CONSTRUCTIVE ESSAY

NAME:
MUHAMAD RAUF BIN MASHOD
MATRIC NUMBER:
161176
SECTION:
307
INSTRUCTORS NAME:
MISS PUTERI AMELIA NURHANANIE BT. AZIZAN
TOPIC TITLE:
THE FLAWS IN THE PRESENT SCHOOL SYSTEM & THE
SUGGESTIONS ON HOW SCHOOLS CAN CHANGE THEIR
PRACTICES TO PRODUCE STUDENTS WITH CREATIVITY AND
MORAL VALUES
What is an education? According to Oxford dictionary, an education is the process of
receiving or giving systematic instruction. Based on this statement, it sounds like the
engagement is either by learning and teaching an instruction given by teachers. Would it be
good enough for the students? How can this approach help the students to handle difficult
situation in the future? The learning process in the classroom is never enough for the students
anymore. It takes more than academia to survive in such a stressful working environment.
Everywhere in the world especially in Malaysia, the education system is indeed facing
problems in producing competent graduates to face this gruesome and depressing challenging
working world. What are the possible problems that caused such a bad system? What can be
done to create a better education system? Todays present school system has three obvious
flaws which are the examination-oriented education, it kills creativity and it is stuck in the
industrial age. Ive come up with three suggestions to deal with the three stated flaws which
are comprehensive assessment, integrated studies and technology implementation.

First and foremost, students nowadays are too exam-oriented. An exam-oriented system
means only education grades are considered in the evaluation of students performance.
Teaching and learning involve a lot of memorisation rather than thinking. As in Malaysia, we
have the three public examinations like UPSR, PT3 and SPM. Not to forget, the monthly
examinations. An examination-oriented education system can bring
unneeded stress with improper implementation. Get a high grade and you get the
affection from the teachers while other students gawk at you in awe. Low grades invite low
self-esteem and isolation. This is because, the students are bound to be highly competitive
and subconsciously, they create caste among their friends. Those who have low grades are
seen as unworthy to fit into their circle of friends. Students are forced to know and learn
everything their study by heart in order to get good grades during examination. This can be
easy for some while it can be very difficult for others, especially those who are hands-on type
of people. Inability to perform may only result in embarrassment although being shunned by
other friends will bring harsher impact to the students lives. One way to solve the exam-
oriented education is by applying a comprehensive assessment. Assessment should be
expanded beyond simple test scores to instead provide a detailed,
continuous profile of student strengths and weaknesses. Teachers,
parents, and individual students can closely monitor academic progress
and use the assessment to focus on areas that need improvement. Tests
should be an opportunity for students to learn from their mistakes, retake
the test, and improve their scores. For example, at the Key Learning
Community, in Indianapolis, teachers employ written rubrics to assess
students' strengths and weaknesses using categories based on Howard
Gardner's concept of multiple intelligences, including spatial, musical, and
interpersonal skills.

Secondly, the current school system kills the creativity of the student. Students are not given
possibilities to explore their areas of interest deeply, as they are forced to follow an extremely
structured course of education. Ideas that do not fit within assignment guidelines are shot
down and disregarded. Many students cannot succeed in this rigid system that limits their
curious natures and personal passions. In his TED talk "How Schools Kill Creativity, Ken
Robinson talks about a girl who struggled in school. Her ability to focus and grades were not
great. But she loved to dance. She learned best when she was moving, which schools restrict.
Because of this, she transferred to a dance school where she became a successful and
eventually professional dancer. If she had continued attending a regular school, she would not
have been able to succeed to that extent later in life due to the boundaries school set around
how students learn. These restrictions can prevent learning more than they inhibit it in many
cases. They cause students to lose their natural creativity and conform to dull, meaningless
standards. In this way, schools often prevent students from flourishing to their maximum
potential. In order to curb the students creativity killing issue is by enforcing integrated
studies. Studies should enable students to reach across traditional disciplines and explore
their relationships, like James Burke described in his book Connections. History, literature,
and art can be interwoven and studied together. Integrated studies enable subjects to be
investigated using many forms of knowledge and expression, as literacy skills are expanded
beyond the traditional focus on words and numbers to include graphics, colour, music, and
motion. For instance, through a national project called Nature Mapping, fourth-grade students
in rural Washington learn reading, writing, Mathematics, Science and technology use while
searching for rare lizards.

Thirdly, the school system is stuck in the industrial age. Our school system is mass producing
standardized batches of graduates, as if it were a factory where each student is a product to
which some value needs to be added before it can be sold for a profit. Sure, you can choose a
direction to study, but you will still be in a class with hundreds of people. The result of
having hundreds of students with identical degrees is that it makes it harder for them to
distinguish themselves from their competitors on the job market. However, if all your peers
have a Bachelor's degree, you could get an edge by getting a Master's degree. But if
everybody does that, then only a PhD can provide an additional competitive advantage. This
actually leads to a process called academic inflation; it commoditizes academic degrees and
decreases their value. This means that many students have to overreach in order to try to get
that higher degree, since their Bachelor's has become worthless in the job market. In order to
counter this, schools must, just like factories have, change from mass production to mass
customization by using modern day technology to create highly personalized, constantly
adaptable curriculums. I do not have anything against the one-to-many format of teaching,
but while a lecture can work very well for a certain subject, like History, there might be a
much better way of teaching a different subject, like Math. There are countless of inspiring
example of online educational tools which have developed a unique learning system for
particular subjects, like Duolingo for languages and Codecademy for programming. Also,
websites like Coursera make high quality university courses available to the public free of
charge. Other successful initiatives are the School of One and NoRedInk, which are
pioneering a new method of education geared towards individual learning needs by providing
students with their own personal learning environment. These wonderful initiatives create the
rough outlines of an imminent and necessary revolution in education.

For these reasons, along with various others, the education system is functioning poorly.
Students are not becoming life-long learners because their creativity and love of learning is
stifled. They are not being prepared to be successful participants in the real world, because
their drive is not towards becoming more knowledgeable, but towards attaining superficial
titles or awards. The highly competitive environment of schools misguides students to want
to have great grades rather than discovering the answers to their innate curiosities. The
pressure to succeed in work-heavy, difficult classes can result in compromised health and
high amounts of stress. This is not how education should be. Students should be guided to
become the optimal, personalized version of themselves, not limited to being defined by
grades and their struggle succeeding in a flawed education system. If the country is to take
about education excellence, it has to start with reformation in education first.