5 Consequences of Traditional Education

By Alifia Afflatus

Excluding a few countries, most countries in the world apply traditional education system in their state schools, even private schools. If you’re familiar with these conditions: standardized test being targeted as the main thing to work on at school, homework and tests are frequently conducted, teacher-centered class, less-communicative learning process, and 3R (reading, ‘riting’, ‘ritmethic) being the only indication of student’s success – you can then define what traditional education stands for (or peek at Wikipedia's brief article).

In my country, Indonesia, students will end the class in afternoon. The exact hours are variable, but let’s say 3 or 4 pm for high school students. My little cousin Althaf, who’s on second grade, finishes school on around 12. And his brother – Arfan – who is now in kindergarten, goes home several minutes before 11, he is five years old. Generally, Indonesian schools start around 7 or 8. Before I took online school education, I experienced a state primary school where we finished class on 3, let alone the additional course my mom enrolled me in, towards the national exam. And it sucks.

To find secondary schoolers in Indonesia taking additional course (many of them get these done on 8 at evening!) is not rare at all. Have you ever wonder how these parents or teachers think that the classes they take at school are inadequate? And is that normal?

These style of thinking emerged after a system, officialized by the national authorities, and surprisingly initiated by businessmen. Before I’m investigating about the errors of this system, its history, and how it began messing up education throughout the world, let’s do a quick reflection about what can possibly be the consequences if the ongoing traditional education was still utilized.

1)      Students will lose their learning enthusiasm

 

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If you meet a student who passionately goes to traditional school, taking courses in the name of reaching their future dreams – without burden or additional notion; “I hate this, but I have to do this” – s/he’s probably growing their own proactivity throughout the condition.

But what about the opposite of this kind of figure? Be honest, you might meet them a lot. Your cousin, nephew or acquaintance might be one of them.

While grading is the first step of successful indicated how-to, you’re not encouraged to explore interesting things or values. One of unwritten alert is, “keep in mind, you’re going to school so you’ll be able to complete the test!”.

There’s fewer opportunity to discuss – let’s say, about a complex cultural condition in Indonesian Dutch-colonial era on 1930’s, how does artificial intelligence work, why women were opressed in the brilliant Ancient Greek era, or why is the phenomenon of made-up languages being a trend in the digital era? If they are emphasized that going to school is to learn ‘what teachers ask them’ instead of ‘what they want and need to learn’, why should there be a reason to feel enthusiast about learning?

Take a look at how SAT has induced stress on students, in an essay reported by Sally Weale in The Guardian. 

2)    Social grading stigma that imprisons these poor kids

Nowadays, even 2R’s have been losing its privilege to make a student peacefully shines on the academic podium. In some countries like Indonesia, reading and ‘riting are no longer as important as ‘ritmethic.

The grading stigma shaped in social tradition imprisons many kids – who unfortunately don’t know how to proactively empower themselves in the disturbing system (or they don’t know where to start) – has made many kids labeling themselves stupid and useless just because they’re good at art instead of calculation.

I’m arguably valuing Einstein’s popular satire about a fish judged by its ability to climb a tree. If the only thing to value a student is by standardized test like ACT, SAT, and so on – lots of students will believe themselves stupid.

3)      You (educator) lose chance of giving them more precious values

I read this analogy in Alfie Kohn’s book titled The School Our Children Deserve, where kids are taken in a bus trip to traveling sites. They’re only given horribly short chance to take a look at the sites instead of exploring, let’s say until reaching even its chimney. Without independent research and wander, these kids won’t have a chance to know more about the sites.

At common schools, students are provided text books containing hundreds of superficial sub-materials. For instance, you only read about an empire – in a history book – about its chronicle, popular kings, and two or three sentences about the battles and events. You won’t be taught about people’s daily lives, how far their civilization was, what they wore, how this history affected our socioculture in 21st century, and what if we’re outwardly in the empire’s bloodline.

Why? Because the curriculum is only composed to fulfill your brain with facts to answer the test questions.

The other things forgotten are sets of values outside academic subjects. Personal leadership and independence, interpersonal communication, life principles, and the crucial stuff we people need to have ‘being a person’. If the purpose of education is to achieve straight A’s, we can make sure that little do teachers have time to teach these principles and values.

4)      Rivalry in fragmentation

Different methods are applied to fragment diverse kids into categories. Some schools use ranking system. Meanwhile the other ban this system, they divide class based on cognitive level. Whether directly or not, it teaches students to fragment themselves also, and build rivalry between the social process.

In fact, there is a healthy way of valuing someone’s progress in life: building integration. In a business company or governance structure, you won’t find everyone has the same role and specialization. Applying this system at school would do better and worth it.

In place of labeling kids with ‘The Smart’ or ‘The Average’, why not conducting team work, group learning or class panel discussion to offer everyone equal chance to shine? Integration motivates students to work together, combine their diverse strength, understanding weakness, and showing better and bigger results that little possibly achieved individually.

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Not limited to the students, it should also be applied to the subjects. On the contrary of subject separation, different art and sciences are integrated into a collective, applicable and interactive concept.

Visualize this condition and you’ll find they won’t only learn and discuss new knowledgeable topics, but also sow their principles and grow interpersonal skills.

5)      Underdeveloped critical thinking skill

If a class generates a routine of teaching facts, memorizing, and recalling through tests – brains are not nurtured to think. They strictly have the skill to memorize, engulf those facts without the ability to relate the usage in life.

When the system keeps going on, teachers are basically yielding human with brain full of facts, but no skill to develop independent and critical thinking. Of course, facts are important, believing a fact instead of hoax, measures how far a brain has reached its better thinking skill to sever between the truth and the untruth. 

But how does it be beneficial when the fact-memorizer can’t make these facts alive by relating and deeply understanding the concept to live a meaningful life of self-development, interpersonal contribution, and investigating phenomenons which sound wrong? []