“The challenge we face is nothing less than transforming our schools from assembly-line factories into centres of innovation,” said the city’s mayor, Michael Bloomberg, who warns that the US school system is falling behind international rivals.
Education is a mirror into where our society is going. As of now, our public schools are saying that we are a 1950’s society and backwards. With bans on technology and social media, innovations that businesses are using and that international countries are using, in the classroom, our students and our society is being left behind by international counterparts who are using technology and social media to innovate their classrooms and challenge their students to think differently.
We need to think bigger.
We need to zoom out and look at what we value as a society.
New York is trying their best:
They’re being told to find new ways to provide a more individualised education, to change the shape of the school day, explore what technology can offer and even ask whether pupils need to be in school at all.
If we don’t speak up, our priorities won’t change.
If we don’t change the focus of our educational system from standardized based, paper and pencil tests, we will only end up with students who know how to bubble their answers and frankly, there aren’t so many opportunities in society to bubble the right answer.