Nowadays, education is extremely important since the world is rapidly changing
and people get to acquire new information and new knowledge in order to keep
pace with the technological and scientific progress. In such a situation, education
of children becomes one of the primary concern of the modern society since children
are the future of the modern society and, therefore, they need to be able to
adapt to the changing conditions of life. At the same time, traditional approaches
to education turn to be ineffective in the modern world and, therefore, it is
necessary to apply new methodology to education and reevaluate its ultimate
goals at large.
First of all, it is necessary to underline that nowadays it is obvious that
traditional orientation of schools on the development of academic knowledge
of students is absolutely out of date. To put it more precisely, the modern
world is characterized by such a rapid development of technologies and science
that it is simply impossible to provide children with academic knowledge which
could endure their lifetime needs. In other words, the academic knowledge students
receive at school gradually becomes out of date and what is more they need to
acquire new knowledge in their adulthood. This is why it is possible to estimate
that the latter is the real and the major goal of the modern education.
In fact, it is necessary to develop certain skills and abilities of children
targeting at the independent acquisition of new knowledge and information by
students, instead of the traditional teaching them of basic academic knowledge.
At the same time, it is important that students in their adulthood or even in
the course of their study are able to produce new knowledge that will make them
more competitive in the labor market. This implies that it is necessary to develop
the creativity of children.
Obviously, such goals of education determine the basic approaches and methods
that should be applied to the education of children. In this respect, it should
be said that children should not be subjects of teaching anymore, instead, they
should become objects of teaching. This means that they should not be passive
participants of the educational process but, in contrast, they should take an
active part in their own education. In practice, this means that a teacher should
not simply provide students with information or academic knowledge but he/she
should rather guide them and assist children in their efforts to acquire new
knowledge, develop essential skills and abilities. Naturally, such an approach
implies a large liberty of children in the learning process but this liberty
should not be absolute. In other words, educators should indicate children the
direction in which they should move in order to get information, acquire knowledge,
and develop skills and abilities they need.
In such a way, gradually children will acquire skills which will help them search
essential information and acquire new knowledge independently from educators
that should be the ultimate goal of education since people should be able to
learn throughout their life and educators cannot always assist them. This is
why on developing skills of independent learning at school, educators will create
a good basis for the further learning of their students.
References:
Russell, G. (2002). The Modern Education. New York: Random House.
