Thoughts on Education System by a Teacher of 40 years experience

My aunt has been a teacher for 40 years. This year, she has reached her retirement age of 60 and I asked her what she thinks about education after being in the industry for so long.

Education has a huge bearing on the human race because it has noteworthy influence on the next generations.

I got good grades at school but I do not think that prepares me for the world. So I am eager to hear my aunt’s views. Perhaps, a teacher’s perspective would be different from that of a student.

Facts vs Wisdom

Our conversation started by me complaining how school does not prepare us for the challenges at work and at life. It merely gives us fact to memorise and pass on knowledge that is subject to change in the near future.

My aunt agreed. She felt rather helpless in this aspect because there is a fixed syllabus set by the education bureau that is shared among all the schools. Schools seldom have the resources, time or manpower to get onto other things except those in the syllabus.

There is a difference between knowledge and wisdom.

Knowledge changes over time but wisdom applies forever. Schools are teaching knowledge but they do not pass on wisdom.

My aunt added that schools teach knowledge by telling people what to think, what to know, what answers schools want the students to write in the exam papers.

What schools do not teach is how to think for oneself, how to ask questions, how to find the truth instead of knowing the facts and model answers.

While she agreed that knowledge is basics (such as ability of language and basic maths), she imagined schools teaching a mix of knowledge and wisdom would benefit the next generations more.

Parents taking more responsibility

Another room for improvement is for parents to take more responsibility in educating their children. Currently, parents pay schools for their children’s education and they tend to rely on schools to do all the work on education. They forget one thing…. that children model their parents’ behaviour and actions (even if there is no express lesson).

Teachers have to take care of multiple children in a class and there is no way that they can know a child as much as the parents can do.

Adjusting education based on the children is the key to stimulate creativity and critical thinking, rather than trying to fit every children in the same box. This is hard to execute at schools.

Parents should not just ‘outsource’ the responsibility to teachers — while teachers do want the best for the students, due to restraints in time, attention, resources etc, teachers are already having a hard and busy time with the increasing extra-curricular activities and ever-changing syllabus.

It is time for parents to step up.

What parents can teach their children

My aunt assumed that the original concept of schools is to pass on (expertise) knowledge while parents teach wisdom so that the child can have the best of both worlds.

What parents can teach include:

how to live a life worth living

how to face failure

how to deal with different people

different paths that children can choose

how to connect with god / universe

etc.

Being a role model is the most direct way of teaching. Parents do not need to hold classes, conversations over meals, daily responses and behaviour that parents (perhaps unconsciously) display would all be in the children’s eyes. They may not understand, they simply learn by observing. And that is a powerful way to learn when they see repeated behaviour growing up.

In fact, even if parents claim that they do not want to teach the kids and will leave this totally up to the teachers, they are teaching the children something too — that they can be lazy! That they can escape from responsibility by outsourcing it.

Every thing that parents say or do, it is a mini-lesson for the children.

In reality, children who grow up to handle life better (more friends, smoother career, happier life, more financial rewards) are those whose parents consciously set a role model for them.

Self-made billionaire Sara Blakely repeated the story of how her father used to invite her and her brother to share their failures at the dinner table and that shaped her attitude towards failure (that it is nothing to be ashamed of, but we should celebrate our efforts). This is a great example of how education should be.

The class starts at home.