Tuesday 28 October 2008

To teach or not to teach

Here is some talk on a TED conference about some important flaws in educational systems around the world.
What I can agree is that universities are very good at preparing students to be a future academic teachers (just look at me, it's temporary, for my PhD only, but still - I'm doin' it). It was a nice observation, anyway, I didn't think of it before. Also, most students fear doing an error or get a bad mark and it really leads to many abnormal situations. For example - during my studies we had usually some coding projects. I was well known of inventing very weird and risky topics and my friends usually were afraid of cooperating with me. They were usually choosing something safe, something on a teacher list, something well-known for them, they were good at, something that will give them a best mark. And as you see, there is a contradiction here! You should go to school to learn something new, right? And they were simply avoiding exploring new, interesting topics this way. Educational system was not rewarding learning new things, not mentioning, exploring new, innovative topics. Students just had to pick the best strategy to... survive and get a degree. That leads to many compromises.
Educational system rewards good marks and loyalty to teachers. If you have a good marks, you also have more freedom to choose your speciality and get scholarship. So you better don't tell your teacher he is wrong or try to dispute with him. It will be not good for you. Also don't try to think on your own - you will just confuse yourself during an exam and find out that solving those exam takes you too much time, since you will be "wasting" your time for thinking, instead of using automatically well-trained skills of solving well-known problems.

In my personal opinion it is all turned around. Ideally teachers should only assist students in learning, provide bibliography, expertise, hints. Students should be aware why they want to learn and improve themselves at university by asking for assistance. To motivate students there should be some obligations - student, individually, should decide after consultation with teacher about his topics he will learn (by studying, practicing, making a project etc..). After the obligation is filled, the work could be measured by several factors (how much knowledge/skills the student gained after the assignment, how creative he was, etc..). And what is also important - while making decision upon next obligation, all previous should be carefully checked, so the next one will be something new to student. At a first glance it complicates educational system a bit, but I believe with a proper management it could be quite efficient - an extension to existing computer databases could be made. There should be not much problem to manage a list of obligations/topics for every student, additionally to standard list of courses/assignments.
I really think universities should be more flexible (individual course program is not enough!) and concentrate much more on an individual teaching.