Sam 1 Sam Hao Mr. Hogan Grade 10 Honors Composition January 14, 2021 A Necessary Transformation to Maker Education There is a saying in Chinese philosophy that “a man of studying is superior to others,” and this profound concept is still a lingering idea in our society. Recently, the Taiwanese Ministry of Education passed the “108 Syllabus”, which aims to encourage holistic education. Since then, most public schools in Taiwan started to focus more on “learning autonomy”, which includes the core values of responsibility, self-improvement, systematic thinking, problem-solving, innovation, and execution. Specifically, they raised the ratio of elective courses to about a third and also increased the importance of students’ academic and extracurricular activity. Being one of the most outstanding international programs in terms of university application, Wego High School’s International Education Program (IEP) still focuses too much on academic learning rather than the ability of learning autonomy, which is now an essential aspect in the new syllabus. The unchanged learning environment, resources, and lack of academic guidance in Wego eventually hinder students’ development of learning autonomy. As a student of the IEP classes for middle school and high school, I initially looked forward to the diversity of the course contents. However, over time, I realized that the program is only “teaching with international materials” but not “educating with international ways and concepts.” Unlike students in other international schools or programs, we were required to study both domestic and international content. Under this great schoolwork pressure, we didn’t have the time to explore our interests and even apply the knowledge we’ve learned on these interests. Sam 2 In addition, the abundant but petty tests and quizzes sometimes made us become incognizant of the learning goals and purposes of these subjects. It somehow reduced our sense of responsibility in studying because we would spend our time preparing these tests rather than sketching learning plans and executing them on our own. More importantly, tests are learning tools that require us to answer questions in standardized ways. This directly goes against the significance of learning autonomy, which encourages students to propose a problem and solve it. During this self-asking and answering process, students can think dynamically and understand the content more comprehensively. It’s because it demands more effort and understanding of the concepts to find reasonable questions. Correspondingly, students will also have a stronger memory of these concepts. To raise the ability of systematic thinking, problem-solving, and execution, experiments are important and indispensable, especially in the science field. During my entire school career in Wego, it’s rare for us to do experiments related to the classwork. Many teachers view experiments as a redundancy because they won’t contribute to students’ learning processes of new concepts and knowledge. However, it’s extremely important to understand the application and implementation of the knowledge in real life, or else it would be insignificant to learn new concepts. Additionally, it cultivates students’ ability to execute an experiment and solve problems by thinking methodically. Without experimenting, students could never know some obstacles that exist in real-life operations. Moreover, the school doesn’t even provide any living technology or hand-on courses, which let the students lose a chance to explore how their interests can be implemented into real lives and become ones’ future careers. Without these classes, it’s hard for us to arouse some innovative ideas and put them into practice. Many people, mostly parents and teachers that support full academic courses, refute the idea that schools should reform from a traditional education system to a holistic approach Sam 3 because they may think that grades and scores are the most useful tools for high school or university applications. However, education doesn’t just serve for the first 20 or 30 years of our lives. It is a process that affects our whole lives. Maybe it seems insignificant now, but it will assist us to live and work with our ideal careers. Thus, Wego’s International Education Program should make alterations to the system of learning autonomy. To build an education system with both academic and hand-on courses, Wego should provide the students with “makerspace” under the frame of “maker education”. Maker education is often referred to as STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) learning, and is a kind of problem-based and project-based learning that requires hands-on and the ability of problem-solving. Relatedly, makerspace is a workspace that provides maker education and experiential learning. With the establishment of maker education and makerspace at school, students can make, learn, explore, as well share their creative ideas and implement them into feasible projects under the assistance of teachers of the related subject’s profession. After a long time developing the contemporary education system, schools like Wego should view their system with the original intention of providing education. For me, knowledge plays the role of applying my ideas and innovations into practical plans. Schools shouldn’t be suppressing student’s innovations, just as the famous American businesswoman, Sara Blakely, has said, “Every person in their life has had a million-dollar idea.” Once this maker education becomes available, not only can students fulfill their dreams, but these innovative ideas will also make the world a better place!
