Educating Children

From the very beginning of this world, people are being educated and providing education. As the definition goes for education, it says in Wikipedia that “Generally, it occurs through any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts. In its narrow, technical sense, education is the formal process by which society deliberately transmits its accumulated knowledge, skills, customs and values from one generation to another”

Today, if we sneak a peak in the current education system of most of the countries of the world, we find nothing matches with the definition mentioned above . It is a matter of great concern that the education system for children in many developing countries including country like Bangladesh  has not been a great success. Even this problems exists many modern developed countries too . Still in the  primary schools (sometime refers as Kindergarten or simply Kindy Schools), education means to make the little guys swallow Bengali, English, Science, Mathematics etc. If we pay our attention to the mathematics section, we find it horrible. What the teachers are doing is they are solving some Exercise problems from each chapter and the students are memorizing it. Students aren’t getting the chance to explore mathematics. The education system has now become more of a matter to pass the exams rather than enlightening the inner self. Students aren’t being taught about how to find new ways to solve a problem, why this problem has become a problem, how we can find a new rule or formula to solve it or how the formula has been formed. Ignoring all this basic yet major factors of teaching, the teachers are concentrating on providing solve sheets and classes. So what is happening is that children are subconsciously learning to memorize. They are not learning how to dive into the unexplored but unbelievably awesome world of mathematics.

So what to do? Simple! There is a famous saying that if you a fish to a person, he can eat it only once, but if you teach him how to catch a fish, he will be eating fish for life.

Our goal should be teaching the students to love mathematics, to enjoy mathematics, and to learn the basic of mathematics rather than solving some problem at the last pages of chapters. We have to teach them the basic rules, the structure of the formulas, the reason behind applying specific formulas on specific problems and so on. Same goes for other subjects as well. That is how the true education system develops. Because education means enlightening thyself.