Kirpalani Akash Unit 1 Essay CHV2O

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Reform Education!

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CHV2O-1!
Akash Kirpalani!
Mr. Rehill!
October 20, 2014!

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Today knowledge is ubiquitous, constantly changing, and growing exponentially.
There is no distinct competitive advantage in knowing what the person next to you knows only, what the world cares about is the usability of this knowledge. The knowledge that children are encouraged to soak up today is comprised of memorization of planets, province capitals, periodic table of elements, these can only take the student’s so far in today’s landscape, though few adults recall what they learned as a child. Having an academic structure, which is tailored for the expeditiously altering world is essential to a country’s economic growth and effecting competing in the global market place. The current education system is not suited for the rapidly changing society, as a result it is necessary to reform our system, this is a political issue that is impacting students (the future of the world), because the system is insufficiently fostering innovation, depriving children of knowledge to be financially literate , and barely utilizing technology as a learning resources. !

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“The western world’s last competitive advantage is its ability to innovate, this ability is at risk as a result of the countries lack lustre education system.” said Tony
Wagner, Harvard Innovation Education Fellow.1 Our current education system, deprives the future generation of the most fundamental element to succeed, innovation. The following characteristics prevail in our current setup of learning are individual achievement is encouraged, specialization is celebrated, averting risk is a normality, and external incentives drive learning. Individual achievement poses a large hazard as currently students spend a large amount of their time on improving their grades to compete with their peers, but innovation is largely about collaborating, because problems are too complex to solve or innovate by oneself. Specialization can be threatening to the innovation culture, because as the Google Talent Director once said
“If there’s one thing that educators need to understand, it’s that you can neither understand nor solve problems within the context and bright lines of subject content.”2
Learning to be an innovator is about crossing subject boundaries and regarding the problems and their solutions from numerous perspectives. In schools avoiding risk is a standard, students are taught in school to avert mistakes. Their challenge is to figure out what the teacher is asking for, and the teacher must find out want the super indent or the province demands. This instills a compliance driven, risk evading nature. Though, innovation is about taking the next wager and learning from the errors. Many of the world’s largest companies, attribute their success to trying not listening to anyone’s comments and taking a risk. In a thesis paper made by a current Stanford University
PHD, they have distilled the most necessary strengths to succeed (financially and with relationships) and in life and the number one element is risk taking, proving the

1

Erica Swallow, “Creating Innovator’s: Why America’s Education System Is Obsolete,” Forbes,
March. 2012. http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericaswallow/2012/04/25/creating-innovators/,
(accessed October 19, 2012). !
2

Swallow, “Creating Innovator’s: Why America’s Education System Is Obsolete.”

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importance of risk taking.3 The system in place uses the ‘carrot and stick’ approach to motivate children in school, which rewards the student by giving them an ‘A’ (carrot) and punishes them by giving them an ‘F’ (stick) . Innovators must have inner motivation and schools should foster the curiosity inside these students to create an intrinsic drive. This transition from a passive education to an innovative culture can only be achieved with political will and government policy has to be a key contributor in influencing the action, many governmental advocates must assist in changing the constitutional act signed in
Canada that assigned education as a provincial responsibility and make it a national priority. Canadian economic growth is current stagnate at below 1%4, but if “we encourage innovation when educating the youth we will thereby encouraging future productivity, boosting our productivity and overall economic growth.” said Carol Wilding,
Director of the Toronto Regional Board of Trade.5 As a matter of fact, analysts from the
Toronto Regional Board of Trade predict that the economic output from teaching children how to innovate could result in 5-7% economic growth in the years to come.6
This is of great political significance, because if Canada is able to boost our economic growth, it will to raise the standard of living and employ more people. There is also a great social output, because if there is a generation of youth is trained from a young age on how to innovate, it would help create solutions to various problems stemming from medical to ethical. One strong political perspective comes from parents who do not want their children to be the ‘lab rats’ for a new system of teaching as it involves many risks and education is too critical to be gambled with. Contrary to want the parents may say this form of educating children on how to innovate has been tested numerous times with positive results. A prominent example is High-Tech High, which uses project based learning and includes most of the characteristics of an innovator (as listed above) in their curriculum. High Tech High has had a large amount of their student body go to the university of their choice and be extremely successful in their chosen career. It is evident that we must reform our education system, to teach innovation in curriculum, as a result this is a political issue that must be addressed.!

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Personal finance is an extremely important concept in life, which the structure of education does not encompass. Financial literacy is the ability implement your knowledge to manage you money in the best possible manner. The current system does not remotely teach any type of personal finance skills. Causing many adults are not financially illiterate, as a matter of fact forty percent of adults in Canada and the United
3

Tom Byers, “Characteristics of an Innovator,” Stanford University, October 20,1997,! http://web.stanford.edu/class/e140/e140a/content/Characteristics.html, (accessed !
October 18, 2014).

