If there is one thing common about most Asian parents, it is the importance we place in education. From the time a child is born, the entire family secretly expects to have a budding doctor, lawyer, engineer or other professional in the pipeline with hopes of an uninterrupted highway to success and big money.
But who can fault us for that? After all, if it’s not every parent’s aspiration for our children, it’s an elemental instinct or duty to see them avert the pitfalls that we endured while growing up. Certainly, a good education provides the appropriate springboard to prosper in life.
That said, the big question is…are we being smart about education?
Just look around you, almost every child or teen is clutching a mobile device. Within the last decade, online platforms and services have infiltrated every area of our lives. We are all fully aware of its roles, whether good or bad. And what about us adults? To most of us, YouTube and WhatsApp are such daily staples we can’t bear being without.
According to an article by Education Week in 2018, YouTube ranked as the preferred learning tool among those between the ages 14 to 23: https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/why-generation-z-learners-prefer-youtube-lessons-over-printed-books/2018/09
Children appear to be inclined to reach out to technology for reference and clarification, a supplemental resource of sorts to the regular class environment.
So, why aren’t we utilizing YouTube to educate our children? No doubt, tackling the national education objective can be a herculean task. But have we considered a permanent educational nexus that disseminates lessons and information for local educational consumption? People upload videos on YouTube daily, so why not have classes delivered to our children through curated and well-planned subject content by our best teachers.
Just think about it, YouTube reaches viewers in more than 100 countries around the world, across 80 languages, consuming an average of more than one billion hours of YouTube content on a daily basis: https://blog.youtube/press/
It’s not rocket science. Google and other reputable educational institutions have been conducting online programs and classes in such a manner for years. Why? Because it makes basic common sense, aside from being convenient, accessible, and most of all, ensures a uniform delivery of information.
Local classes can be conducted with lessons produced by the Ministry of Education and played in classrooms where physically present teachers can facilitate exercises, answer questions, and provide assistance, as and when needed. This will instantly eliminate the existence of inferior teaching quality, misinformation and other issues that are all too common with management of a large-scale education system.
Here’s a good example of education made simple, easy and interesting on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjuoITPEyHk
One of the key issues in education that we faced even during our times is the blatant inequality we were subject to. It ranged from inexperienced and unsuitable teachers to affordability issues in buying the best work and revision books. Then there were the endless tuition classes which only a handful could afford.
But all that can be eliminated in one fell swoop with technology today. Besides, national examinations can be based on a single source – eradicating the possibility of students from being blindsided during national examinations when areas in the syllabus were not appropriately covered or even taught. Besides that, revisions at home or during vacations will be a cinch with access to the classroom - 24/7. Apart from allowing parents some avenue to monitor what’s going on in class, sick days will not result in students falling behind and having to play catch-up with the rest of the class.
And apart from uniformity, equality and convenience, there is the reduction of wastage brought about by repetitive tasks and people working within individual silos.
If you remember the days of the dreaded lockdowns, Google, Schoology and other platforms paved the way to bring the classroom to our homes. It proved workable then, so why can’t we lead the way in education now?
Of course, many would say, ‘it sounds really good but is it really applicable?’ Well, if it’s not, higher institutions of learning would not be adopting it. Some such students even utilize technology to access their class notes, having little need to spend on expensive books and materials.
But then again, what use would existing teachers have?
A presentation by Thomas Krüger, President of the Federal Agency for Civic Education of a study titled Youth/YouTube/Cultural Education. Horizon 2019 took the view of redefining the role of the regular teacher as education coaches: https://www.dw.com/en/youtube-in-schools-a-digital-revolution-in-the-classroom/a-49049423
Teachers will always be needed to guide students and lead with a helping hand where an electronic screen falls short. Questions will still need to be answered, and proper guidance remain crucial to the growing mind. The only difference will be the functions they discharge and emphasis diverted to priorities like civic consciousness, sport, human interaction and how to maintain a competitive mindset. These are some of the values we seem to be falling back on as a society today.
If the plan of initiating a mainframe education system for the entire country seems a little too ambitious, why not try a pilot project in central districts where internet access and mobile devices don’t pose a hurdle.
Technology is infiltrating almost all industries. That said, some of such developments are good, others aren’t. But education is one place where we can teach our children in a well supervised, consistent, and workable way.
We have the technology, let’s make it work for us.
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