If you consider yourself to become a teacher, and you feel that you are good at teaching, don't become a regular teacher.


Let's start today episode by reviewing how we ended the last episode. I threw a bit about a phenomenon that most of us could say as a result of peer pressure, which I do not agree 100%. If you have not read last episode (and I do not know why you have not, but you can always read it first here: https://affairhorizon.blogspot.com/2020/09/ed1.html), I spoke about the problem I have with the negative view on scepticism. This is exactly what I wrote:

The problem is there is actually a weird phenomenon in our society that tends to suppress, make scepticism kind of taboo. Have you ever feel that you are being pressured by questioning something? You feel guilty by being different. 

Why does this phenomenon exist? Let's look at our formal education system.

Let's Discuss School. 

Most of my readers are at least university students, so I could ask you guys this question: Did you enjoy school? Did you do well? Either you did well or not, either you enjoyed or not, I am sure that there is at least a single time on your life when you could not stop complaining about our education system. It could be about how nonsense it was, how heavy, or how stupid it was. 

Most of the opinions are similar: It limits our capacity to be creative, it is too static, or it cannot fulfil each student's needs. However, the real question is: could we really actually make it better?

Let's first discuss why schools exist in the first place. I often refer to schools as the mass formal education system. Two keywords here: mass and formal. Every word has it own part to shape schools as we know nowadays.

Mass means it is dedicated to a lot of students at once. The exact opposite is individual or group, such as private lesson, home-schooling, or after-class course. Mass means there has to be a standard to make sure every single student could benefit the same way from the system, not optimally. If we want each student to benefit optimally from the system, don't go to school. You will not get a personally tailored curriculum for each student needs in schools.

If a standardised system already sounds awful, wait until you hear the second keyword: formal. Formal in this sense means it is regulated by a bigger constitution, and in our case, it is governed by the ministry of education. There could not be a worse combination than mass and formal when we are discussing how to build an education system.

From these arguments, there are a couple of things that we need to understand: Firstly, schools are not built to fulfil each student needs and desires. Secondly, don't hope teachers could also express their creativity to educate students as they want. Because the system is so tightly governed, teachers' hands are always tied behind. They need to do what the curriculum says with just a little bit of headspace, but more of this later.

List of Common Complains

1. Why do we learn too much unimportant stuff in schools? Will I use this in my real life?

Actually, I have discussed this in another post "Why Straight-A Students Are Underrated?" (https://affairhorizon.blogspot.com/2020/04/season-1-episode-4-straight-students.html)  If you have not read this or forgot what it was about, feel free to read and come back. Long story short, we learn almost every single subjects with hope that each one of us could find what we want to study further, which at a quick glance it looks successful. Most of the high school graduates in my hometown managed to find a major in the university. However, have we reached the goal by making sure that every graduate continues their education in universities?

Of course no. A lot of dreams died within the school because the school does not and cannot facilitate every single student's dream. That's the reality. I had a lot of friends who actually wanted to pursue a more creative career rather than going to university as almost every single one of us but decided to forget it since school always shows some stigma that only people who visit uni will consider "successful."

Whose fault is it? There are two easy suspects, but none of them actually 100% guilty. School is not responsible for your decision, yet it could actually influence it. I also have friends who don't care anymore what school says about their decision, and just pursue whatever they wanted. So I could easily say that it is your fault by not being stubborn enough, right?

No. 

The reason why this stigma exists in the first place is not because of the school; it is because of our own society. Our society simply does not allow someone to be different. It is the sad truth and changing how school works will not simply change how our society views some career paths. Could this change, however? I have a suggestion, but we are gonna discuss that in upcoming episodes. Let's get back to track.

So, why do we learn too much unimportant stuff? They are not important just because you think that way. As a mass education system, school need to teach as much as they could in a given period of time. That's why every school in the world have similar subjects: maths, science, history, language, etc.

However, there are also important things that missed the curriculum.

2. Teachers are always too strict with the curriculum.

Yes, this is true. However, teachers are not paid to educate anymore. They are paid to pass information about things that are already prepared by the government. I'm gonna make a controversial statement here, so bear with me.

I came from one of the most famous high school in my hometown. Not the best, but one of the most well-known. The students were top-notch - and people relate it to a good education system. However, in my opinion, it is not what was happening. The teachers were not the ones responsible for the quality of the students. It was the students itself. The teachers could just come and give some exercises and go home, and we would still be graduating with excellent scores.

I am not discrediting any teacher here. There are indeed excellent teachers, but my point is they are just information messengers, not educator, and in this era, where information is literally everywhere, if we still view teachers as a messenger, they will be less important with time.

The curriculum is not only bad for the students, but it also sucks for the teachers. Great teachers cannot express and show their skill in educating or being creative in teaching since they have to follow every single procedure.

So, if you consider yourself to become a teacher, and you feel that you are good at teaching, don't become a regular teacher. Go teach private lessons or in after-class tutoring program. You will be more rewarded there.

The school that we know will not be able to facilitate teachers to be creative.

3. School should be more dynamic.

Believe it or not, I fully agree with this one. The only problem is...it is really hard to do. In the process of establishing an education system, you could only choose one: fair or dynamic. Most of the cases choose the fair one, which means it is standardised. If you are too smart for school, bad for you. If you feel you do not fit in it, also bad for you. Average students are always the ones with least complains, since they are what the government think as the "standard".

Knowledge always develops. New things are being discovered every single second. However, it seems that the curriculum has always been really slow in terms of adapting to new discoveries. What we were taught seems so irrelevant for our future, and that is the caveat by having a centralised education system. Every change needs a long time to process - so do small adjustments.

This also means that being different is dangerous. Being out of the box, being the first one to make changes, thinking differently are the enemy of this static process. As the end effect, every teacher's and student's mind is like being caged. They cannot wander free and explore the wide possibility of learning. In the most extreme case, it makes us feel guilty by being different. Scepticism and critical thinking become taboo, as we saw in the last episode.

However, we are talking about school. A centralised, standardised, government-controlled, based on politic and economic interests, and mass education system. What could go wrong, right?

Should We Switch Side?


Yes, school seems to be the one at fault, and it totally makes sense that every student complains about the education system. Yet we need to see the bigger picture - why and how school exists in the first place - before we start going blatantly at them. Even every single member of the system is doing their best at making the system much better, the school will still suck. There is no one to blame it on. Or everyone is there to blame on.

However, why some country do better than others? What have they done differently? Even we are stuck in this system, it does not mean there is nothing to do to make it at least better.

School sucks. And next time I'm going to attack them.


Title image credit: Jim the Illustrator