An Alternative Look At Future Education

Dr. Michael LaitmanOpinion: (Mr. Popov, president of the International Education Association, from ng.ru): The problem with our society is that it doesn’t know in which direction the world is moving. The direction of the future is not being taken into account when building the education system. …The adults are disoriented.

“The main organizers of the pre-school, kindergarten, and school education system were industrial and military leaders. Thus the pre-school-kindergarten-school system was organized to support this idea. It wouldn’t have occurred to anyone to take tiny children away from their parents and put them into daycare; however, the industrial model of those times demanded daycare. And it wouldn’t even occur to today’s parents that this can be done differently. This is why today we’re missing an affordable and developed network of qualified nannies. Children are being put into institutions where they get sick, and then they are all vaccinated. Schools and universities are based on an industrial way of life and are designed to raise a class of disciplined workers.

“Today the world is competing for people who are capable of independent decision-making and action. However, the parents don’t want there to be any changes within the school system. We don’t understand where the world is going. Fifth graders are spending time on the Internet, they’re in a different world, and the schools can’t do anything about it.

“English schools are among those that have the most freedom. Up to 80% of children are studying via the Internet. The whole world is trying to teach children to work independently and find information on their own. After all, children are bored at school, and though they are small it’s still impossible to force them to do something they don’t want or have no interest in doing.

“Teachers are mistaking that there is no alternative to school education. There is an alternative. It’s because of the teachers that the parents today don’t see it. First this alternative is discovered by the children. Some, for example, realize that a better way to study geography is through the Discovery channel. It’s also a lot quicker and more comprehensible.

“The development of the global Internet can lead to a point where everyone could receive knowledge through the Internet. In the U.S., a company called Apple was the first to introduce a school education system through the Internet. There is a growing number of children who are being home schooled and receive a certificate of completion at the end.

“If we wonder what will happen to all the teachers, then we’re not thinking about the children. Our society isn’t discussing what we’re doing with the children. It’s convenient for us to think that schools should be conservative and that kindergartens are a very necessary invention.

“Today, parents don’t want to put their children in schools because they want to protect them from violence and abuse. This attitude toward schools is reaching a large scale. Parents are trying to save their children, never mind giving them knowledge but simply save them from beatings and humiliation.”

My Comment: On the “correct’ school see sections “Children,” and “Education.”
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One Comment

  1. With the reference to Mr Popov comment: “Parents are trying to save their children, never mind giving them knowledge but simply save them from beating and humiliation.”

    That clearly represent our global defiency in being able to unite and conciliate; Agressions from teacher towards pupils, pupils vs pupils and teacher, parents vs teachers and pupils,…That is the world we presently live in and escaping by learning via Internet is not the remedy…

    In South Italy, the Kindergarden (public & private) use also unacceptable punishing & threatning methods (spanks, pulling ears, humiliating, beating a piece of wood on the desk…), that clearly demonstrate their professional and mostly their personal inaptitudes to educate harmoniously our children.

    My son did not frequent the Kindergarden (3 weeks in my presence within 3 years); Raising small children under 5 years old is the duty of the mother or a family member, when possible – So did I, despite the law in Italy obligates schooling at the age of 3…, and did send him a year ahead at the elementary school as he wished to do so…But here again, he had to be witness of some teachers that used “slaps in the face” for punishing so called “disobedient” pupils and one of the teacher used that piece of wood to beat a pupil on his back and shoulders… That was last year, and I made sure that this person will no longer teach and I still keep a vigilient eye on a second one who had a disciplinary notification (My son was never slapped or beaten, but his schoolmates, and he did suffer in his incapacity of being able to help his friends to whom a great injustice was being done; I will never forget his pain when he told me the events, crying, “my friends, my dearest friends”…

    From the above, the most shocking is not the deliquency of the teachers, but the one of the majority; the parents, those who accept these “hateful and destructive” gestures, and those that apply “the law of silence”…

    While living in that reality, dear Rav and Friends, I remain confident in uniting our efforts in reaching our goal.

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