IP Blog

1. “Playing Small Does Not Serve the World.”—Your Brain is Your Brand.

The methods of learning are becoming calculated. Students are taught through monotonous and boring lesson plans. Whatever happened to thinking out of the box? Creative thinking has gone down the drain. The key to success in classes is to learn what the teacher wants. Students take notes on what their teachers say, and then on test days reiterate the same information right back to them. School systems are set up teaching students that their goals should work around getting an “A”.

How can you develop a sophisticated culture with higher level thinking when everyone thinks alike? With an uninventive basis of education teenagers are learning that their expectations are mediocre. Many students are not pushing beyond these low expectations. From the start students need a motivation to show they have what it takes to think differently and make a change in the world. So let’s encourage, through education, a more intelligent and productive society.

3. Nobody Cares if You Walked Up Hill Both Ways Barefoot in the Snow and Could Diagram a Sentence.

Education seems to be losing sight of what is important. Should students be taught how to do net ionic equations, or how to achieve their goals in life? Even student’s goals are being distorted. Why should all of their effort be put into brown nosing a teacher to get a good grade? Shouldn’t there be goals like achieving happiness, spending as much time with friends and family as possible or living life to the fullest? Why am I not being taught real outlooks of life situations? Instead of sitting in classrooms all day, can’t I be prepared for the real world? Learning can have so many forms, but students are only taught from one, and it’s an unrealistic to apply to daily life. I want to learn so much, but regular classrooms teaching about useless information become restrictions to expanding my ideas.

7. Collaboration Ain’t About Holding Hands. It’s about Going Cool Places Fast.

Many societies originally developed and became world powers due to their geographic location. With a horizontal axis, information could spread throughout and have similar beneficial developments to society. This line of expansion was relevant thousands of years ago, though. Now, with just a few clicks of a mouse I can learn about anything from anywhere around the world. So, why am I not being encouraged to learn about other facets of society, and working with people from anywhere? Education is stuck in a time period from thousands of years ago. Why aren’t these opportunities to learn so much being taken advantage of? My high school is afraid of anything technology related. E-mail is probably the most advanced thing they have ever heard of, and I doubt they would ever dream of giving us school e-mail accounts. Also, try working on a project when just about every search is blocked. I understand that there needs to be some type of restriction on the internet, but I can barely do a search for a presentation I’m doing on the atomic bomb. If schools could get passed this thinking that technology is frightening, maybe we can expand our knowledge with unlimited possibilities. I could work on assignments with people from Japan, and then have a web conference with someone from Australia. Can you imagine the benefits of this learning style? Let’s broaden our connections and stop this old-fashioned thinking.