What Education Ought to be: Perspectives of Youth

Fill-in-the-blank worksheets and rote memorization of facts, always an anathema to students, have become even more so to young people accustomed to fast-paced Nintendo games and action-packed television shows. Poor student performance and high student drop-out rates have spurred a national effort in education reform, the topic of an HPCC in Education Seminar, ``What Education Ought to Be: Perspectives of the Youth.'' Lisa Bievenue, NCSA specialist in education, arranged the presentation.

This seminar, held in mid-February at the Beckman Institute, differed from most in one significant respect: the speakers were students--ranging from a third-grader in a Champaign elementary school to a senior in science education at UIUC. Despite their age differences, they were nearly unanimous in their call to harness student creativity in a more hands-on approach to the curriculum.

Hands-on projects preferred

Emilia Garvey, a third-grader at Champaign's Washington Elementary School, agrees. "The more projects we do, the more about the facts we learn,'' she says. ``In social studies, we are learning about farming communities. Instead of just reading the book and doing the papers, we could talk about how farming communities have changed over the years, and maybe how children in farming communities and children in city communities are different and why. It would be a lot more fun for the children than just listening to someone reading out of a book.'' Garvey also felt that a wider subject range and allowing for greater flexibility in doing schoolwork would stimulate greater interest among elementary students.

Real-life applications wanted

Joseph Smarr, a sixth-grader at Urbana Middle School, provided an explanation for why students prefer a more interactive learning environment. When teachers rely heavily on lectures and worksheets to teach the subject matter, ``many kids feel that they're not in charge and that they're not making any decisions,'' says Smarr. Kids spend ``endless hours'' on video games, according to Smarr, ``because they feel that they can use their brains to make decisions. I think that schools should be aware that kids want to learn with projects because they give them a chance to make a difference. They get to use their own imagination and knowledge.'' Smarr stresses that, although computers can be a valuable tool in interactive learning, they are not a prerequisite. Acknowledging that many schools have ``limited budgets, space, and time,'' Smarr says that teachers should make use of resources like NCSA. Community centers and libraries could offer computers for interactive learning as well, Smarr said, especially in inner-city areas in which schools have neither the money for computers nor access to a resource such as NCSA. Last October Smarr made a similar presentation before the National Research Council's Coordinating Council on Education in Washington, DC. He feels that it is important to speak to others about his ideas to encourage change in schools.

High-tech aids for teachers

There are many electronic bulletin boards for teachers, according to Gasaway, in which individuals can request ideas on incorporating music into science courses, for example, or livening up Romeo and Juliet. ``It's also possible to create databases on specific areas, which teachers could simply access through anonymous FTP,'' says Gasaway. ``The more teachers get their hands on it, the more it evolves and changes. You don't have to be that creative as an individual anymore; you don't have the burden of coming up with some entirely new idea to get the kids interested.''

``One of the barriers to the use of network resources,'' says NCSA Director Larry Smarr, ``is having to spend long distance charges with modems to get to a network. One of the great things about Internet is that a local phone call can get you all over the U.S.for free. We need to make sure that every school in the country has at least one Internet access. I think that this notion of how technology interacts with education is something that Vice President Gore and President Clinton are going to place higher and higher on the national agenda.''

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