The Educational System

This semester I have spent a lot of time pondering the education system in conjunction with child development. It seems that the more I learn the more I wonder why we have the system we do.

First of all, why are students grouped by ages and forced to interact with peers of the same age all throughout their academic careers? By keeping kids of the same age together all of the time they do not gain vital skills and abilities to allow them to comfortably associate and interact with people across all age groups. Is it possible that we are instilling shyness in our students? I had a conversation with a professor on campus who home schooled his children for part of their education. He remarked on how shocked he was to see that the children in the home schooling system could communicate with persons of all ages and did not suffer of the shyness often seen in kids. These children were comfortable interacting with babies on up to the elderly. I think it is important to ponder this. Having students learn in mixed age group settings could support not only cognitive development but social development as well.

Furthermore when thinking about my previous blog on Finnish education system and male psychology, do we really need to start educating students as early as we do? Are we actually hindering them by institutionalizing their learning so early? It is in the early ages of development when children are extremely inquisitive and self-motivated to learn. Therefore I believe we should let them continue to learn and explore on their own before we try to structure their learning and set parameters which a school automatically sets whether or not it intends to simply by the nature of the school setting.

Would it be more beneficial to students to start school later enabling them more time to learn how to learn on their own? Exploration is key to learning and by shortening their time to explore maybe we are inhibiting their future abilities to learn. Also, by mixing ages in the classroom and environment may be created in which students learn to communicate and feel comfortable interacting with persons of other ages. Furthermore such a setting would enable students to help to teach and support their classmates and provide other sources of knowledge than only the teacher. What is the ideal educational approach?