Students, what is your fantasy education system?

[Ken Leung]

Ok, it is time to elaborate exactly what I meant to say in my last post.

As a college student I do not have years of experiences in teaching, but what I do have are thoughts stem from years of being a student, the first 13 years of which were in Hong Kong, and the rest in the US. As the “customer” of the education system, I believe there are some merits in some of my following observations. So, onward to the 9173 points I am about to make .


First thing first. It is very easy for anyone to criticize the education system those who lack the experiences and insights of educators. I for one I want to complain how much school failed to inspire and motivate me as a student in the early part of my life. However, I must acknowledge what school did right for me, because I wouldn’t be who I am today without learning the necessary skills which I use to build the foundation of my mind. I might not have liked it, but looking back now, they were necessary. This brings me to the first building block of my fantasy system, the “education part”.

30% Education

There are necessary knowledge/skills /ideas/tools that must be taught to a child that serve as a foundation for his or her mind. We might’ve hated the boring classes very much, but there are doors we have to walk through that leads to bigger things in life. The use of our language, for example, mathematics another, are among some of the most fundamental building blocks of our mind, and must be taught if we cannot afford anything else. Once we’ve talked about these basic building blocks, then we can talk about the bigger picture.

Beyond the necessities are some what debatable. I would not call all the lessons I took in school completely necessary, but I wouldn’t say they were entirely useless either. My trouble with these classes is that all I learned from them was how to pass tests and do homework (which I abhorred and did poorly in), and I don’t even remember what they were anyway (I vaguely recall social study, science, religion, art, and music lessons). They did anything but inspire me to be more interested in those subjects, much less given me the basic skills in developing and cultivating my “interest” in those subjects. I think instructions are necessary, but just now necessary I do not know.

Since I am giving education 30% emphasis anyway, I will leave it at that for now.

30% Learning, thinking, motivation, inspiration, application, mind-opening, exposure, diversity, understanding, experience, foundation, initiative, journey, and empowerment.

From everything I’ve seen in FIRST and the outside world, I am convinced that inspiration is just as important as learning. A while ago, I compared the mind of a human being to a bowl of water. In order to increase the amount of water that bowl can hold, in analogy to the amount of knowledge a child can hold in his mind, you must 1. Fill the bowl with water, and 2. Increase the size of the bowl so it can hold more.

Part of my evidence is me going through the kind of education system that only fill the water and never increase the size of my bowl. By the end of it, I hated school so much I wanted nothing to do with studying or learning. I consider a child who learns to hate school is just as bad as a child who learned nothing at all (or worse yet, hates school AND learned nothing).

I believe it is important for students to see school as a learning environment where they are the ones doing the learning. I also believe it is important for the following things to happen to students:

1. Get inspired about the outside world and just what kind of life school and (more importantly) learning can bring them.

2. Learn to think as much as learning to memorize, finish homework, and past tests.

3. Get motivated about learning, because there is no limit to what a motivated student can do. Part of that means understanding yourself, what you want, and how learning can bring you closer to your goals, which is the most difficult thing we have to do when we grow up.

4. Understand how to apply what you learn from school, and in general, how knowledge is applied in the real world. It also means students must at some point goes through some hands-on experience where they learn the applying part instead of reading about them.

5. Become open-minded, because people are very different on many levels, and just because they are different, doesn’t mean they are wrong. It means to have an open-minded attitude where they are willing to look at the world and eager to discover things that are unknown/different from what they are used to, it also means learning to tolerate those who are different from they are.

6. Get exposed to the kind of career/field/disciplines out there and understands their roles in the world. (This is a big component of “inspiration” and “motivation”.)

7. No matter how difficult it is, we must treat each student differently, because they are different. We may never get rid of standardized testing and universal curriculums, nor do we need to completely. But I think it is important for teachers get to understand their students and try to help them learn in their own way.

8. Take initiative of their learning experience instead of relying on school for everything. Though they may not be mature enough to know what’s best for them, having the right attitude and mind-set will go a long way in becoming life-long learners.

9. And finally, understanding that learning is a journey they just began, instead of something you finish when you get out of school.



40% Self, Friends, Family, School, Culture, Government, and the World

The last but most important component of my fantasy education system is not the school, but the world itself. We must get rid of the notion that school is going to do everything for us. I cringe every time parents send kids to school everyday without active involvement, and then ask why their kids are failing at school (Parents who must work all the time to make a living is a different issue). The learning at home is just as important as learning in school, and somehow, that doesn’t seems to be happening anymore. Family as an institution doesn’t seems to be emphasized as much anymore.

We also treat education as the silver bullet that will cure all problems in the world, when in fact we cannot and should not put the entire burden on schools to accomplish that task. We must understand that education comes from friends, family, culture, government, and the rest of the world have just as much influence in a child’s life as schools do.

That is why we need parents to take initiative in their children’s life.
That is why we need scientist/engineers/artist/writers/doctors/entrepreneurs/historians/philosophers to take active roles in creating a culture that will inspire students to go into their fields.
That is why we need leadership in our governments to tell us need to strive to be better and more competitive in this world.
And that is why we need a world that tells us knowledge is the key to our growth as a species.



That’s about all the points I have energy to make today. But I just want to say one final thing.

Everywhere I go, I see the key missing from our current culture is this kind of leaderships I am talking about in the “40%”. We need leadership, leadership, leadership, and more leadership if we truly believe that education is important and necessary for our way of life. And everywhere I go, I just don’t see that leadership anywhere, except in special places like FIRST.

So please, we need some leadership, because if we don’t get some soon, I am going to have to step up to the plate and do something . And trust me, I am not going to stop until I get something done.