Saying that students must be passionate about what they’re learning is a large load of bologna!! I disagreed with about half of what the man in our Ted Talk said. Ridiculous and not functional, to be completely honest. I know that I am a bit late posting this, but I just kept forgetting that we were asked to blog about it. Anyways, I do not believe that we need to passionate about what we’re learning all of the time and that it is better for us to be well-rounded.
He made a point that we need to customize schools to our interests and that we need to customize everyone’s education to make sure they “like it.” Because that’s functional. (Eye roll.) No! I know many people who hate writing. They are not passionate about writing and probably never will be. Does that mean that they should never have writing included in their curriculum? No! Writing skills are vital to life! Or if there are people like me, who aren’t particularly fond of science, can I just not learn about it? Sure… that’d be nice. School would be a whole lot easier for me, for sure. But is it really practical? I don’t think that I should just skip out on science because I don’t “like it.”
It’s still extremely important to know the history of our planet and our country, to know basic chemistry and biology to better understand ourselves, to write to communicate; we must know how to do basic math, what music is, and why being physically active is important. Although we may not personally be fond of something doesn’t mean we can just be exempt from learning it.
An argument that he arose was that education should be tailored to our passions… but isn’t that what college is for? Public schools give everyone basic background information that is important to know regardless of a person’s passions or the direction they’d like to take their life and career. College provides various majors with various classes tailored to a person’s passions. It’s nobody else’s fault but their own if they decide to take classes or take a path that they are not passionate about.
It’s important for us to be well-rounded with a plethora of background knowledge. Public schools forcing us to be well-rounded will typically introduce us to our passions. With the vision of passion based education, if we assumed we hated writing, we’d never have to try it and we’d never find out that we adore it. How sad! I’m going to have to bring up a point that Lily made and that it’s not necessarily that people need to only learn about their passions, but we need to encourage people to be passionate about everything that they’re learning no matter their passions. So true! THAT is what would help the world be progressive and proactive as opposed to stagnant in a world of very passionate people.
Maybe think about this. Who would do your plumbing? Or be a garbage man? Or do any sort of dirty job? I cannot name a single person who feels passionately about any of those things… but they’re all vital to the way we live. Does that change anyone’s mind?