I know it's rather long. I will try to write up a shorter summary for a future blog entry.
Please be kind and provide feedback.
The problem of imported educational systems
in
(edited, first draft)
1 Introduction
1.1 Abstract
In this article, I argue that most of the educational system in
1.2 Motivation
“You must start right from the beginning, letting your buildings grow from the daily lives of the people who will live in them, shaping the houses to the measure of the people’s songs, weaving the patterns of a village as if on the village looms, mindful of the trees and the crops that will grow there, respectful to the skyline and humble before the seasons. There must be neither faked tradition nor faked modernity, but an architecture that will be the visible and permanent expression of the character of a community. But this would mean nothing less than a whole new architecture.”
Hassan Fathy
“Architecture for the poor” p.p. 45
This article desires the same, but for education.
In the beginning of the 20th century, most, if not all, Arab & Muslim countries faced the problem of populace illiteracy[1]. Since then, many of these countries have done a great job in providing public education and raising the knowledge levels within the people[2]. These educational systems put in place, have been catching up with the modern technology of the world. Indeed, some individuals raised through these systems were able to join high-standing intellectual circles and participate in the advancement of the world[3].
Today, however,
2 Understanding the Problem
2.1 Education as part of the society
All human communities, big or small, aim to provide its members with the needs of life[4]. However, as societies evolve and grow through time, they develop systems and institutions to support their growth and to participate in the process of expansion[5]. While primitive tribes require each individual to take part in the basic needs of life like food collection, fighting, and producing goods, larger societies organize their members in specialized areas, like agriculture, military, and industry, to increase efficiency and thus allow further expansion.
Each specialized area is made of institutions, like schools and universities, and a governing system, like the educational system. For a second example take the military. The infantry, the air force and the navy constitute the institutions, and the overall system is the offense-defense power of the country.
The main condition for advancing a society is to maintain the synergy between its different sectors[6]. A man would not agree to spend all his day working in a farm if he cannot count on another making and selling him some clothes to wear. In addition to covering the main aspects of life, the different sectors should work in harmony and feed into each other constructively. For example, farming cotton, in the agriculture system, feeds into the clothes manufacturing, in the industry system. As societies expand, the relationships between the systems grow deeper and more interrelated.
If we are to choose the most connected system, in terms of its dependencies to and from the other systems, it has to be education. All the other systems depend on education to provide the necessary workforce, and to advance the efficiency and state of technology used in each. On the other hand, the components of the educational system are highly dependent on the needs of the other systems. If the goal of education is to provide workers and advance the other sectors, it obviously follows that education has to adapt to the needs of the other sectors. If we allow a society to grow on its own, we’ll notice how the educational system is deeply rooted in the society, just like the roots of a tree hold fast to the ground around it.
2.2 Educational Systems through lineage of knowledge
Education is the most explicit form of passing the society’s collective knowledge across generations. This knowledge is much more than dry facts and abstract information. It incorporates generations’ worth of experience in how these facts evolved and came to be known. It includes a rich history of the people who discovered them and their stories. It contains the morals in which these facts should be used. In other words, collective knowledge is the society’s memory through time.
Such knowledge can only be transferred by human interaction within the boundaries of the society. For example, studying
Chains of teacher-student relationships form lineage of knowledge. These lines, in addition to transferring the basic knowledge between generations, they also insure compatibility with the other society’s systems. Teachers teach their students how to make their knowledge relevant to the surrounding sectors in society, because they know, through the lineage of knowledge, how discoveries were made and what they served. The purpose of the educational system is indirectly well-taught through the lines of knowledge.
2.3 Colonialism and importing the educational system
Unfortunately, in the past several hundred years, most of the Arab and Muslims countries went through the decline of the
Unfortunately, this phenomenon has continued even after the independence era, and it is still the norm in the present time. Today, new generations are born into the Jordanian society, but they are totally disconnected with almost all their society’s collective knowledge that has evolved and expanded over hundreds, even thousands of years. Even worse, the new imported educational system is so disconnected with the rest of the society’s sectors, to the point they almost do not contribute to one another, and that is not seen as abnormal.
3 Analyzing the Impact
3.1 An incompatible system that has lost its sensors
An educational system that has evolved within the society and grew with its different sectors, such a system would eventually develop its own two-way communication channels: to sense the changes and needs of the society, and then to react and exert the necessary change and development in the society. Healthy educational systems develop very complicated institutions and channels to act as sensors on the society.
