It is no small fact that a few of the education systems we have, at least this side of the pond, are rather lovely but not as lovely as they should be, so to speak. It depends on a number of factors, to be honest. We have the entire background philosophy to the structure of our societies, we have our environment, our people, the number of people, and the entire sustainability of our economy, our society, and our future generation ... That being said, we occasionally run into things about our education system we feel we could improve. I may as well expand upon my answer later when I may collect my thoughts, but here is one of the many problems I see with our education system in Canada. An ... excessive one-size-fits-all approach. This is not endemic to the Canadian system, though the extreme standardization is something that does not necessarily sit well with me when, throughout the elementary and high school systems, there seems to be a continued focus on rote learning (though not as much as Asia) without actual application. Not to mention the fact that everything seems to be centered around visual learning when we have a diverse range of people who learn better through auditory and kinetic methods. Although standardization is necessary with education to some degree, students learn better when things can connect to them more on an individual level, as Finland and Denmark teach us. It would also be a dream of mine for English Canada to take French more seriously, and this is from an English Canadian, but the biggest problem with this lies in educational funding. In Ontario, at the very least, education and educational funding seems to be stuck in a flux. For some reference, here is one of the many education indices you can glance through, sourced through the UN Human Development Index project. So I come to this lovely forum to ask you, Discussion section: 1. What are some of your qualms with your country's education system? None of them are perfect, mind you, so do not hesitate to say anything that comes to mind from personal experience. 2. How do you think this could be improved?
I have qualms with teacher X and Y rather than with the system at large. I' m sure it' s perfectible but in the end, whatever system you dish out, the teachers can either make it fly or make it sink, it' s really up to them. That being said, I remember reading something JK Rowling allegedly answered to a question from one of her readers : why would Dumbledore allow such a ******bag as Snape to teach at Hogwarts ? Her answer was that he knows having to deal with a horrible teacher is a lesson in and of itself. I' m rather curious as to how well the Montessori education is doing. Looks cool on paper, but even if it is indeed better than school as I know it we' d have to implement it progressively. Trouble is reforming education in any shape or form is almost Mission : Impossible in my country, for various reasons I' m not gonna list here.
I have many problems with the British education system. Now, my mum works in education so I hear her moans about Michael Gove a lot (he's the education minister in the UK) and I really don't like him. I don't just not him because of what my mother has said but because of the changes he is trying to make to our education system. Yes, it is flawed, I know it is but the changes that he proposes are just terrible. Firstly, there is this thing called the "English bacc" and the basis of it was to replace GCSE's (courses taken between the ages of 14-16 usually) and everyone had to do english, maths and the sciences and chose 5 other subjects (I think) and had to pass ALL of them in order to get this achievement. The reason this annoys me so much is because you have to do english, maths and the sciences and I can name so many people just in my school who would never pass one of them even if they spent all their time on that one subject but that doesn't mean they are stupid or not worth employing especially in a job that doesn't even require those subjects. I understand the importance of maths/english/science but not everyone is suited to them and not everyone wants a job in that department. So basically, if someone just couldn't do maths (I use this because I think you need a very specific mind set to understand the harder bits of it to pass it) but were exceptional at all other subjects then they wouldn't get the qualification, someone should not be held back for that. Another thing is our arrogance! Sure we get taught languages in school but not to a huge extent, I feel like England just expects all other countries to learn english and be fine with that but I really wish I had a better language education- like learning french at a really early age so I could be fluent in it and not have to rely on other people knowing english. Sure I did GCSE German but I am no where near fluent or even that good at speaking it, I am not great at getting around in Germany or Austria when I went, I only really remember the basics that I was taught which doesn't help much. Furthermore, ISA's! Now this is very specific because they are a practical science exam for the exam board AQA. I had to do 5 in my last 2 years of school and each one was ghastly. The basis is, you do a practical (e.g. a titration in chemistry) and reocrd the results in a specific way and this is marked out of 12 and those marks come from very specific areas like all the results are within 0.5 of the standardised results the board give us which then means you don't get the mark if your acids were an incorrect concentration or something. Anyway, that isn't too bad as normally everything is fine, it's the fact that it is treated like an exam but can be done at any time within a few select months and the teacher has access to the paper and the answers and can give them to you if they chose to and everyone would get full marks! Now I heard of a lot of schools that did this but my school did not so we worked incredibly hard to get good marks. The other thing is, because the board is aware that cheating is possible they make the grade boundaries extremely high so for people who didn't cheat it is basically impossible to get anything good. Most people got U's (the lowest score) most of the time. By high boundaries I mean (out of 50) 49 A*, 47 A, 45 B, 43 C, 41 D, 39 E and anything less than 39/50 is a fail. It's just pointless and completely corrupt and should just be scrapped. This may also be quite specific but closed book english exams. This is basically a normal english exam but you don't get a copy of the book you are studying so you have to spend so much time learning quotes when you should be learning technique and the exam is more of a measure of memory as opposed to proper english skill. I have a friend who has real problems remembering stuff off by heart due to brain deformities (he's not stupid, he's really clever and good at what he does) but he fears the exam so much and may fail it just because he can't remember stuff that well. I do have so many qualms with the education system and I have more but can't remember them right now.
