I schooled in Nigeria and i think our educational system need to be restructured.

our education system is not broken but has simply become obsolete. It’s doing exactly what it was designed to do but unfortunately, our needs have changed. We can’t just make incremental improvement to the current education system to somehow make it work for the next century. It’s like changing the screen or making incremental changes to an old Nokia phone and somehow expecting it to become an iPhone.
It’s time for us to go back to the drawing board and redesign the education system for the next century. Let me give you my thoughts on the functional specifications of the education system for the next century.

Adaptive – Student Centric Learning

All of us who have or have observed children already understand that no two children are alike. We also intuitively know that children have different types of learning intelligence. Some children learn logically, some learn conceptually, some learn visually and some learn experimentally. Don’t you think it makes sense to have our education system adapt to the way a student learns rather than the way a teacher teaches? In other words, our education system needs to be “student centric” instead of “teacher centric”.

Personalized – Self-paced learning

Just like children learn differently, it should not surprise you that they also learn at a different pace. Some kids are naturally good at one subject and can master that subject more quickly but may take little longer to comprehend a different subject.

Gamification for Immersive and Addictive learning

Have you ever noticed that you never have to remind your children to play their video games? It’s always a struggle to get them to stop playing because they always want “just another 15 minutes”. Just imagine an education system that is as immersive and entertaining as a video game. Wouldn’t it be nice to hear your child begging to spend just another 15 minutes with math, history or science?

Problem Solving and Critical Thinking

Every child with access to a smart phone or other internet connected device has access to all the facts they will ever need. Do we really need schools to teach our kids basic facts or skills? I am not suggesting that children no longer need to learn these basic facts but I am suggesting that we don’t need schools and teachers to teach them. The students should learn these basic facts from various internet resources at their own pace before coming to the school. Schools can now be more productive and use the classrooms in an interactive and collaborative way to encourage children to use these pre-mastered facts to solve real world problems.

Collaborative and Peer to Peer learning

We live in a society where we have to learn to work collaboratively. When a person works collaboratively in an organization, the person is rewarded and considered a team worker. However, when a student in our current education system collaborates to get to the right answer, it’s considered cheating.
We intuitively know that there is more than one way to solve most problems. We all live and experience life differently and develop our own individual perspective. We individually may have a good idea but most of these ideas can be improved as we collaborate and get different perspective from others.

Punishment vs. Encouragement

The human brain is an amazing organ and it is optimized for our survival. It is always on the watch for the threats and acts ferociously whenever it detects a threat. It releases adrenaline, cortisol and various other neurochemicals to get ready for fight or flight. These neurochemicals increase our heart rates and shut down most non-essential functions, including our digestive systems and pre-frontal cortex.

Conclusion

We must remember that no challenge is too large for innovation and entrepreneurship to solve. The rapid pace and adoption of technology should encourage all of us to embrace what was previously unthinkable. Technology may not the answer on its own, but it can certainly help us reach the immersive, rewarding educational experiences we all seek.

We now have all the tools and technology available to us to finally create effective and engaging education system for the next century

As I said previously, it is important that we leave a better country for our children but it is even more important that we leave better children for our country.