Or have “We don’t need no education” become the new global anthem...
[NTUSU Tribune - Unthemed - October 2010]
Education Reform is an issue widely used as political propaganda. Recent propaganda with regard to education reform largely deals with the technological upgrade of our current education system. The introduction of technology in some classrooms is hailed as a major achievement; education is now keeping up with the times. Or is it?
There was a time when information was not as easily and widely available. In such a scenario, there was value in memorizing information needed frequently. Hence, education rationally involved some amount of memorization. The world now, however, is entirely different. Information of any and every kind is a few button presses away for a large percentage of the world’s population. With the accelerating spread of technology to third-world societies, many envision a day when the whole world will have such easy access to information. In a world where searching for information and correctly recalling memorized information takes approximately the same amount of time, memorization of information loses its value.
Easy information access implies a shift in value from recalling information to efficiently locating the required information and processing it. This is exactly what our education does not teach us to do. A basic task like searching for information efficiently is completely overlooked. In the sea of information that is the internet, finding authentic and relevant information is not an easy task. There are ways and there are sources to accomplish a search efficiently and accurately; why that is not a part of our education, frankly entirely eludes me. After required information is located there is the process of utilising the information to attain a particular end result. Again, a very crucial skill and yet again a skill we are assumed to either be born with or pick up on our own!
While prophecies about the complete absence of paper books may be unlikely, those regarding all books being available digitally are very likely to materialise. With endeavours such as Google Books doing the rounds, it is very likely that soon enough all our information could be available digitally. And to imagine that a resource like this would lack the people to exploit it simply because our education did not cater for it is a pity.
Education and Education Reform in today’s world need to be rethought. The function of education has drastically changed with the coming of Web2.0. Sharing information has never been this easy. Yet ascertaining the authenticity of information that is shared has never been harder. If the goal of education is indeed to empower people then it should take into account the skills it needs to impart to achieve that empowerment.
Education will have to evolve with society or it will lose its value-add feature that we pay dearly for. In the future, education will either be based on an entirely different concept or it will be extremely affordable due to a lack of demand. Whichever route it eventually takes, the history of education two decades later will make for a truly interesting story.