For example, in the
In 1969, Minsky and Papert wrote a book called “Perceptrons” that proved that they have great limitations in solving non-linear problems. Within a year, most of the grants money was redirected away from any Neural Networks research. This shows a great example of how the educational system reacted swiftly to the fact that Perceptrons research was inadequate to the society. However, some government grants kept few research projects going for long-term exploration. In 1986, a book titled “Parallel Distributed Processing” was published by McClelland et al, re-introducing a modified version of Neural Networks that overcame the challenges previously presented by Minsky. This new system showed a lot of promise to the industry, and so it became one of the well-funded research areas until today. Many of the new handwriting recognition programs use some form of Neural Networks. This is another clear example of how a healthy educational system has channels to present new ideas to the industry and exert changes to it.
These communication channels between the educational system and the other sectors in society, do not only help the overall growth, but they also act as a continuous reminder to the personnel in the educational system of its main duty. That is twofold, to provide the necessary work force and to help enhance the other sectors in society.
Now let us think about an imported educational system. Theoretically, if a system is copied, these channels should also get copied as is. However, a channel, by definition, is a connection between two points. While one end is connected to the educational system, the other end should connect with some other systems in the society. The imported educational system did not evolve within the society with the other sectors, and thus it does not know where to hook these channels. Without these channels, people running the educational system work independently and they seem to forget the main aim of education. They become a disconnected body that strives to live on its own. And these channels die. They die not because they do not exist, but also because people forget that they should exist.
3.2 Producing unsuitable graduates and researching unneeded technologies
With the communication channels dead, the imported educational system in
While the high unemployment rate in
The disconnected state of the educational system also shows in the areas of research in many of the Jordanian universities. Much of the research done is unrelated to any needs in these societies, but is usually a solution to problems found in the originating countries of the educational system.
3.3 Education for missing reasons and the problem of blind memorization
Another very big consequence of losing the communication channels between the educational system and the rest of society, is that the people working in it forget the main aim of this system. Students ask “Why are we studying this?” The teachers wonder “why are we teaching this?” However, the teachers do recognize the general importance of Education. And thus, they start looking for ways to justify going through the educational system from within the educational system itself. They start coming up with reasons like “We educate for the sake of education.” “You have to study to get high grades in the end of the year.” “You get high grades to get recognized and rewarded with gifts.” “You study to be called an Engineer or a Doctor.”
As education starts justifying itself by itself, measuring the success of students gets harder. A praise-worthy student becomes not the one who can implement his knowledge in society, since that channel is missing. The only way to measure students’ performance becomes the literal reverberation of the studied material. And today, looking at the high school certificates, and even university exams in
Education for the sake of education can be useful sometimes in long-term-return disciplines that are very broad, mainly theoretical sciences and math. On the other hand, it’s disastrous in practical and industry-related fields, like business and management. Looking at the current state of Jordanian graduate students in Western universities, they almost all observe that they are much stronger in theoretical analysis but are much weaker in practical sciences compared to students who went through the western system.
3.4 Great imbalance in specialization and majoring for the wrong reasons
With the vague understanding of the reasons for education, students are deprived from their main tool for choosing their higher education major. That absence gives place to minor reasons, like the socio-economic reputation of careers, as the main criteria for specialization. Unfortunately, this process is self-feeding and grows in cycles. If some students with high grades choose a major, its reputation grows, and thus more high-standing students are inclined to pick that major.[9]
This cycle has taken place in
All top students end up measuring in Medicine or Engineering because of social pressure rather than their own choice. In a study done in 1990 (?), Dr. Fathi Jarwan of University of Jordan, found that during the period 1980 to 1990, 80% (?) of the top ten high school certificate performers in Jordan are not happy in their careers, and would definitely choose a different path if they go back in time. A realization came too late.
With almost all top students going to Medicine and Engineering colleges, it follows that the weaker students end up filling the Management, Humanities and Economics seats. This great imbalance results in overwhelming lack of entrepreneurial sense in the society. All the smart students learn how to be excellent employees, and the weaker ones are supposed to impress them, rally them, and lead them as managers. The first step, impressing the engineers, usually fails and the whole process falls. Sciences that are supposed to diagnose these social problems and to come up with creative solutions, these sciences receive the least attention from the educational system, and thus end up not performing their job. And the problem spirals deeper with time.