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“Canada GDP Growth Rate,” Trading Economics, n.d. http://www.tradingeconomics.com/ canada/gdp-growth,( accessed October 12, 2014).
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Madhavi Acharya-Tom Yew, “Is Teaching Innovation The Path to Prosperity,” The Toronto Star,
March 28, 2014, http://www.thestar.com/, (accessed October 19, 2014).
Madhavi Acharya-Tom Yew, “Is Teach Innovation The Path to Prosperity.”

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states of America admit that they do not know how to manage money properly and 56% of adults do not know how to budget.7 Keep in mind that these are just the people who admit to not knowing. In a society, where money is a key asset, it is necessary to learn how to manage it. The President 's Advisory Council on Financial Literacy wrote in its
2008 Annual Report to the President that "by almost any measure, today 's schoolchildren are ill-equipped to understand personal finance and make their way in the modern financial world.”8 Debt is a large concern, 75% of Canadian adults are in debt and the average debt per a capita is $16,000.9 In addition, many attribute the economic crisis in North America to the financial illiteracy of North Americans. Ben
Bernanke, Chairman of the Federal Reserve System in the US has stated that, "one of the key lessons of the financial crisis and the large amount of personal debt is the importance of financial literacy. Teaching students economic principles will help them as citizens understand and make choices about many of the critical issues confronting our nation.”10 Stephen Harper, the Canadian Prime Minister, pushes a similar cause by stressing, “the importance of financial of literacy has become increasingly important and should be taught in all schools around Canada.”11 Teaching financial literacy should not only be a provincial responsibility, but a national obligation. The political significance of teaching personal finance in schools is that it will allow future generations to realize the importance of paying of debt and because many know about personal finance, the future germination may be able to avoid another financial meltdown as seen above by the quote by Ben Bernanke. A key political perspective is one of the teachers, in a recent survey conducted many teachers stated that is the parents responsibility to teach their children about financial literacy, but this statement has a large flaw which is if the parents are financially illiterate will the child also be financially illiterate. Therefore teaching financial literacy in our curriculum has extreme importance in life. !

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Technology in education is a somewhat new field, but has countless benefits. There are many methods to use technology in the classroom, but few schools fully utilize this new
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Amy Rosen, “Teaching Financial Literacy at Home and in School,” Forbes, March 31, 2014, http://www.forbes.com/sites/amyrosen/2014/03/31/teaching-financial-literacy-at-home-andschool/, (accessed October 19, 2014) .
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Jean Folger, “Teaching Financial Literacy to Teens,” Investopedia,n.d. http:// www.investopedia.com/university/teaching-financial-literacy-teens/, (accessed October 18,
2014)
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Luan Lasalle, “Three-quarters of Canadians polled are in debt,”Financial Post, October 29,
2013,http://business.financialpost.com/2013/10/29/canada-debt-rbc-survey/?__federated=1,
(accessed October 18, 2014).
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Jean Folger, “Teaching Financial Literacy to Teens.”

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Government of Canada,“Harper Government Stresses the Importance of Financial Literacy”
Government of Canada. n.d, http://www.fin.gc.ca/n14/14-059-eng.asp.(accessed October 19,
2014).!

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Our current system lacks large use of technology, though some schools have started to implement laptops, but they are mostly used for note taking and other medial tasks which could be achieved with pen and paper. The first element and one of the largest is that digital literacy in this day and age is becoming ever-so useful and using technology can promote and enhance a students digital literacy. In fact 75% of jobs in
North America need some type of digital literacy.12 Secondly, technology can be used to radicalize the classroom, by using a flipped classroom approach, students are able to have initial exposure to the content outside of school via instructional videos, then during class they are able to practice these concepts with the teacher’s help. The benefits for the students are that they are able to learn at their own pace by the ability pause the video and re-watch certain sections of the video that they do not understand.
It also allows students to ask questions to their teachers during the application of these concepts to remove any confusion. The flipped classroom approach has been implemented in many schools, one of the most famous success was in a New Jersey
Public School, where the overall GPA (grade point average) was a D, but with the utilization of the flipped classroom approach, the overall GPA rose to a B.13 In addition,
Epistemic games can be implemented in schools, which are computer games that put you in a real life simulation to help students learn to apply the course material concepts in innovative ways. This allows students to role play professionals and apply course material in a way that is engaging and encourages thinking outside the box. The first implementation of epistemic games was at the MIT Sloan School of Management, where tests show that students have a 40% increase in retention of the concepts and
Schaffer, an MIT professor, observed, “that students were more interested and thought about the concepts in a different manner”.14 The political significance is that the use of technology in schools could help millions of students who live in distressed areas to improve digital literacy and assist in increasing GPA and student retention of concepts, helping to level the playing field and give everyone equal opportunity to go to university.
Providing technology to schools with underprivileged, many say can result in theft, but the importance of educating the children with technology can supersede any risk. The political perspective of parents is that technology can distract children from learning in class, but a point brought up is that if the student wants to be off task he will be, which takes no consideration about the presence of technology. Though if technology is the reason that a student is off task, the benefits outweigh the disadvantages. Implementing technology in the Canadian education system will need a national curriculum, but this change could potentially help millions. Changing our method of teaching to include technology is necessary to ensure a better future. !

