Attention Teachers and School Administrators!
Looking at the present and future state of education today, there is a ubiquity of e-learning and mobile learning devices. The Massive Open Online Courses(MOOC’s), Social Media Applications, and AI-enabled smart devices, such as Alexa, Siri, Cortana, Google assistant, etc. can answer your questions with accuracy. Many other educational robots are out there.
Thus, it becomes evident that compelling kids or students to memorize things is waste of time and mentally exhausting. Those who know me when I was a young student know I have a photographic memory. I can memorize a whole handout and reproduce it word for word during exams. Now I have come to realize that education has gone beyond the cognitive dimension of Bloom’s taxonomy to emphasize problem-solving skills and competencies. I passed my exams and earned academic awards in those years, yet, realized as I grew up that I had little or no knowledge in solving complex problems and tasks that come up daily. Having personally experienced the tremendous changes in education necessitated by technological innovations, I was motivated to write this article.
Getting students to only memorize definitions and concepts and reproduce them during exams is a very weak pedagogical approach. I do not object to memorization. Memorizing is definitely a part of learning. What I disagree with is “rote memorization” which I strongly believe should give way to teaching students by an explanation of theoretical concepts and definitions to their level of understanding in order to help them understand and construct their own meaning. Memorized ideas and concepts often fade with time. The brain can retain them as long as the exam stimulates them, but after exams, when there is no mental stimulation, they all fade away.
A greater amount of time should be spent in the practical application of these theoretical concepts to enable the students to develop higher-level problem-solving skills and competencies. The focus of education in the 21st century is on helping the learner develop a sense of autonomy and agency in learning. They should be taught to be empathic, creative, to communicate their ideas, and how to collaborate with others in solving problems.
Teachers should acquire more technological skills to leverage technological affordances to boost their pedagogical and content knowledge. Teachers should foster an atmosphere of socialization and collaboration with the students by helping them develop the courage to ask questions in class. The old fashion way of shouting “shame” on a student who fails a question in the classroom is psychologically stifling, abusive, and builds negative self-esteem in the child. Such open and malicious disapproval does not encourage the child to develop a strong mental attitude to validate their knowledge and communicate it. This should be avoided completely and any teacher who indulges in it should be made aware that this is not permissible. Teachers should be disposed to diagnose students’ misconceptions to better direct and facilitate learning.
Problem-solving skills should be developed very early in the child’s learning experience. I recall a story of a child who was asked, 5 minus 3 and he couldn’t answer it fast but when asked 5 oranges minus 2 oranges he quickly answered 3 oranges. This story reminds us of the importance of relating learning to concrete experiences that resonate with the child. Teachers should devise ways to teach abstract mathematical and theoretical concepts that help the learners understand the concepts in practice and to develop skills to solve problems arising in their daily experience.
Parents, your child may be doing well in math in school, but you may be surprised the day you ask him to give change to a buyer in your shop and he will not be able to do it. Then you will know that theory should be related to practice. Bring your children to your shop, if you have one. Watch them exchange money with buyers and judge how competent they are. Give them tasks to solve and engage them in contributing to problem-solving situations that arise in the family. Don’t simply discredit them as children.
This is just a heartfelt appeal. We need to change things now before it’s too late. The western world is moving fast. We are unfortunately and awkwardly backward. ##Wake up! Nigeria
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