However, our world has changed and the time has come to change our education system as well. Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay “Education” emphasizes the importance of individualized learning. Emerson believes that “the secret of Education lies in respecting the pupil” (Emerson 102). Instead of grouping students by age and teaching them all the same information, we need to respect what each individual desires to learn. Kim Jones has already begun changing learning with her organization Curriki, which aspires to “make learning more personalized” (“About Curriki”). Jones also notes in her Forbes article that success from education is “no longer so straightforward” (Jones 1). She understands that the current education system is becoming outdated and that it needs to be revised. We cannot create groups of students and put a few teachers in front of them and expect the students to learn. Tracy Groom explained in his column, “Blame Students, Not Teachers, for Failure to Learn” that a key factor to student failure is “the limited contact time most students have with individual teachers” (Groom). Students spend more waking hours in school than they do at home but students only spend around one hour with each of their teachers; and that one hour includes several other students who all need the teacher’s attention and time. To make learning more personal we are going to need more teachers. However, teaching is not an appealing career to most people, therefore we also need to build greater support for teachers. At some point we changed from criticizing students for their failure to condemning teachers for not properly teaching those failing students. This concept is flawed. Groom explained that “teachers can deliver students to rivers of knowledge and understanding” but it’s up to the students to drink the water (Groom). With each of the factors that we have to change before we can
However, our world has changed and the time has come to change our education system as well. Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay “Education” emphasizes the importance of individualized learning. Emerson believes that “the secret of Education lies in respecting the pupil” (Emerson 102). Instead of grouping students by age and teaching them all the same information, we need to respect what each individual desires to learn. Kim Jones has already begun changing learning with her organization Curriki, which aspires to “make learning more personalized” (“About Curriki”). Jones also notes in her Forbes article that success from education is “no longer so straightforward” (Jones 1). She understands that the current education system is becoming outdated and that it needs to be revised. We cannot create groups of students and put a few teachers in front of them and expect the students to learn. Tracy Groom explained in his column, “Blame Students, Not Teachers, for Failure to Learn” that a key factor to student failure is “the limited contact time most students have with individual teachers” (Groom). Students spend more waking hours in school than they do at home but students only spend around one hour with each of their teachers; and that one hour includes several other students who all need the teacher’s attention and time. To make learning more personal we are going to need more teachers. However, teaching is not an appealing career to most people, therefore we also need to build greater support for teachers. At some point we changed from criticizing students for their failure to condemning teachers for not properly teaching those failing students. This concept is flawed. Groom explained that “teachers can deliver students to rivers of knowledge and understanding” but it’s up to the students to drink the water (Groom). With each of the factors that we have to change before we can