Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Perhaps we should stop teaching kids to find the answers and switch to teaching them how to find the questions.

I read much these days from older people complaining about how younger people just look up the answers on Google. These younger people don’t know anything; they don’t learn anything.

Well, the world has changed. The knowledge of mankind is at our fingertips on the Internet. Give me a question, I can find the answer. Show me a younger person who can’t do the same, and I will be terribly disappointed.

We have collided with a brick wall called the education system. In school, teachers ask questions and students find the answers. In the past, finding the answers meant reading the texts, sometimes many texts, and formulating answers. Sometimes it meant calculating the answers after reading the texts that taught calculations.

Nowadays, finding answers is almost trivial, and that infuriates teachers.

Okay, what do we do? The Internet has made the second half of education almost trivial.

Perhaps, we should shift education:

Teachers stop giving the students the questions.

Teachers start teaching students how to find the questions.

I doubt anyone will adopt my recommendation for education reform. Nonetheless, I give it.