13. Reengineering Education: Starting with the Basics

Hey everyone, it’s been a while! Last time, we left off with identifying what education systems in developing countries fail: providing basic skills. Today, we will discuss how education can be reengineered to achieve this goal.

Making sure every child learns the basics well in school is not only possible but very easy, as long as we focus on doing exactly that.

Therefore, we must focus on the basic skills, and commit to the idea that every child can master them as long as she and her teacher expends enough effort on it. The book suggests the following points:

1. Let volunteers teach the children who could read well to use their reading skills to learn.

2. Reorganize the curriculum and classrooms to allow children to learn at their own pace, and make sure those who are lagging behind can focus on the basics.

3. It is a good idea to set more proximate goals for both children and teachers, so everyone can stop focusing too much on one elusive outcome. Scholarships to girls who scored top 15% on an exam not only got the girls to do much better, but also put pressure on the teachers to work harder, so boys did better too. 

In the modern world, the use of technology in teaching has not been very positive, but this is based mostly on experience from rich countries where well-trained and motivated teachers might be a better alternative. In poor countries, however, studies and programs have shown that the computer is a great learning tool, allowing each child to be able to set their own pace. 

Schools must recognize that they have to serve the students they do have, rather than the ones they perhaps would like to have—this is the first step to having a school system that gives a chance to every child. 

And the chapter on education ends here! Let’s take a little preview on the next section: population rates. For India, in particular, population control needed to be exercised. There are many reasons for the world to be worried about population growth today. In Jeffrey Sach’s book CommonWealth, he states its potential impact on the environment, as population growth contributes to growing carbon dioxide emissions and hence to global warming. Drinking water is getting scarcer by the day—The World Health Organization estimates that ⅕ of the world’s population lives in areas where freshwater is scarce. 

The problem is that it is quite impossible to develop a reasonable policy to control the population if we don’t understand why some people have so many children. 

We will continue exploring the problems that may arise with having large families next time!

Image Source: https://www.vecteezy.com/vector-art/6101848-school-education-cartoon