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United States Government, “Fact Sheet: Digital Literacy,” United States Department of
Commerce, May 13, 2014, http://www.commerce.gov/news/fact-sheets/2011/05/13/fact-sheetdigital-literacy, (accessed October 19, 2014).
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Jen Maxfield, “Flipped Classroom Approach in NJ School Sees Success,” NBC New York,
October 16, 2013, http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/Flipped-Classroom-New-MilfordHigh-School-New-Jersey-Homework-in-Class-227889131.html, (accessed October 26, 2014).
14

Robert Torres, Learning on a 21st Century Platform,(New York: ProQuest, 2009), p.12.

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The present system of learning is not preparing children for the quickly altering world, as a result it is necessary to reform our education structure, this is a political issue that is impacting learners, because the present method of educating is inadequately cultivating innovation, lacking education in personal finance, and unable to take advantage of the use technology as a method to educate. Changing the academic structure to encompass innovation, financial literacy and technology will mean government intervention in a way that would create a national curriculum, this change could help Canada compete in a global marketplace and allow our living standards to rise in future generations. We do not have as many people as countries such as USA,
China or India, but imagine how powerful the next generation of Canadians could be if they have the ability to innovate, financial literacy and are antiquated with technology. A brighter future will have to start with education. !

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Bibliography!

Acharya-Tom Yew, Madhavi . “Is Teaching Innovation The Path to Prosperity.” The Toronto Star,
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March 28, 2014. http://www.thestar.com/.(accessed October 19, 2014).!

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Byers, Tom. “Characteristics of an Innovator.” Stanford University, October 20,1997.!
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http://web.stanford.edu/class/e140/e140a/content/Characteristics.html. (accessed !
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October 18, 2014).!

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Carnegie Mellon University. “Flipping the Classroom for Active Learning.” Carnegie Mellon !
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Univeristy. n.d. http://www.cmu.edu/teaching/technology/flippingtheclass/index.html.!
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(accessed October 10, 2014). !

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Folger, Jean. “Teaching Financial Literacy to Teens.” Investopedia. n.d.!
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http://www.investopedia.com/university/teaching-financial-literacy-teens/. (accessed !
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October 18, 2014).!

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Government of Canada. “Harper Government Stresses the Importance of Financial Literacy.” !
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Government of Canada. n.d. http://www.fin.gc.ca/n14/14-059-eng.asp. (accessed !
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October 19, 2014).!

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Lasalle, Luan. “Three-quarters of Canadians polled are in debt.” Financial Post, October 29, !
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2013. http://business.financialpost.com/2013/10/29/. (accessed October 18, 2014).!

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Levasseur, Iran. “Epistemic Games Are the Future of Learning.” PBS, February, 2012. ! !

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http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/. (accessed October 20, 2014)!

Maxfield, Jen. “Flipped Classroom Approach in NJ School Sees Success.” NBC New York, !
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October 16, 2013. http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/Flipped-Classroom. ! !
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(accessed October 26, 2014).!

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Rosen, Amy. “Teaching Financial Literacy at Home and in School.” Forbes, March 31, 2014.!
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http://www.forbes.com/sites/amyrosen/2014/03/31/teaching-financial-literacy-at-school/ !
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(accessed October 19, 2014)!

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Swallow Erica. “Creating Innovator’s: Why America’s Education Sy stem Is Obsolete.” Forbes, !
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March. 2012. http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericaswallow/2012/04/25/creating-innovators/. !
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(accessed October 19, 2012). !

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Torres, Robert. Learning on a 21st Century Platform.New York: ProQuest, 2009), p.12.!
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United States Government. “Fact Sheet: Digital Literacy.” United States Department of ! !
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Commerce, May 13, 2014. http://www.commerce.gov/news/fact-sheets/2011/05/13/. !
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(accessed October 19, 2014). !

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Unknown Author. “Canada GDP Growth Rate.” Trading Economics. n.d.!
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http://www.tradingeconomics.com/canada/gdp-growth.( accessed October 12, 2014).!

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Bibliography: March 28, 2014. http://www.thestar.com/.(accessed October 19, 2014).! ! October 18, 2014).! ! (accessed October 10, 2014). ! ! October 18, 2014).! ! October 19, 2014).! ! http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/. (accessed October 20, 2014)! Maxfield, Jen ! October 16, 2013 ! (accessed October 26, 2014).! ! (accessed October 19, 2014)! ! (accessed October 19, 2012) Torres, Robert. Learning on a 21st Century Platform.New York: ProQuest, 2009), p.12.! ! Commerce, May 13, 2014. http://www.commerce.gov/news/fact-sheets/2011/05/13/. ! ! (accessed October 19, 2014). ! ! http://www.tradingeconomics.com/canada/gdp-growth.( accessed October 12, 2014).!