It is an obvious truth that the school curriculums have always been open for discussion, especially considering the fact that how schools are blunting the skills of even the sharpest pen in the box, in this case, in the class.
Despite every school having its own weak and strong points, I strongly support the idea to develop a brand new idea of what a school is. According to this point of view, Elon Musk did one of the best possible investments to guarantee at least a generation of his students to have the similar creativity and technological skills. But what are the missing parts of education systems currently used all over the globe, such as the one we have in Turkey?
First of all, the innovative curriculum designed by Elon Musk has no language, music, or sports lessons, which may sound not so benefitial at first. On the other hand, this way students can focus on certain complex types of topics including building battling robots, discussing nuclear politics, and planning how to defeat evil AIs without being forced to run a parkour or play one or two songs with the flute flawlessly. By omitting the so-called-unnecessary lessons from the curriculum, Elon Musk achieves drawing a great attention on the remaining lessons.
Some people may argue that the language is a necessary aspect of our lives. However, imagine an alien who travelled billions of light years. Now take away the sense of hearing from it and make it blind as well, while adding johnston organ found in insects. Now, the language becomes definitely useless. The only thing we share is our knowledge of physics, since it managed to travel with a spaceship, and knowledge of math because it made the necessary calculations to visit Earth, assuming the trip was purposeful and not coincidental. Therefore, our deaf and blind friend can only use our common knowledge and decide wether or not it should blow up the whole planet, which proves that language lesson is not necessary in order to communicate. In addition, we will be using computer-based translators in a near future.
It may be stated that some of the sudents do not share the similar interests, this is exactly why I believe that there should be multiple types of curriculums for different fields. As an example, if a student is interested in engineering, they should be able to attend to the lessons only included in the mentioned field. In my opinion, funding an organisation worldwide can be a great solution in order to detect the most ideal curriculum that is possible for our time for every field of education, especially for science, math, engineering and technology. Advising governments to follow this curriculum formed with the help of professionals from all over the globe should be the highest priority of this organisation, so that we can provide the world with the same education opportunities. Obviously, this requires a great contribution from every government. Thus, some sacrifices are necessary in order to achieve the educational integrity as a world.
In spite of the fact that remembering detailed knowledge of the things that will not be preserved in our minds for a long term is not efficient, some people still insist on having a curriculum based on students’ memorization skills. Elon Musk once again proves that education without memorization is a brilliant yet easily attainable goal. In his school, Ad Astra, students are given all the data needed, especially the ones that they cannot research all on their own, in order to solve a problem. There is no exams, no pressure, no names to memorize. Just raw data for students to process and use in their ideas. That is the main goal we would like to achieve, not trying to fill students’ minds with excess amount of information and preventing them from seeing the most innovative and efficient solutions.
Elon Musk’s ideas are definitely not flawless, and there is always room for improvement. However, he sets a great example to reach every students’ dreams: An education without major drawbacks, such as trying to recall each and every piece of information, pressure caused by countless exams, confusion caused by the enormous numbers of lessons, problems in focusing because of the monotone lessons, humiliation due to any grades deciding the ‘value’ of students and many more… I believe that this awareness must be spread among not only people with enough financial power, but also among those who live in poverty as well. Qualified education is not a luxury, it is a must.