Teaching: The Future?

Today I am going to teach teachers how to teach. A few months ago I helped create a video for a Buddhist Conference and then presented it to my fellow Buddhist youth at a conference. So today, a mere week or so before the AP testing, I must go journey to the land of Mountainly Views and educate Dharma School teachers on connecting with the youth and create interesting presentations that appeal to the younger generations.

I find this to be quite interesting because our generation has been force fed information. We are biproducts of a system based on teaching for tests and judging teachers by their student’s test scores. On a system more obsessed with the little numbers by one's name on an application than by their skills. How do we teach a generation that is labeled immediately by their standardized tests, by the SATs, by the GPA they got in high school?

I figure the only way to engage our generation of spoiled, video game playing, technophile, Ipod wielding, text messaging, adrenaline junkies is by adopting new forms of interaction. Those old 1980s education movies are great entertainment, but fail as sources of education. We should question the use of text books and writing exams because as shown by the great standardized testing of our generation they don't always work. How can we judge a person by their SAT score, or by their GPA? Some of the most talented people can't test well, or simply hate school.
What seems to be need to be done is the implementation of different types of schools. Not everyone is meant to go and become a CEO of a major company. Though we need our doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc. We also need hardworking people who want to make things. Of course America doesn't really make anything anymore, but we need to try to start again unless we want to be China's glutonous #1 customer forever. Because many of our social problems stem from the social classes that we have generated. All the major issues about drugs and violence emerge from the forgotten. Those poor souls that America has abandoned to live in their ghettos and fight for scraps.

So instead of pushing our standardized schools on everyone, why don't we create more schools or programs that aim at providing job training. Why would a lower class citizen want to learn about Calculus or Biology if they knew that they would just end up fighting for a low paying job later in life? We need to establish solid programs that offer alternatives to these people who know that school is giving them nothing. Because this despair often turns people to bringing entering the drug trade, or becoming a criminal. Hell I'm sure they might make better money that minimum wage like that and though I don't endorse their actions, it is hard not to understand why that path might be taken.