Why to enclose the education in a classroom when the whole world can educate me. Why not embrace a new WWW (Wide Wonderful World)
What is the similarity between education system and watching the same movie repetitively for many years in the same movie theater? It does not sound exciting. We will be terribly bored of monotony. This boredom will be multi-fold if we don’t like the movie. The silver lining would be making new friends in the movie theater.
Similarly for the last 100 years we have been going to the same theater called school / classroom and watching the same movie “Education”.
In little ways, over the decades the movie has been made better, earlier it was black and white (remember our textbooks), now color has been added, the visuals have been improved, animations and slicker technology has been added. But the cinema hall and the movie are the same.
The projectors (teachers) are now more contemporary and viewer friendly, no doubt. The cinema hall has also been upgraded, more comfortable and modern, even air is now conditioned. But the cinema hall and the movie are the same.
The parents feel good that their child is going to the same cinema hall and watching the same movie they watched. If the child comes back cribbing about the movie, parents sell them the movie even harder. They even send the child to smaller repeat shows (tuitions) so that the child masters the movie or some parents give children devices at home which screen the same movie in a different way. They have even created a toddler version of the movie (called preschool) where children can get prepared to go to the cinema hall for the movie later. But the cinema hall and the movie are the same
In conferences, in publications and media, in drawing rooms and discussion groups, in debates across the world, this watching the same movie in the same hall has been lamented, criticized and shown to be the greatest malady of industrial revolution. But the cinema hall and the movie continue to be the same.
Most of us, when we think of the problems with education, resign to it, declaring it is a humongous and futile task to change the movie, the cinema hall, the system.
If you want to see various exciting movies in different theaters we have an invitation for you.
Simply walk out of this system, walk out of the hall. Life is a multiplex. The moment you walk out of the cinema hall you can see so many more movies outside. For one interested in music, there are musicians making musical movies. For one interested in football there are clubs playing football movies and for techie geeks there are coders coding movies in open source communities. I am sure you get the idea
For the children not sure of one kind of movie, they can explore myriad kinds of movies in the multiplex of life and choose their calling in due course of time. Many of us, called entrepreneurs, can even create new movies
We do not need to change the system, we can just step out of it to (www) a Wide Wonderful World.
Interested? Welcome to open learning.
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