If you look at the back of a bottle of over-the-counter medicine or the front of prescribed medicine, you can find the prescribed usage label. Note that everyone over the age of two years of age is given the same recommendation of usage usually and prescribed medicine is more uniform than the over-the-counter medicine. In school, students are given a similar prescription of what they should be learning and what they should know by a certain age.
Is this a good practice of educating? Let’s analyze this.
First, curriculum is grade level based. Usually students of the same age are in the same grade level. This practice assumes that all youth of the same age are and should be at the same level and that they should have the same learning capacity. This practice is simply flawed and negligent of individuality. Similarly, doctors prescribe medicine to individuals because of similar symptoms despite the fact that their bodies are different. Note that certain allergies can cause a person to have a negative reaction to a medicine. So is it strange for students to react negatively to a uniform system of instruction?
Second, if a group of individuals have similar symptoms, should we assume they have the same disease/issue? Here’s a New York Times article about Lyme disease and the different diseases with similar symptoms. Similarly, students are assessed as having the same symptom (age) and given the same medicine (uniform education). If we know that there are different diseases with similar symptoms, then why don’t we understand that students who seem similar need different forms of education?
It is irrational to think that every student of the age of seven will learn words at the same rate and capacity. I’ve learned from experience that some students are better with numbers and others are better with letters. I’ve also learned to associate words with numbers to teach certain students.
What does this mean?
This means education has to be uniquely morphed to the individual. The one size fits all prescription style education has proven to leave some students behind. Simultaneously, this system causes some students to react negatively. If you’re an educator, you’ve heard plenty of students say they are not learning. This is because the one size fits all does not fit them. It’s time to revamp curriculum ideas and give teachers a certain level of autonomy to impart knowledge into their students.
What do you think?
-Bryant