Thursday, October 17, 2019

Dr Shiva Ayyadurai on Educational





Dr Shiva is quite rightly calling the educational edifice out.  There are plenty of issues around the whole system that have made it far less effective that anyone would like.  Yet reform does take two things.  They are scientific imagination and money.

Yet before we go there, we need to also focus energy on the teachers first.  The High school system shows us what can be done.  It is possibly as good as it can get.  All teachers are typically university grads in their area of focus.  More cycling of teachers can be promoted to help students  advance and more remediation can be applied to the top third as well.  Yet these are adjustments.

More specifically, full teacher training needs to be applied in the University themselves.  This should be a mandatory component of first year training.  I would literally skip the first year electives here and ensure teaching competence. 

I would then ensure later study units are literally taught by students as well.  This can be done in two phases, in which the first term sees the student mastering that material, then teaching it to the next term in order to develop some mastery.  Large classes are uncommon after the first year.

The combination should drive a more efficient teaching and learning system that is focused.  Electives can consist of a series of solid first year survey courses which actually describes most of them.  Thus an extended four year program could well involve several such courses, including the sciences.  The intent is to broaden real expertise and general knowledge without drilling down on expertise often obsolete.

Otherwise understand that the whole system has been gamed to fund so called managers..








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