Education is an incredibly important part of every civilization, as it helps it move forward and advance, but what is the best way to educate? Personally, I love hands on learning. I love doing things that are fun and learning at the same time. A good example of this is soccer. Each day on the training field, I am learning what works and what doesnt, but at the same time I am having fun. Sometimes this can get frustrating, as all learning does, but overall it is quite enjoyable. That being said, not everything can be incredibly fun while you are doing it. Take math for example; the best way to teach math is to learn by doing, but doing math bores the hell out of some people. Math is a great skill to have, but many people never learn it because it is so boring. The only way to get good at math is to get over the boring parts and just do it. This concept can be hard to grasp when you are really young, which is why so many people are unmotivated.
Having really good teachers is a great idea in theory, but in practice, it is going to be quite difficult to find that many people who are enthusiastic and good at teaching people that actually want to be teachers. The main reason being the salary; teachers make horrible money, and yet they are vital to progressing society. The simple solution would be to pay them more, but where would this money come from? The government isnt just going to put a ton of money simply into teachers' salaries, so that is a just a dream.
I do agree that we should be focusing more on education and an easy way to do that would be giving teachers more money, but I just dont see that happening.
The salary issue is an interesting point. When there's a shortage of a quality good, the classic economic response is to pay more. It's interesting that this solution is off the table for teachers.
ReplyDeleteAs you say, though, there's always going to be some inherent obstacles. Isaac is right, I think, that the way to overcome them is to maximize problem solving and critical thinking. But, you're right, there's somethings that just might be boring. You just have to get through them to get to the good parts, just like you need to clean your house.