3.5 Two fields that seem to be less affected
3.6 The situation: stalemate
As the educational system communication channels fade away, the other sectors also lose track of these channels and they become indifferent to the changes in education. This kills off any mechanism of incorporating educational system recommendations in these sectors, thus making the future change even harder. For example, researchers who see the effect of industry-research feedback cycle in the west, usually blame the industries in
Change is not going to come “eventually.” Calculated and brave steps need to be taken.
4 Proposed Solutions
We must start right from the beginning, letting our education grow from the daily lives of the people who will go through it, shaping the institutions to the measure of the people’s works, weaving the patterns of a university as if on the society looms, mindful of the shops and the factories that will grow there, respectful to the moral values and humble before the heritage. There must be neither faked tradition nor faked modernity, but an educational system that will be the visible and permanent expression of the character of a community. But this would mean nothing less than a whole new system… If I may borrow the words of Hassan Fathy…
4.1 Admit the problem and analyze the situation LOCALLY
If I can only deliver one message from this article, it’s that one-size-fits-all does not work with Education. Furthermore, not just Education, but it does not work for all core systems in the society. The gravest mistake is to try to look for the solution in the “advanced countries” or ask the “foreign experts.” There is no standard solution to this problem. The most able people to solve the problem of education in a country are those who live in it. Our best experts are us, not just that, but we are even the only ones who can help ourselves.
Using foreign minds to solve core local problems is doomed to fail. One of the most famous manifestations of this statement is what happened between
After admitting to the problem, and fully realizing that we are the ones who have to figure it out and solve it, we should hire local creative minds and let them study the problem to its details. The effort should be directed towards understanding the intricate characteristics of the local society and finding its areas of strength and weakness. The extent and nature of the problems should be well defined and analyzed.
No assumptions should be left unquestioned. Statements like “it has always been this way” or “the whole world does it this way” should never be used. Basic practices should be thought over and over, like “why do we need 12 years of elementary and secondary education?” “Why do we admit students to school only at age 6?” “Why university departments are divided this way?” “Why do students advance through classes by age instead of speed of learning?” Remember that many of the norms today were not so in the original educational institutions that evolved in the Muslim world. For example, students were admitted to the “Kuttab” as soon as their parents sent them and they did not disturb the teachers. Students advanced based on their speed in learning reading and writing and memorizing Quran. The student-teacher relationship was very close and broad, and beyond mere facts, it covered practice, morals and social understanding.
Before rushing to giving recommendations and proposing solutions, the results of the problem analysis should be circulated. A solution plan should be advised by involving people from all the different sectors of society, not just to get their advice, but also to build commitment. This plan should be flexible to react to unexpected outcomes, in the same time it should be firm since traditional societies, by nature, tend to resist social change, especially on such large-scale. Once the plan is ready, its purpose should be widely circulated amongst people, and it should be carried out in full scale with support from many of the society’s powers.
4.2 Refocus the purpose of education on society’s needs
As the misalignment between education and society is analyzed, sectors like industry will recognize many areas of research that will seem embarrassingly simple or backward. For example, one of the most relevant industrial engineering challenges might be “optimizing work in Shawerma and Falafel shops.” An industrial engineer learning how to optimize big factories might find such an “area of research” rather demeaning and unworthy. Such feelings should be overcome. The heavenly towers of advanced societies are built one block at a time.
While the overall change needed is general to the society, universities today can take many steps to bring this change closer:
1- Industrial advisories: Universities can form advisory boards from the industry to help steer its direction. Such relationship should also create a degree of commitment in the industry to watch research results more closely.
2- Focus on local research problems: Researchers in the universities can be required to keep about 80% of their research areas relevant to local society. Note that it’s important to keep in mind that we will always be part of the world and that generic-world-problems should also get their share.
3- Reverse Balance Majors: Since it will take relatively long time to teach students how to choose the right majors, more emphasis should be put on diversifying popular curricula like Engineering. This is somewhat similar to double-majoring, where students get the engineering title for social pressure, in the same time they get to study what they like and can be creative in.
4- Entrepreneurial & Economic emphasis: Creating companies and businesses requires a certain degree of intelligence, creativity, initiative, and management. Encouraging students from all majors, especially engineering, to take more administration and economics courses would help the overall change spirit and would eventually create more companies and job openings in society. This can translate to requiring engineering students to take more business and enterprise classes, a trend which is already taking place even in Western education – mainly because of the historic narrow focus of Engineering curricula.[12]
5- Discouraging literal memorization: While memorization is a useful skill in education, using it as the sole measure for students causes many unwanted side effects as explained earlier. Dissuading teachers and students from this practice can prove very useful.
