and not enough
teachers so they had to pump out
students as fast as their industrial
assembly lines
he later went on to say that these tests
are too crude to be used and should be
abandoned
but it was too late and standardized
testing had been ingrained in western
education
sometimes these tests can be too
prescriptive
if you don’t write the word you don’t
get the mark other times it’s the other
way around and it’s too subjective to
the examiner’s moods and views
particularly in discussion based
subjects where answers are more
arbitrary
another issue is that exams are also
highly time pressured
which doesn’t always accurately reflect
the conditions
in the labor market i took a look at
some of the literature on this topic
and my findings consolidated my ideas
exam stress is toxic
one study took a look at the
particularly exam-centric
approach of the chinese schooling system
and it found that that approach can
stifle a student’s imagination
creativity and sense of self quality is
crucial
for a child’s ultimate success in and
out of the classroom
another study that i found took a look
at the relationship between test anxiety
and performance in set tests and it
found that test anxiety experienced by
students
may adversely affect the ability of
testing to measure the student’s
comprehension of course material
results support the relationship
hypothesized between test anxiety
and performance expectations at the time
of the final exam
these both further serve as testimonies
to my point
exam stress is toxic unfortunately i
believe that in most cases
educational models built around exams
end up in a toxic cycle of learn
test forget repeat looking forward
i think we need to come up with a
solution and implement it now
sadly i do recognize that most of these
issues are in the hands of the systems
themselves and outside of our immediate
reach
but i still think it’s important to
generate more dialogue around the issue
and more awareness perhaps schools
should pay more attention to student
learning types like auditory kinetic and
visual
because one size fits all just doesn’t
work perhaps school should also explore
more student-led learning
because it encourages students to build
their soft skills and it exhibits the
protege effect
which is essentially peer-to-peer
learning and that’s known to be an
incredibly effective method of both
learning and teaching
schools should help students pursue
their passions interests and curiosities
they should as much as possible provide
the means for students to do so
to explore out of their own genuine
interests
students should be inspired to learn and
pursue their dreams and curiosities and
passions rather than
maybe being made to fit into a mold
modern
education just isn’t modern and that
needs to change thank you