Education is more about product than process
Schools ignore the big picture, turn us into nothing but knowledge dumps
Chad Bartsch
The Gateway (University of
Albertal)
EDMONTON -- After my convocation this past fall, I moved one inevitable step closer to the “real world.” Consequently, the following will be both pensive and meandering.
Reflecting on my own educational experience, six years and two degrees later, I cannot help but analyze the way our society approaches the notion of formal education. The combination of my recent graduation from the faculty of secondary education, and the fact that this means I am now a teacher, has further driven my reflection on what it means both to educate and to receive an education.
Although not without caveat, it seems as though our current educational system mirrors the all-mighty capitalist business mold. And it isn’t simply kindergarten to grade 12 – our postsecondary system is the epitome of this model. It is, in its most crude form, a transactional model predicated on the notion that one enters school as an empty container, only to be filled up with the correct amount and type of knowledge – no more and no less. This would explain all those who are after a business degree: school has become the modern-day panacea for the fiscally challenged.
The thought is that if you can earn a degree that will find you employment and allow for the accumulation of more possessions than everyone else, your education has served you well. Never mind all that superfluous knowledge that feeds the soul.
School has become less about the process and more about the product. By process, I refer to the individual experiences that one encounters as he or she progresses through their schooling. These experiences are characterized by little stories of triumph or personal difficulties brought on by interaction with the various “big pictures” that are the subjects of our study. It is here where we start to conceptualize our lives and, to an extent, our places within that big picture.
However, many people have become callous to the individual experiences of students at the micro level and, as a result, are only concerned with the larger frame that focuses on the all-important “end product.” A significant paradigm shift must take place in the way we view education if the individual experiences of students are to be included in academic discourse, thus enabling them to construct healthier and fulfilling meanings for themselves about the world they live in.
With my formal schooling complete, I find myself on a precipice of sorts, with a completely different way of living before me. Furthermore, I have come to a perplexing realization: I am now about to become part of the system that, until recently, I have been able to analyze from a distance. I find it amusingly ironic that I am questioning the very legitimacy of the system within which I am about to become an integral cog.
Nevertheless, as I contemplate my own life, on the cusp of a teaching career, I hope that I have constructed my own meanings in a healthy manner, within a conceptual framework that will allow me to focus on the experiences of my students, while at the same time helping them to build both the academic and social tools they need to live fulfilling lives.