4.3 Revive the old systems & institutions, and reconnect
As mentioned earlier, much of the society’s collective knowledge have been lost in the Jordanian culture, mainly because of the cut lineages of knowledge. There is almost complete ignorance today of the achievements and research of historic local thinkers[13]. (?) About 95% of all pre-1900 Arabic and Muslim manuscripts are still not in print yet (i.e. few copies exist in hand writing). While scientific facts in there compositions are likely not to be of added value, they contain much of generations experiences and practical findings that would help consume local resources more efficiently and successfully. They would also enhance the confidence of local students by showing them great examples of their own history and tradition. I am sure that many “first discoverer” claims will be found upon studying works of traditional scientists.
The process of reconnecting the lineages of knowledge would benefit humanities and social sciences much in recognizing the state of ideas that was reached at one point, and it will help drive these ideas forward, providing answers to the society’s moral and organizational questions. For example, take the debate of forming leadership and practicing “shura”.
Using old methods with modern technologies can result in great solutions to some of today’s problems. For example, take the success of the Hassan Fathy, an Egyptian architect who studied the old methods of building houses in
4.4 Benefiting from other society’s advances
While the message of this article stresses independence of thinking, it does not claim that societies cannot benefit from the knowledge and experience of others. On the contrary, the global dialogue plays an important role in enriching thought, diversifying points of view, in addition to speeding up the process of testing hypotheses and drawing conclusions. However, a system or knowledge should not be blindly copied from one society to another, since it might not fit, or even if it did, it won’t be well-integrated.
The main point to make here, is that knowledge from other societies should be brought to the context of the local society before implementing it. The untold assumptions, that might be too common in other societies to the point they are rarely explicitly stated, should be brought up and studied. It is also important to understand how that knowledge fits within its originating society before importing it to the local society – since difference in perception can easily render the knowledge useless or even harmful. As a light example, celebrating the mothers day (?) as the second Sunday in May in some western societies should not be copied blindly to
While the example discussed above is rather light and simple, many abstract social sciences, like Economics, hide so many assumptions behind them, and make so broad of generalizations, to the point they may seem transferable. However, experience and deep examination of such theories show that they treat a society like black box, and many of their grand generalizations are based on experimental data that is usually tied closely to the subject societies. Such sciences with little objective basis should be taken with lots of salt. Most of the time, they should be developed from ground up inside the society.
Some might advance the argument that universities should always focus on teaching advanced sciences in order to urge the industry to follow and develop. I agree with this statement with adding “in small steps.” Making inventions will always mean that universities will be ahead of the industry. However, these steps should be small enough to allow the industry to catch up. If the industry fall way back, the channel will be lost and the two bodies will stop the feedback cycle between them, resulting in the disconnected problem we’ve discussed above. This is just like the persons two legs. Each should alternate taking a step to stay in tune. One should not try to keep walking while the other has stopped, or else that person will seize to be.
5 Conclusion
In conclusion, I would like to reiterate my main points. Societies are made of systems within it, like Education, Economics, Industry, etc. These systems grow only through a feedback cycle between them. They can never be treated as independent bodies, but rather can have a healthy existence only by keeping relations to the other systems. These systems transfer across generations in a society through lineage of knowledge, chains of teacher-student who keep them alive in their full meaning.
Losing much of the lineage of knowledge during the end of the
To solve this problem, big changes in society should take place, and the whole educational system should be re-thought and re-implemented with the local society in mind. This process is not easy and not short, but let us remember that the journey of 1000 miles starts with a step.
5.1 Revisions
Date | Changes |
| Started writing it. Second attempt (previous one grew to be too complicated and long). Wrote the “Defining the problem” section. |
| Wrote the “analyzing the problem” section. Wrote the “the solution” section. Still have the abstract, the conclusion, and parts of the solution to write. Wrote the rest of solution and the conclusion. Abstract to go. |
| Wrote the Abstract and the Motivation & Introduction. |
| Completed many sections. Incorporated Kanji’s comments. |
4-15-2005 | Corrected typos |
5-27-2005 | Edited to narrow the research topic on |
12-2-2005 | Fixed few references |
[1] UNHD report on Arab World, part 1 (TBD get pp)
[2] Same (TBD pp)
[3] Albert Hourani, Arab Thought in the Liberal Age (TBD pp)
[4] A bit too generic. Rephrase and make the purpose of the paragraph more obvious.
