(As a starting post for the year, this post will be rather poorly structured, so do bear with me if the structure puts you off a little.)
Education was first created as a method of spreading thoughts and ideas. The term "college" actually meant a gathering of intellectuals to discuss issues in depths that can only be reached by the most brilliant of minds. In the past, great thinkers used education as a means to spread ideas. Confucius used education to teach the masses about the way to live. Then came the use of education as a selection tool, as seen in today's world and in the ancient Chinese system.
However, today, it seems that education has lost its purpose of empowering people through the availability of information. After all, with the world wide web and the exponential increase in computing speed and internet access, information is available to all, just a few keystrokes and the tap of a mouse button. Rather, education has become hijacked by corporations and industrialists to churn out competent young minds to feed the insatiable hunger of firms that seek to harness the youthful minds for growing capital and increasing production. It is no wonder that in many countries, like South Korea, students are crammed with hours in school followed by even longer study times in "cram schools", all because a good degree has become the greatest, if not the only determining factor of many youths' careers.
Also, in recent years, much attention has gone to the use of rote memory in the education system. It is generally know that Asians spend much time at their study desks memorising facts and practicing mathematical sums compared to their Western counterparts, who see this as counterproductive in promoting innovation, which has been the way forward for mankind since time immemorial. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, an Ivy League college in the US, has even uploaded all of its lectures onto youtube because they value the innovative thought process cultivated in the institution rather than the contents that will still be available to everyone else through online means anyway.
However, in my humble opinion, while the thought process is indeed important, we should not forget that thoughts should be grounded in the facts that are already present. When people speak of thinking out of the box, we should remember that students will only be capable of that when they actually have a well defined "box" that shows them the boundaries of technology in their time, and those of the time before them. It is my believe that only through the synthesis of our current knowledge and a thinking mind can we advance our understanding of the world around us. After all, how can one seek to break through the boundaries of our current knowledge when he or she has not even grasp knowledge itself?
The Asian system, though a system that strips the individual of the freedom to work as hard as he sees to be worth, does have its merits. This form of education prepares the individual for working life as it trains the young to work on assigned tasks for prolonged periods of time. This confers upon the individual the opportunity to reach his or her potential as they are able to focus on tasks through the years of "drilling" that has been a characteristics of their lives, other than a deprived childhood. Bill Gates once mentioned that on a ceremony to award and recognise individuals who have contributed to developments in Microsoft, he was only able to read one name out of the whole list of award recipients. What he meant was that Westerners were no longer the engine behind the developments of this world as they were in the old days. It was also recently reported that India now has the second largest number of people working as top corporate executives, just after the USA. In the end, there are few substitutes that are able to mimic adult life in the student context better than this tough system.
Finally, I had come across an article that mentioned about the role of education in driving innovation. It raised the example of the founder of Paypal, who had made it big after he failed to secure himself a promotion in the Law sector. The article had mentioned that the education system of today trains people to compete rather than innovate. Though I do not have significant examples to prove this point, I do, however, feel that education is not the direct cause of this. Promoting competition does bring benefits as well. In economics, it is widely touted that competitive environments are the driving forces behind markets that provide goods of the best quality at the lowest cost. Even with the use of rote memory and repetitive drilling of concepts, the number of patents in the world is increasing even as we speak. In Japan, which is equally notorious for its cram schools is giving out more patents than it has in any other year. China has also seen an increase in the amount of new knowledge generated by its people. South Korea, evidenced by its strong automobile and electronics manufacturers, is a place where innovation is flourishing and in some cases, producing products that have outsmart their Western counterparts who continue to push for promoting innovation through education.
Today's education systems do have their strength and weaknesses but it is worth noting that as a one-size-fits-all approach, few other systems will have produced as good an outcome as the system of rote repetition and memorising that is but a characteristic of many education systems, even more so for Asian countries. As Asia begins to gain the global spotlight, perhaps, it is time we realise that this education system has indeed within it the potential to prepare the youths of today for the challenges of tomorrow by arming them with the box not to confine themselves with, but to show them the boundaries so they realise where their conquest really begins.
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