Schools Must Prepare Us for the Future

It is almost universally agreed that education is a very important, but we are not particularly sure what we really want from it. The world’s largest commitment to there being good schools ironically has not been matched to what they are for. The environment, classes, rules, and policies all have an impact on the schools outlook.

Recent studies at the University of Salford Manchester, collected from 751 students across a variety of learning environments shows how a classroom design can alter a students learning progress. The results were clear and captivating. The classroom environment including, organization, lights, and even color on the walls “could affect [the students] learning process by as much as the average improvement across one year.” Classrooms should be large, with windows, open spaces, colorful, organized, contain lights, quieter places to study, and open places for breaks that include socialization. It is becoming noticeable and clear that the design of the environment is impacting student experience and learning.

I think that school curriculums are teaching us like Robots, giving us artificial knowledge. What are schools doing to prepare us and future generations for the future? In most faculties you visit in 2019, you will see teachers teaching the precise same subjects that they taught in 1918: reading, writing, math, science, history, and foriegn languages. I mean nearly all debates going on now are focussed on how teachers teach, but nothing about what they teach. Digital skills, time management, creative thinking, problem solving, self care, and collaboration are in increasing need every single year yet are not talked about, or taught in schools. Topics we are learning today will no longer be needed in future years: handwriting is progressively outdated, arithmetic is no longer done by hand, and computers/the internet has replaced the need to memorize little and basic facts. Society is failing to prepare the next generation for the future already. Schools must start teaching the curriculum of the future, not the past.

Universal claims it is getting students ready for the future, but how is that possible if were learning everything the past has. The world around us has changed, yet schools are still the same. A school’s goals should only be thought of only after students know and understand the difficulties of adult life. If school is going to claim to prepare students for the future, we must understand what the training is for. What difficulties and challenges do we need to be equipped to deal with? 

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