Education… really? – Praneeth Lakshman, The Tiffin School

Our education today can be traced back to the Industrial revolution. Due to a surging population rate in urban areas and, as a result, an influx of young children, education moved from being a rich person’s privilege to the common man’s need. With these huge populations moving in, there was a genuine need to take care of the children’s upbring in often poor circumstances.

However, it is vital to remember that the concept of working under a boss that did nothing for you, in a completely different environment to where you grew up and also where freedom in expression was limited, was completely different to what the workers were used to. This proved to be a considerable issue in the workhouses, often causing tensions between the workers and their higher-ups.

Schooling could provide the solution to the factory owners. By conditioning these children to a watered-down environment of which they will most certainly end up in, the children will be less jarred and more complicit in the factories. And this was a fine solution, and even morally just – providing kids with basic skills like arithmetic, reading and writing meant that those kids were more informed and better suited to their environment.

Unfortunately, 2 World Wars hit. Not only did it shake up the whole world’s economy, it shook the very morals of the common people. This is evident, for example, with Labour’s win in 1945 – 8 weeks after Victory in Europe. People wanted to see real change in society, as now the wars had been won and introspection was due. With this, people wanted to see a real difference in education as well. 

This was already started by the Butler Act, a landmark educational reform in 1944. It was the act that:

• Defined the split between primary and secondary schooling (at age 11)
• Formalised the idea of grammar schools and their selective examinations
• Increased the compulsory age of schooling from 14 to 15 (which was, in 10 year’s time, extended to 16)

But these changes do not address the elephant in the room: was pre-war education different to post-war? And the answer is, largely no. Yes, we have an expanded variety of subjects than what the Victorians had. Yes, we have some protection against teachers physically hurting us. But standardised tests, school rules and the curriculum structure itself is still very reminiscent of the olden days. We have tests, grades and performance indicators – because you were continually observed in factories. We have detention – to mimic prisons. We have the 6 weeks holiday – as that was initially for kids to go back to their farms and help their parents with the harvest. I want to make this clear: none of these are evil or filled with malice. But shouldn’t we at least review our education today? Today, when we look around the society that we live in, doesn’t it occur that the standard of our education is simply not adequate enough in this century?

Very few people today work in a factory. In fact, 6.7% of the workforce are factory workers. What once used to be the powerhouse of England’s economy, has now reduced to 20% of its GDP. Now, the remaining 80% is the service industry – also referred to the tertiary sector. This includes retail, marketing, teaching, real estate … There are so many jobs that fall under this category. There’s also the burgeoning industry data and information collection. In a world where this is the youths’ reality and their aspirations, is a system in the 1800s really doing it justice?

Some people argue that it is. Schooling, as it stands now, provides its students with discipline and the work ethic that the world demands of them. It doesn’t matter if the students aren’t learning the subjects they will one day need in their jobs – what matters is that they understand how to learn new subjects. How to solve problems, how to formulate ideas. That is the core of education, they claim.

And while that claim might be completely right, it won’t hurt to observe our neighbours. I’m sure you all have heard this, but Finland is slightly different to us in terms of education. They don’t have compulsory, standardised testing. They have the least homework set in the world, according to OECD (a worldwide organisation who measures a lot of metrics). And the result? They rank the highest in the 2021 World Happiness Report, and they have done so for 3 years now. Maybe the issue with our education is not that it’s ‘inherently flawed’, or ‘evil to students’. Maybe, it’s because we value performance and we don’t value happiness. We need to evaluate, as a whole society, where we need to be in the future, and the youth would be the main vehicle to inflict that change. That is the power of education, the power of learning, the power of our species. Maybe we all need to decide: is it the happiness of our students, or the performance of our students, that we will carry with pride?