I think that if education became tailored to fit individual's needs, it would be a problem. I think the exam system, etc would become less of a fair test on the overall education spectrum.
I think this would result in certain children being left out as there are not enough teachers to make it physically possible to pay enough attention to individual children to create a personal learning syllabus.
Certain children, such as those with learning disabilities do however need (and deserve) extra help and support from children. I believe this is sufficient in schools as there are special units, and measures in examinations to make sure their difficulties are taken into account.
In terms of culture, I think education is tailored to specific cultures. For example, when we were looking at the distance learning programmes in places like Australia. For their culture, the very sparse areas, this is specific. Or in villages one might find that classes, etc are much smaller, this isn't intentional but just because of the population. And schools like this probably wouldn't cope with hundreds upon hundreds of students. But likewise, could students coming from somewhere with a massive student body with little parent/student interaction be able to cope with a transfer to a smaller school where there is more attention on them from the teacher and more chance of their work being scrutinised.
Prensky suggests that education need to be changed to appeal more to the young digital minds. I would agree with this but I wouldn't say there is a necessity (anytime soon at least) for all education to become interactive and digital. I would however, think it could be incorporated slightly more into education, as I believe they are now staring to do.
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2 comments:
i agree with u aly and i also mentioned this in my blog that i think people with learning difficulties should have special help so they are given a fare chance to beable to achieve what other people at the same level as them without learning disabilities are doing.
Alyson,
Yes, I think in terms of practicalities, you're quite right that it's not possible to individually tailor education. I think it's good that you consider learning difficulties here. What about also considering that if we just learnt about English culture, wouldn't this make us quite ignorant to others? How about also thinking though that the more you progress through education, the more chance you have to tailor it....eg, 3rd years at Uni pick their own dissertation topic. When you get to PhD level you can be quite specific over what you study?
All the best
Emma
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