Education Matters

Nelson Mandela said, “Education is the most powerful weapon we can use to change the world” and I absolutely agree with him. It is my firm conviction that each person, who wants to make the grade, grasps the importance of education. It is common knowledge that if you want to get education, you have to attend an educational establishment. However, what is the aim of modern education and how teachers can enhance children’s thirst for knowledge?

Opinions are divided… For the great majority of people from the old school children should hit the books and cram boring set texts in order to become teacher’s pets and get full marks. The teacher’s aim of the lesson is only to give the pupils a rough idea of the subject. The other side of the coin is that there are people who keep up with time and have different train of thought. For example: it was a great pleasure for me to listen to Dr Sugata Mitra and Sir Ken Robinson who gave TED talks.

I couldn’t agree more with Dr Sugata Mitra that a lot of schools are obsolete and produce the people who must be identical to each other.

In my opinion, teachers make an unforgivable mistake, when they teach children what to think but not how to think. I also like his idea about children and the Hole in the Wall. Unfortunately, there are a lot of gifted children in the Third World countries who haven’t access to education. To my mind, such streetside computers may help them to acquire knowledge easier. Furthermore, the Granny Cloud may also be very useful because of self-organization of the educational process.

I also bear in mind the lecture of Sir Ken Robinson. It’s true that teachers are the lifeblood of the success of schools. However, being a teacher is a natural talent because this person should demonstrate an ability to cover a lot of ground in a 45-minute lesson. Anyway, children’s concentration in class may wander. That’s why, I take the view that it is also important to prepare a lesson full of absorbing and cognitive material in order to light the spark of curiosity in pupils and keep their attention.

By and large, schools play an important role in educational process and we cannot put an equality sign between the human teachers and computers. It is said, “Practice makes perfect” and there is always room for improvement.