Okay, so to preface this I want to just say that I live in Scotland. So if you aren’t from Scotland this probably makes no sense to you and you’ll wonder why the education system sounds so strange. So keep that in mind.
I’ve been in the Scottish education system for 17 years now with no breaks, no gap years and no idea what the hell I’m doing. Now, as far as the primary school experience goes, who knows whether that’s working out or not. That’s not an area that I’ve experienced for at least 10 years so if you wanted an insight into how it feels to be part of the education system as a 12 year old then you’re in the wrong place.
High school. High school is a different thing entirely. Although not what I would call recent memory, my experience of high school hasn’t faded into obscurity as with my most likely fond memories of primary school education where all you needed to worry about was what time the milk was being delivered and what your Mum had put in your packed lunch. High school is aimed at providing a vaguely broad education as far as I can tell. Though you can “choose” courses, it isn’t exactly like picking between the blue pill or the red pill, more like choosing between maths for business-y stuff or maths for gouge your eyes out with pencils-y stuff. Unfortunately I ended up doing the gouge your eyes out with pencils stuff. This isn’t a criticism of the content of the education I received but more about how it was assessed, which is in general my biggest issue with the system as a whole. I was in high school for six years, with three of those years being assessed by examination, for National 5’s, Highers, and Advanced Highers. Now examinations aren’t exactly a new thing. They’ve been around for ages, and that right there is the issue. You’d think in the god knows how many years that we’d been teaching people to do stuff we’d have made some changes to the way we figure out how good someone is at something. Now perhaps I’m just misinformed and there is a very good reason why we cannot assess abilities based on performance in an area other than memory, but if there is a reason I just can’t see it. Exams are easy to manage and to compare people by, that’s a very clear benefit, but they do not in fact measure a person’s ability to create and to learn and to adapt to new skills and techniques.
My performance during high school was strong as far as I can tell. Mostly A’s and B’s apart from in some areas (looking at you higher chemistry). My grades at higher managed to get me an unconditional place at Heriot-Watt university which was my first choice of university. Now this is obviously where education becomes a lot more targeted. You don’t learn about why “the curtains were red” really means the author is conveying distress or that an element with three carbons in it has the word prop somewhere in it (looks like I do remember something from higher chemistry). Now does this mean all of the stuff you learned during high school that you’re now never going to use was a waste. No. But actually yes. All of that time you spent learning, no sorry, memorising quotes from an author or what time dilation does or what letter means speed of light in equations it just all gets chucked and never talked about again. I appreciate that having a varied education allows for a more informed choice when it comes to university but I also don’t think the way that schools educate students puts them onto a path in life other than being in the middle of the food chain in some huge industrial powerhouse of a company. Surely we should be educating students to create their own ideas and to become leaders of their own creations rather than being a support for someone else’s. Maybe that’s just my own personal feeling on the subject but I don’t think I’m the only one that doesn’t quite agree with the structure of our education system right now. I believe high school would benefit from a more fluid education type based around students interests rather than the core pillars of education that the whole system seems to revolve around.
Now moving on to university. Now although the quality of education you get is higher, it’s not necessarily doing a much better job considering where universities place themselves in the world. After four years at Heriot-Watt I have realised that a university is nothing more than a training centre for those looking to join in the middle level of industry and to work their way up to junior manager at the industrial behemoth of their choice. Businesses pay universities to essentially educate their students in the areas that they feel would be most beneficial to them. Now this isn’t bad necessarily, but again it does limit exactly where students education can take them. Again we’re not looking at leaders of businesses or multi-million pound start-up creators because that’s not what the industry wants, and it’s not what they pay for.
So what’s the alternative? With the changes to education due to ongoing lockdowns, it is very obvious that the education system was outdated. If we can’t learn things online when education sites like Khan Academy, Skillshare and Brilliant exist for a small fraction of the costs of a university degree (Scotland has free education but those in England aren’t so lucky), then surely that only exemplifies how behind the times the education system is.
I don’t expect a change in the system. It’s been stuck like this for so long now that for it to change there would need to be such a huge overhaul that they might as well build it again from the ground up. Instead all I want to do is to make the point that maybe following the linear path of the education system like I have isn’t the best path in life if you want to be successful and rich. It may be the most straightforward, but whether it takes you where you want to be? You really do need to be sure.
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