In most countries in the world schooling is mandatory until the age of 18. With some degree people can drop out at 16 with a sort of work and school combination. That school is mandatory in my opinion is a good concept. But what we are thought is no longer of this age.
I know this will sound blunt and dull but please read everything before judging. But schooling only proves one thing these days. It proves that at a specific point in time you could memorize something. In a day and age where people can flick a few buttons and get the same information I find it dull. Why do students need to memorize the birth day of some king in some country? Why do students need to know the composition of the solar system?
You can tell me that those are not deciding factors in graduating. And I agree. But the fact remains that if you don’t imprint your brain with those useless facts you will not get the best degree possible. You will not be an A student but most likely become a C student or less. And with that your chance of getting in a top school diminish. Not because you are not smart but because you did not remember useless facts.
In a day where companies are innovating and trying to find thinkers. Or problem solvers for those few unique issues they encounter, we as a species are grading our children on the amount they can memorize. Not if they are thinking differently or thinking out side of the box. Can they problem solve beyond our known books. The only way we grade people pre university is by they amount they can memorize.
Schools these days are stuck in the 60’s with old and boring lecture material that you can find on google. Not that it is wrong to teach young people these things. But why grade them on it? Let people evolve into something they want to be.
Schooling is fixated on combining course x and y because that is the curriculum. But for example in Belgium every education has some mandatory language classes (Dutch, French, English, (German)). While this is good if you take a language based education. But why does a welder need French? Why does a programmer needs Dutch? Yet if you fail one of those classes you can do the year again? Is that not wrong? I can understand that if you want to become a programmer you need to understand programming but the rest should be educational but not graded upon.
For example in my coarse I am taking to becoming a programmer I have a coarse on networking. And I find it interesting but should I be graded on my knowledge of networking. Should that be a deciding factor if I succeed or not in the coarse? It is interesting to get a grasp on this but if I want to know a subnet I just google for a subnet calculator and my problem is solved. But no, in the coarse we need to calculate subnets by hand? We need calculate things when we can use our programming to do it for us?
The schooling system should stop forcing people to do these things. It should force people to think outside the box and expand their minds beyond the known curriculum. Force people to become less dependant on books and more innovating young adults.
