What is good Education?
When the student is young, diverse topics must be exposed. While our Education systems are good at covering the fundamentals, say Newtons laws of motion and Kepler’s laws of planetary motion or Bohr’s atom model, the real applicability of it in building a Car or a Nuclear power plant or in terms of how a GPS works or how Vaccines work when discussed opens up a whole lot of understanding of the basics.
In fact, most of the science we see as fundamentals have always been triggered by observations on real world phenomena or solving a real world problem.
Completely ignoring real world problems or limiting it and focusing on abstractions brings a huge block and postpones the understanding or solving of the real world problems. This only delays a students ability to connect concepts with reality.
Unfortunately we have linearly stacked Science and Engineering. We do more Science earlier and then more Engineering later. Ideally both should go hand in hand right from beginning. A kid enjoys the block world. It forms its idea of physics by moving in the real world. When it is put in a school, most of them take the kid away from the block world and flattens it into print and paper. This is too difficult a jump to make and often leaves them bored and brings an early void that takes a long time to fill with something useful.
Reading pages and pages of some theory without understanding where it is applied or why it came into being and reinforcing them by writing exams amounts to switching off the creative faculty of kids and just focusing on their memorizing and abstract visualizing abilities. They are often too hard even for a mature adult.
Exposing the child to diverse topics of concepts and how they tie to reality early on gives a fantastic idea for a kid to identify its interest areas. For example, a kid may find a liking to Automobiles early on as it gets exposed to the Physics of motion and the Engineering that applies the physics to create the Automobile. This gives a wholesome, grounded idea on how things work and associate it with the broader theories that got abstracted out of the concrete problem space.
Identifying interests early on can enable them to expand on specific areas and discover new possibilities. Our Education systems in turn produce generally capable individuals without focus. They can fit in anywhere, but they are blunted. They have a huge burden of learning with their interests not particularly aligned with anything.
A person goes through general science, then goes through some specific Engineering like Mechanical or Automobile Engineering and then works for years to understand how to construct and run a Metro rail or an Aircraft. This is a long route and makes them weary.
If our Education system could have helped identify the interest by exposing them to both concepts and their applicability, Science and their Engineering in specific fields, the student gets to see the connectivity early on, form his opinions and likes early on and can be more focused and sharp.
If he wants to make an airplane, let the system allow him to do that.
