SCHOOLING AND EDUCATION: A JUXTAPOSITION.

I have always argued that SCHOOLING is different from EDUCATION, to know the reason why, we will have to look at the history of schooling. Schooling started in the late 17th century in the western world to meet the demands of the industrial era who needed blue and white collar workers to work in their industries. But times have changed, we are now in the 21st century, information age where INNOVATION is key and its impossible to have innovative ideas if you are not creative. There was no need for creativity during the industrial era because everything a worker did was a ROUTINE and so the school was set up to train people to follow routine. And so people like me who like to THINK OUT OF THE BOX are always punished in class for not wanting to follow routines. Lol. When I was in secondary school I was always day dreaming because what they were teaching me wasn't meeting my needs. I am not a ROUTINE person, I'm not a machine without a mind. Schooling is not for HUMANS, its for MACHINE. What I am trying to say is that we are running a schooling system that has no impact on our kids. They have minds, they want to create, they want to innovate, they want to make their environment better, they want to fall in love, they want to be rich and ball, they want to relate with friends from around the world and UNTIL OUR SCHOOLS FIND A WAY OF MEETING THESE NEEDS WITH EFFECTIVE CURRICULUM AND EDUCATIONAL POLICIES we will be wasting the years of our kids in school. I believe that the only time we got education right was at the NURSERY SCHOOL LEVEL; because kids are free to be themselves and create, play and be happy and not try to be machines. Interestingly these industries now have COMPUTERS THAT CAN DO WHAT SCHOOLED KIDS ARE TRAINED TO DO. For example, instead of having a kid who can define difficult terms offhand, you will just Google the term. The essence of education is to help a person EARN A LIVING and MAKE A LIVING. And so let's redefine our schooling system by FOCUSING our attention
in training the HEADS,HEARTS and HANDS of kids. The TEACHER -CENTERED classes is ancient, it was only good for the industrial era, we should adopt the STUDENT-CENTERED classes because what is the essence of teaching if the students are not learning. There are too many graduates on the street today who have spent 20-25 years of their lives to know and do what can easily be done by computers. Let's help our kids be creative and innovative, that is what is required in the 21st century.