The world has seen a remarkable revolution in the past century. With the creation of computers, humans have equipped themselves with the most powerful tool in the history of mankind. The Internet connects all of us and provides an endless amount of information at our fingertips. In this new world, where success often is a result of the individual’s capabilities and knowledge, education has become more important than ever before. However, while most industries have been — or are in the process of becoming — disrupted and digitalized by technology, the educational system is as repellent to change as Donald Trump is to making apologies*

The Current Situation

A quick look at the statistics clearly demonstrates that the educational system is — in its current form — failing. Two out of three eight-graders can’t read proficiently and the same amount have math skills below average. Three out of five do not meet the requirements in civics and an even larger share cannot write sufficiently. Moreover, 70% of college professors believe that what is taught in high schools does not adequately prepare students for college, which might explain why less than half of American students — 46 percent — finish college. Subsequently, every year 1.4 million students drop out of the school system, and this number is increasing annually. Out of the nearly 15 million crimes committed every year in the US, dropouts are responsible for more than 80% of them - mainly due to their lack of a degree, which significantly decreases their probability of getting a job.

Source: https://urbanschoolfoundation.wordpress.com (Inflation adjusted)

The Challenges

While there are problems in all levels of the education system, the root cause is found in elementary schools. The huge knowledge gap between what’s expected from students when they commence high school and what they actually know is the biggest obstacle to their success. Therefore, the focus should be on improving the elementary school system first, as the effects from this would affect the following levels.

There’s many ways education could (and should) be changed. Some of the more basic ideas include that only the brightest and most motivated people should get the opportunity to teach, and their pay should truly reflect the importance of their job. The curriculum should be digitized and extensively updated. The courses should be relevant to the present, and answer the needs and requirements of industries, and organizations. ++++++

However, educational spending accounts for roughly 141 billion of the 3.5 trillion federal budget (2014), the industry employs 3.8 million people, enrolls roughly 50 million students each year, and is responsible for the management of more than 100.000 schools. In other words, we cannot expect comprehensive and immediate changes. The necessary changes will require long and enduring processes. Nevertheless, there's one thing that’s certain, we need to start the change process sooner rather than later. Otherwise, not only will our children and students abstain from the true purpose of the school system, but the US workforce will consequently continue to lose ground to almost every other industrialized nation and the economy will, as a result, suffer greatly.

The “Wouldn’t It be better if” section

After comprehensive analysis and considerable thoughts, it becomes clear that one aspect of the educational system could be changed relatively easily and at a low cost in terms of time, effort, and monetary investment. Specifically, I am talking about the concept of classes. Let me illustrate this with a well-known scenario:

Jenny is a brilliant 5-year old girl. She loves to learn more than anything in the world and has consequently taught herself (with help from mom and dad) to read and write in addition to several mathematical and scientifical concepts. Her neighbor, Jimmy, is the same age and they are both beginning at the same school next week. Unlike Jenny, Jimmy’s passion is playing baseball and he has literally no interest in books or science at all. The letters and numbers look, to Jimmy, like small spiders wandering around the page with no purpose at all, and he has no idea what he is supposed to do with them.

Is it really beneficiary for these two kids to begin in the same class or are they going to end up like the kids in the illustration below - unmotivated?

Wouldn’t it be better if Jenny and Jimmy began at a level that matched their knowledge, talents and personal interests?

Imagine if they took a brief test as part of their enrollment process. The purpose would be to get an overview and understanding of their skills and interests, so the school could place them in the classes that best matched these. Consequently, this might lead Jenny to start in the 3rd-grade in math, 2nd grade in English, 1st grade in music, and so on.

The Benefits

First of all, the pupils would be placed in classes where the curriculum matched their previous knowledge. As a result, they would be less likely to lose motivation due to either a lack of challenge or being taught concepts that were over their head. Motivation is — according to studies — the single most important factor for individuals to keep their focus and succeed in anything. Since children have shorter attention spans than adults, keeping them focused and motivated is crucial for their continual commitment and interest in school. Ostensibly, the biggest benefit would be not having students confined to one class level in all subjects.

The pupils would not be divided by age and grade level anymore. This would help to decrease bullying, as this often is a result of older students picking on those in grades below. Moreover, bullying as a result of “stupidity” or “nerdiness” would also decrease since most students in the respective classes would be on the same competence level. A fair argument would be that this change would only lead the bullying to transfer from between classes to between age groups, as 10-year-olds might end up in classes with 13-year-olds. However, the highly increased social networking among the student accompanied by this change would likely balance this out. With several different classes, the students would greatly increase their social network and be less dependent on the 20 or so people in their “main”. Consequently, having more classes would greatly increase the likelihood for pupils to connect with like-minded people (and hopefully lifelong friends). This would also serve to decrease bullying in the school as the pupils would have larger networks and be more connected.

Further, this would also lead to a fairer distribution of the teachers time between the students. Today, 80% of a teacher's “council-time” is allocated to 20% of the students. These students are normally the ones that are having problems following the content of the course. This negatively impacts the dynamic in the class and the rest of the students.

More classes would also mean more class principals. Optimally, each teacher would only be concerned with one subject -which they were truly passionate about — and thus have several classes within that domain, like in high school and college. With more teachers to relate to and connect with, the students would get a better follow-up and the parents would also have more connection points and, as a result, be better informed about their kid’s progress and development.

Lastly, this rearrangement of classes would — if done correctly — greatly improve the chances for students to gain the knowledge requisite for a high degree of success in high school and beyond -> basically the whole point of elementary school.

Final note:

Personally, I believe the entire concept of classes is outdated and that they shouldn’t exist at all. Rather, the students should follow a progress model — something similar to what you find in online education today. Applying gamification and “active learning” to the curriculum has shown great results and is a far better way of assessing and engaging students than grades and “preaching” teachers. This model also resembles that of Elon Musks new found school, Ad Astra, which he started as a reaction to the current education model, and will probably yield much higher results. Unfortunately, it is not realistic to assume that such dramatic changes will happen within education anytime soon. Rather, smaller incremental changes are far more likely. Hence, we should focus on small and easily implemented alterations with potentially high impact. The important thing is to start this process as opposed to continuing the path of the past century.

To “follow-up” on the Trump metaphorical analogy at the beginning of this post…MAKE EDUCATION GREAT AGAIN!

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