Outside the School Box

As an educator in Korea, I am constantly frustrated by my own limitations as a teacher, but I'm even more exasperated by undoing the damage done to my students by teachers who came before me.  While a complete overhaul of the Korean education system might not happen before the apocalypse, I may not be too flummoxed to turn things around by implementing more critical thinking into my curricula.

You see, the Confucian ideal is not dead here, and an unfortunate aspect of education here is simply: listen and apply.  The instructors pass on whatever knowledge they have gleaned and the students absorb and regurgitate.  It is a very linear way of teaching, not to mention lazy, and I refuse to fall into the same trap.  But how can I forge ahead and stay organized?

Rote memorization of text or numerals has been shown again and again to be an incredibly ineffective way to educate, and students find it not only a useless method, but a damaging way of inflicting stress on otherwise prime minds.

Critical thinking and problem solving is the way forward in education in Korea, and in the world.  These are the tools of future innovation since they force teachers to loosen the grip on the hammer and allow the students to learn from an accidental thumbnail strike.  They open up the possibility for creativity but more importantly they extend the gift of failure.  For every synapse that gets fired on a new and different, but ultimately wrong pathway, there is a lesson learned.

For me, the struggle involves taking a step back, forfeiting a modicum of control and letting students find their independence but I also require a set of tools that I don't often use: methods of teaching better critical thinking and problem solving that include a technological interface. 

These are the points that I believe to be the most important in my classes and these are also the points that I most need to improve.