Educational Empowerment: Higher than the Plain Bottom line
Empowerment, which has its roots in the self-help movement, has become a popular buzzword across many disciplines including education. Empowerment can best be defined as enabling or permitting someone to do something. In educational empowerment, students are encouraged to think on a higher level of realization about themselves, life and the world. The information, knowledge, and way of thinking that was acceptable in previous generations are no longer effective to survive and compete in this ever rapidly changing world. “Adaptation to the changing realties requires higher order thinking skills”. (Brady 2008)
Currently in the American education system, students’ knowledge gained is measured by the outcome of standardized test and exams. This method of evaluation only reflects how well a student was able to regurgitate information back to the instructor. This can be practical in many cases and would accomplish the “bottom-line” for the instructors’ learning goals and objectives for the students. The educational system is set up with uniformed standard learning objectives and not based on individuals’ weaknesses and strengths. In most cases, students who do not work well in the standardized method of instruction can have problems succeeding in school.
In general, there are three “chances” or opportunities to help students in learning: the first is the original encoding of the information to be learned, second the maintenance of that memory of information, and last the retrieval of the learning through test and exams. In each of the examples provided to help students’ learning, educators have the opportunity to expand students thinking and knowledge by taking engaging students to think beyond the basics. It is important to have the information not only retained but ingrained. A successful approach is making a connection of what is being taught to something relevant to the students’ lives. Individuals can remember things that they can connect back to their own personal experiences.(Jansen 2005)
Alfred North Whitehead from England stated in an address in 1916 to the Mathematical Association that the second handedness of the learned world is the secret of its mediocrity. (Brady 2008). Students optimize learning when they are able to make a connection with information and by thinking it through the manner in which they best process it. Some learn best and intrinsically motivated through visuals, audio, or through hands on activities. It would be beneficial for the American society if educators empowered students to become independent thinkers and doers and not reliant on someone spoon-feeding them. A great educator of his time, Paulo Freire, coined the term banking education. This concept of “banking education” discusses and illustrates students as mere “containers” filled by teachers who measures their teaching success by their ability to fill students with knowledge. This can cause laziness and have one accept things in the world as is and not question or challenge it. Students can become robotic as they continually engage in remote memorization and not engage in activities and thinking that would make them more human. (King & Wang, 2007)
The educator is in the place of authority of knowledge and the student is submissive or “oppressed”. Freire mentions that it is not the educator who knows and the pupils who don't, but both are co-learners and educators. It is only through communication the walls of elitism can be broken down and the lateral bridge can be built educational empowerment. (Gadotti 1994)
As we expand more in to this technological era, computers and machines are outsourcing people. “The educated individual is the adapted person, because he is a better “fit” for the world”. (King and Wang p. 201). People need to be more conscience of themselves and the world in which they live in. This has to begin in the early stages of our lives in elementary schools and continue through our workforce training. The lessons to be learned are the same however the questions that are asked have to change. There has to be a revision in the way information is presented, maintained and recalled. This might call for new methodologies of facilitating learning, testing, and relevance. No longer can bottom line education suffice, students need to learn how to tackle issues for themselves, the skills needed to be productive citizens of society. (Brady p.64)
Reference:
Brady, M., (2008, February). Cover the Material-Or Teach Students to Think? Educational Leadership, (Vol. 8, Num. 5, pp.64-67).
Jensen, E., (2005) Teaching with the Brain in Mind (2nd Edition). Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development, (p 106).
King, K.P. & Wang, V. (Eds.). (2007). Comparative Adult Education Around the Globe. Hangzhou. PR China: Zheijiang University Press. Worldwide distribution: Transformation Education LLC.
Gadotti, M., (1994) Reading Paulo Freire: His Life & Work. State University of New York Press.
Empowerment, which has its roots in the self-help movement, has become a popular buzzword across many disciplines including education. Empowerment can best be defined as enabling or permitting someone to do something. In educational empowerment, students are encouraged to think on a higher level of realization about themselves, life and the world. The information, knowledge, and way of thinking that was acceptable in previous generations are no longer effective to survive and compete in this ever rapidly changing world. “Adaptation to the changing realties requires higher order thinking skills”. (Brady 2008)
Currently in the American education system, students’ knowledge gained is measured by the outcome of standardized test and exams. This method of evaluation only reflects how well a student was able to regurgitate information back to the instructor. This can be practical in many cases and would accomplish the “bottom-line” for the instructors’ learning goals and objectives for the students. The educational system is set up with uniformed standard learning objectives and not based on individuals’ weaknesses and strengths. In most cases, students who do not work well in the standardized method of instruction can have problems succeeding in school.
In general, there are three “chances” or opportunities to help students in learning: the first is the original encoding of the information to be learned, second the maintenance of that memory of information, and last the retrieval of the learning through test and exams. In each of the examples provided to help students’ learning, educators have the opportunity to expand students thinking and knowledge by taking engaging students to think beyond the basics. It is important to have the information not only retained but ingrained. A successful approach is making a connection of what is being taught to something relevant to the students’ lives. Individuals can remember things that they can connect back to their own personal experiences.(Jansen 2005)
Alfred North Whitehead from England stated in an address in 1916 to the Mathematical Association that the second handedness of the learned world is the secret of its mediocrity. (Brady 2008). Students optimize learning when they are able to make a connection with information and by thinking it through the manner in which they best process it. Some learn best and intrinsically motivated through visuals, audio, or through hands on activities. It would be beneficial for the American society if educators empowered students to become independent thinkers and doers and not reliant on someone spoon-feeding them. A great educator of his time, Paulo Freire, coined the term banking education. This concept of “banking education” discusses and illustrates students as mere “containers” filled by teachers who measures their teaching success by their ability to fill students with knowledge. This can cause laziness and have one accept things in the world as is and not question or challenge it. Students can become robotic as they continually engage in remote memorization and not engage in activities and thinking that would make them more human. (King & Wang, 2007)
The educator is in the place of authority of knowledge and the student is submissive or “oppressed”. Freire mentions that it is not the educator who knows and the pupils who don't, but both are co-learners and educators. It is only through communication the walls of elitism can be broken down and the lateral bridge can be built educational empowerment. (Gadotti 1994)
As we expand more in to this technological era, computers and machines are outsourcing people. “The educated individual is the adapted person, because he is a better “fit” for the world”. (King and Wang p. 201). People need to be more conscience of themselves and the world in which they live in. This has to begin in the early stages of our lives in elementary schools and continue through our workforce training. The lessons to be learned are the same however the questions that are asked have to change. There has to be a revision in the way information is presented, maintained and recalled. This might call for new methodologies of facilitating learning, testing, and relevance. No longer can bottom line education suffice, students need to learn how to tackle issues for themselves, the skills needed to be productive citizens of society. (Brady p.64)
Reference:
Brady, M., (2008, February). Cover the Material-Or Teach Students to Think? Educational Leadership, (Vol. 8, Num. 5, pp.64-67).
Jensen, E., (2005) Teaching with the Brain in Mind (2nd Edition). Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development, (p 106).
King, K.P. & Wang, V. (Eds.). (2007). Comparative Adult Education Around the Globe. Hangzhou. PR China: Zheijiang University Press. Worldwide distribution: Transformation Education LLC.
Gadotti, M., (1994) Reading Paulo Freire: His Life & Work. State University of New York Press.
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