5 Harmful Ideas In Education

The education system, in any country, must provide students with opportunities for acquiring knowledge and skills in basic academic disciplines. Those seeking to learn need to study in good conditions, without any restrictions and obstacles. However, schools and colleges in many countries have faced problems and haven’t solved them yet, despite recently adopted measures and remedies.

John Hattie, an education researcher, reached such a conclusion basing on his “meta-analyses” and investigation results. He has examined students and educational institutions, as well as checked the suitability and effectiveness of the means to improve the education systems around the world. Consequently, he has come up with five ideas in education policy that seem to be inefficient or harmful. In this article, you will find the short description of each.

Achievement standards

The achievement standards imply an average student’s quality of learning, including his or her academic performance, depth of knowledge and the ability to use skills properly. They detect whether a student is prepared enough for the next level of education. Obviously, these standards are same for all, regardless of the fact that pupils may vary greatly in traits of character and personal features. Some students achieve the standards easily, while others just stay behind and earn bad grades. Such an inequality is a problem of modern education, the only solution recently, as Hattie states, is to set an individual approach to every student and monitor his/her growth and progress.

Tests of achievement

The role of achievement tests is to check the level of knowledge, skills, or proficiency in certain subjects of a person. Students at any educational establishments usually take exams to demonstrate what they have learned or achieved during the study year. The importance of achievement is actual, but in most cases, plenty of schools do not provide complex and efficient tests and give students inappropriate ones. Well, it would be nice to increase the quality of tests, which will undoubtedly improve teaching.

School choice

There are private, charter and public schools, that are thought to be significantly different. Some parents consider choosing private schools because they may offer better opportunities and conduct an individual approach to their children. This is a wrong inference since private institutions often teach the same things as public schools.

It is not actually adequate to focus on the school choice. If thinking about productive and effective learning, parents should concentrate on finding intelligent and well-experienced teachers whose help would be crucial.

The idea of small classes

If taking into consideration several studies of various groups, it is necessary to launch small size of classes for better performance and success. People think that a teacher will do his or her duties more proficiently with a small group of pupils. On the other side, Hattie gives an example of Japan and Korea, which have one of the best education systems in the world, whose classes have at least 30 students. This fact slightly decreases the usefulness of small class size, however, Hattie suggests improving the teachers’ support and training if they work with small groups of students.

Large sums of money spent

Many schools and universities share the idea of spending as much money per student as possible to refine the quality of learning as well as their reputation among others. For instance, Korea and Finland spend up to $75,000, while the U.S. $105,000, and obviously, the students who study in American schools boast higher academic performance. Hattie dispels this myth by saying that $40,000 per student is definitely enough for providing a good education.