[5] Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations (TBD pp)
[6] Same reference (TBD pp)
[7] Look for “Rise of Colleges: Institutions of Learning in Islam and the West” by George Makdisi (or any other works) on Traditional Education and its decline under the late Ottoman period & the colonial era.
[8] History based on AI A Modern Approach 2nd edition 2002 by Russell & Norvig, p.p. 757
[9] Provide material proofs on this point.
[10] Malik bin Nabi, “Economics” – look for other references
[11] I need proof – a study of this. Nabi’s book is very generic in presenting the results
[12] Read about Fredrick Terman, the dean of engineering of Stanford in the 1930s, who had pretty much started the great relationship between Stanford and the industry, which has come back to help Stanford much in recent days.
[13] Need references to support this point.
[14] Get a reference on this work
WOW ... this is such a huge essay. I suggest breaking it up in pieces.
ReplyDeleteI don't think monolithic posts maintain the reader's attention.
Very interesting argument. I skimmed through it and found it very compelling if not absolutely true
Hello Mohammad: Of course, the essay is too long for point by point analysis. However, I would say that I mostly agree with the main premise, which is that linkages between the education system should be approved to make it more relevant. I would disagree with the point that the the education system that we have has supplanted anything. At the end of the Ottoman period, literacy rates were less than 10% for men, and close to 0 for women. Your idealization of the old education system seems to be based on sentimental and probably dogmatic considerations.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, industry is also an imported economic sector with no real roots in Jordanian social history. Most industries are small scale simple conversion setups which use imported equipment which was set up by foreign technicians. This being the case, one can argue that it the lack of "channels" between "industry" and education is to a large extent an expected outcome of how these rudimentary industries were transplanted into society.
One aspect that I wish you had pointed out is related to how government agencies and departments interact with academic institutions and use their expertise and results. There is no historical basis for why channels are missing between the government and universities.
Aside from these points, I would say this is a very good essay. Channels between all sectors of society and education should be encoraged to developed, students should be tought skills that will help them in the market and encouraged to study subject that suit their ineterests.
Great work!
waider,
ReplyDeletemy friend. thanks much for the quick comment. Yes, I agree, the article is long. I hope to summarize it, and possibly break it into blocks for comments.
Khalaf,
ReplyDeleteThanks much for the quick and sizable comment. I appreciate your feedback so much, I want to ask if it's possible to email you the document. It would be great if I can get as much feedback as possible - in the different places where you find suitable. I'll look up your email soon.
I'm not sure why you think I 'idealize' the old educational system. I think that the Ottoman empire, especially towards the end, but a negative force on arabic countries.
However, I do have an affection for any social system that is home grown - because it's directly related and useful for problems at hand. A dollar spent in such a system is a dollar gained (if not more).
Your comment about the development of industry in jordan is very interesting. I didn't think about that.
Regarding government, if the educational system was home-grown, then I would expect better channels to exist between them. Since our educational system is imported and artificial, and to a degree our old governmental system was imported, i'm not very surprised there are no channels.
At the same time, since the educational system is not well built, other systems lose faith in it and kind of ignore it.
thanks much for the nice words.
to all readers:
How do you suggest I develop this essay? or what to do next? would translating it into Arabic would be of any use?
Yes, very long, but there are a lot of valid points. Of course the obvious suggestion is to break the essay into homogeneous segments (i.e., education and community, evolution of education in Jordan, problems with education system in Jordan, specific case studies: engineering?, possible solutions, etc).
ReplyDeleteThe main message to me is that education is (and should be) a natural extension of any society. As such, there has to be seamless linkages between education and the various aspects of society, its institution, and individuals at the social, economic, intellectual, and cultural levels.
The disconnect between institutions of higher learning and the society at large is a very valid observation. However, this phenomenon extends beyond education and affects other areas of Jordanian life. Further more, I think this disconnect is directly related (both as a cause and symptom) to the “identity” crisis plaguing most of the Arab and Islamic world. Until we truly understand (and appreciate) who we are and how we fit in this small globe, we will continue to struggle at school, at work, and in life generally.
By the way, this is by no means a problem exclusive to Jordan or Arab culture. Many countries and cultures are struggling with “the world is flat” era. However, our situation is greatly exacerbated since we were placed under the microscope and the spot light of world opinion vis-à-vis terrorism.
Hey decent post, Took me a while to read and probably lost alot of points just because i couldn't break it down section by section.
ReplyDeleteThen again i didn't wanna be rash and sleep on it.
