Reform in education is much desired and a lot of efforts have been put to bring about such reforms. Education reforms are essential for the global success of economies and to help them cope up with the 21st century needs and requirements of their citizens.
Various events and discussions focusing on education reform have taken place around the world and many influential speakers have shared their visions about the much needed reform in education.
Here’s a compilation of 5 great videos on Education Reform:
Ken Robinson: Changing Education Paradigms
In this TED talk, Sir Ken Robinson, a visionary cultural leader focuses on the changing education scenarios around the world and the need for effective education reforms. He lays out the link between 3 trends that are of concern today; the rising drop-out rates, schools’ dwindling stake in the arts, and ADHD. According to him, reform in public education is largely needed for two reasons; first being economic, as people try to assess how to educate their children so they can take their place in the economies of the 21st century given that the future state of economy cannot be anticipated. The second is cultural as countries want to educate their children such that they have cultural identities while being part of the process of globalization. Sir Ken says, to bring a true reform in education we need to think differently about human capacities, get over the old conception of academic, non-academic, abstract, theoretical and vocational, and see it for what it is, a myth. We need to recognize that most great learning happens within groups, that collaboration is the stuff of growth and work towards changing the culture of our institutions by looking into their habits and the habitats that they occupy.
Big Thinkers: Barnett Berry on Education Reform
In this video, the president and CEO of the advocacy organization Center for Teaching Quality lays out a roadmap for reforming our education system and improving the school environment for teacherpreneurs, those teachers who are out best, best classroom practitioners who regularly teach children, never lose that touch because they are working with children and serving them on a regular basis. He emphasizes on the need of more highly adaptive solutions to help children reach high educational standards. There can be no more top-down one size fits all approach to school reform. To support well-meaning educators what’s needed is more preparation, more opportunities for them to work with each other and to share their practices in a highly accountable way and more time to work with other support providers for children, especially in high need communities. Berry insists that teachers should make their unions realize that it is time to change dramatically and to turn organizations into more professional places, with a focus on teaching and learning.
The Importance of Education Reform
In this video the President of the United States, Obama speaks about the critical need for education reform and discusses what his Administration has done to raise standards and encourage excellence. He recognizes that education is an economic issue and from the very first day in his administration, has made excellence in American education, excellence for all students a top priority. According to him, it is essential to put a college degree within reach for anyone who wants it and that’s why he is making higher education more affordable so they can meet the goals for producing higher college graduates than any other nation by 2020. Obama reveals that the single most important thing done by them towards education reform is the initiative called ‘Race to the Top’. It is a U.S department of Education contest created to spur innovation and reforms in the state and local districts K-12 education. He also addressed various controversies associated with this initiative. He says that change is hard and fixing what’s broken in our education system is not easy, results can’t be seen overnight and it may take a decade for these changes to pay off but that is not a reason not to make them, instead it’s the reason to start making them right now. He concluded by stressing on the importance of parental involvement in children’s education which is as significant as the reforms are.
