The goal of education

The goal of education in many parts of the world is “to know, to understand and to apply”. In Malaysia, this has depreciated to the goals of “to know and to remember”. The real goal of education, which is I believe practised in the elite schools of the world is however not merely to “know, understand and apply” but rather to acquire the skills required to be able “to learn, to think and to communicate” because once one is properly equipped with these skills, one can achieve the former goals on one’s own.

These educational goals require an alternative approach to curriculum design. Instead of designing curricula that provide students with content to be known and understood and later applied, the basic approach should be one of discovery. Students should not be told in class what they should know, but rather where to find out what they need to know. They should then be sent away to discover this knowledge on their own, thus simultaneously learning “how-to-learn”. Having discovered this information (knowledge), the student should then be assigned work requiring them to organise and use this knowledge to solve particular problems, thus simultaneously teaching students “how-to-think” as well as “to understand and apply”. The final goal of this elitist curriculum can then be shaped by requiring students to always present their findings and formulations in a variety of ways, thus developing their ability to effectively communicate.