On the western world a good amount of people have a sour feel when it comes to talk about the education system although most people agree that education is the base for a working society. This has a lot to do with the fact that our current education system doesn't work on the modernized world most of us live in. The current system only evaluates how good are you at the system instead of teaching you the basic skills you will need in life.
The figure of a lecturing teacher and a quiet classroom was developed during the second industrial revolution, and it was supposed to create efficient factory workers as that was the main job people would get. This is the reason why our education is based around following instructions since that is what factory workers did back then.
But we are long past that age, most work activities nowadays are not based around following instructions but rather decision making, team work, innovation, and creativity. Skills that are not only not encouraged on schools but punished as well.
This punishment of creativity has corrupt some of the most common assignments teachers do. The base idea of research papers is basically corrupted, research is born from curiosity and creativity, but they rather assign you the subject they think is appropriate rather than letting you find for yourself killing the creative process and therefore any native interest on the subject . Research papers are supposed to teach you how to "research" , but we don't do research as we used to, if I want to know something I will go into YouTube and start from there, the problem is that the system doesn't see that as legitimate research, as if on your working life you will have to go to the nearest library every time you don't know something.
We want to encourage team work, by giving team assignments what we seem to miss is the fact that teamwork is not created from one day to another. The best teamwork comes from a healthy relation between coworkers, that starts with a conversation, but conversations are not encouraged in schools as most teachers want a quiet classroom they can lecture to. You might argue that most class conversations are not about class subjects themselves, but this is because lecturing doesn't make any subject interesting. If we start making class subjects interesting rather than mandatory, we can start having conversations about them that in time will lead to a better ability to socialice and work with a team.
The ability to innovate is rather odd to evaluate as everyone has their own way to go around it, the most important thing is to not punish innovation and encourage it. Having flexible rules or requirements on assignments can lead to innovative ways to go around it. If a student comes up with a different way to go about something, as long as the end result is correct we should congratulate them rather than punish. Many Math teachers are guilty of this, when the assigned problem is not resolved their way (or the way they had intended) you don't get the full grade or points, but math problems are designed to challenge our minds to find the answer not to follow a set path, again corrupting the base idea from which they were created.
The current school system is struggling in our modernized world, and it will only get worse as time goes on. Online courses are already a mainstream thing, where students can chose the time and teacher style that works best for them, it doesn't have title just yet but it might on the soon to come future, rendering in the process many of today's practices useless. If we go a bit further into the future we have Ai taking many jobs, including education, and Ai can give a fully personalized education to every student in the world, and the more people use it the better it will become this one is a question on when will this happen. Because of their struggle the system is trying to fight back , stigmatizing things like "online sources" or "online teachers" even "online sources", but they should know many have tried to fight technology and that many have lost. Schools need to embrace change and technology, encourage skills useful in today's world rather than valuing following instructions and memorizing.
We can start by changing the year system, the only place in society where we are grouped by age is school, which is a very naive thing to do, as you can't expect every 10 year old to have the same skill set and capabilities. we should evaluate them based on their skills, and let them work with people of the same "level" no matter their age mix them around on some classes so they understand and get used to the idea of teammates being better at different things.
Let them use their curiosity and teach them how to channel it. How to differentiate a good source from a bad one is a good start, but don't tell them which one is which as they need to find out for themselves. This style of self-learning is proven to be better for retaining information. Teach them to look at sources from sources, as this can only help get a more clean idea of any subject. We should also encourage different ideas and points of view so we teach them to develop their own. This will in time teach them what subjects they prefer.
Don't split learning from enjoyment. Learning is a very enjoyable experience as long as the subject is interesting for the person learning it. Let native learning be a thing, let people choose the subjects they want to learn. Some might be mandatory but if they are mandatory make them feel useful, as most will be fine with it if they think they can find some use to it. Encourage conversation and discussion, teach people that their ideas don't define them, and that ideas are flexible. Teach them to separate who they are from what they think.
Most important of all we need to stop thinking that just because something has always been done one way that it is correct. We don't do basically anything as we used to 50 years ago, and this system was created well over 100 years ago. Just because something worked for you doesn't mean it will work today. Embrace change or it will overrun you over time.