If there is one thing that ties everyone in Canada together, it would be education.
At some point in our lives, we’ve attended and graduated high school or pursued a post-secondary education.
We are taught lessons that are said to be invaluable for our lives moving forward, but for all the benefits that educational institutions boast, I’ve often found one underlying issue with how we’re taught in schools.
Conventional ways of teaching emphasizes the accumulation of knowledge over the critical use of it. In this system, students are expected to regurgitate information without viewing it through multiple perspectives or apply it in a practical way.
Having been in the International Baccalaureate diploma program for nearly two years, I have come to appreciate its unique form of teaching, which values critical thinking in the educational process.
We are taught more so how to think than what to think.
Too often, when people base their beliefs off of a biased perspective, they neglect to search for the valid points in other perspectives or look for counter arguments which may discredit their viewpoints.
What I’ve learned in the IB program is that for someone to fully develop their arguments, beliefs, or claims, they must not only examine it through varied sources of differing opinion, but also examine the limitation of those sources.
Each step of the way, critical analysis is implemented, allowing us to stop and question what we learn.
For education to be truly effective, there needs to be a practical aspect to it. A pianist cannot become a majestic performer by simply reading from a textbook on musical theory.
Similarly, what I’ve learned from IB is that in order to become immersed and invested in the courses I take, I have to engage in hands-on activities in order to make full use my acquired knowledge.
This is demonstrated in the multitude of internal assessments which we conduct in each IB course. We are given relative freedom to analytically investigate topics covered within and without our curriculum with elaborate detail.
Conventional education doesn’t always promote extracurricular involvement. When schools do make such activities compulsory, students would often engage out of necessity and not interest.
Consequently, there would likely be no continuation of such activities as soon as a quota is met. Thus, activities undertaken through self-interest would persist longer.
A strong work ethic has to be accompanied by a degree of interest in any subject, whether it is academic or athletic.
What I learned from IB is that the information we learn in school is as important as the methods we use to learn them.
In a society where we encounter information and ideas that are highly controversial and partisan, it is pivotal that we are prepared to scrutinize such information using our ability to think critically.
David Wang is
a student at
Garibaldi secondary.