One critique is that if you scaling it down to Jordan there is not much background and history to build on, not much localized life was there to begin with. Eduation was done in palestine mostly and spread across lebannon, Iraq, and egypt back in the old days. They might be better examples for what you are describing.
ok so the general premise of establishing channels between life and education in order to get the cogs of innovation moving back again . its ambitious and nice to have, but i can't help but feel its like reinventing the wheel rather than making it better.
first up I think the top down solution is flawed when it comes to education, you need to format the student from an early age so he would be adaptable to the change otherwise he will be discouraged and shocked.
So you need to prepare an environment for the early school students to be able to learn, as a sponge rather than a sculpture.
what you mentioned about student teacher relationship is important but in our day and age is not feasible. one way to achieve such a thing would be to assign teachers to blocks rather than grades so that a teacher will get to bond with their students over a period longer than a year, which will achieve a similar effect.
Regarding the memorization it is true but somewhat unavoidable, thats the byproduct of longer than should be curricula and less than capable teachers.
You would need to rehabilitate both , that means to adjust their working condition accordingly since the current workforce in this area is very volatile and frustrated.
before steps 1-4 you need to focus on the teachers again in the university level, currently one thing that is plaguing the system is that they lack actual experience in the field which helps fuel the disconnect from reality!
The teachers got more credit in ur post than they deserve i believe they don't teach for the sake of education they teach for the sake of money period, which makes a good recipe for a corrupt system.
I am not sure i totally agree with the mixed major idea, but i do believe that the current major format is very bloated ! too much useless information
They do need to shorten the course time, and add some flexibilty to the major. Keep the core areas and encourage minors.
(for example 5 yrs of engineering, cut it down to 3.5yrs)
but dont force them into subject matter engineers for example (referring to your example) will like to get more techincal most of the time, and would actually feel inhibited by the business classes unless they have the interest in them.
And Honestly you can't really count on the industry to start it up, since we are not really good at keeping our human capital, actually we excel at exporting that.
SO in conclusion the premise is excellent, but the solution is slightly disconnected.
THNX for the brain tease keep it up
ENJOY
too late at night so pardon my mistakes there :)
ReplyDeleteThanks Ayman for the comment. And sorry for the delayed response.
ReplyDeleteI agree that this problem is by no means limited to Jordan. I think most of the 3rd world is struggling with this problem.
I think the problem at core is 'lack of self-dependence'.
I don't see what you mean by identity crisis. How would identity crisis cause these problems?
Dear No-Angel
ReplyDeleteThanks for the long comment - and yes, I agree, it's long. I should find a way to break the post in order to discuss each main point separately.
The enhancements you mention are all true and needed, but I think unless we know what is our goal, any changes are almost meaningless. Second, I think all the changes we have to make should be born out of our society's need for them. Thus, just sitting in a room and thinking 'how to enhance our educational system' is not really a solution. A person's opinion is just that, until it's substantiated by actual need by the industry or the society. And this is why I say at the end that the change must start with the industry.
I hope to discuss this further with you. Let's see if the breaking up idea actually works.
hey i am waiting for you to break it up :)
ReplyDelete"Thus, just sitting in a room and thinking 'how to enhance our educational system' is not really a solution." that is exactly what is needed here, a panel of different perspective that can come out with a unified view.
The reality is we don't have much of an industry, and the majority of our factories are being sold off to foreign investments because of many reason. So rellying on foreign input for a local issue is ....
Salam NoAngle,
ReplyDeleteI didn't thin you guys were serious about cutting this post up :-). I'll make sure to do that soon then.
as for industry - we can't every forgo their input. What is the goal of education? big part of it is to provide employees to the companies we currently have. Thus, we must know what these companies need in order to custom-make our curricula. (of course, this is not the only factor, social impact, future business, global trends and future sciences, in addition to some scientific research, all of these factors go into the decision)
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteVery good post. Reads like a research proposal. Have you considered doing a masters in humanities? This would be a good start for you:)
ReplyDeleteI suspect you are lacking references from the article because studies do not exist on these topic in the first place. Generally, for any statement to be accepted, it has to be backed up with a reference of some sort.
Anyway, leaving the technicalities aside and taking it more as editorial or opinion piece, I think you touch on very important issues here. Mainly that we tend to copy other people's solution to our own problems even if they do not apply. For example, we buy computers for schools, but they sit in boxes doing nothing.
As you said it is our creative/entrepreneurial side that is lacking, but even more importantly, critical thinking.
All in all a good post. keep it up, and hopefully we will read your thesis on the topic some time soon :D