TED Talk #6- "Dave Eggers' wish: Once Upon a School"

Dave Eggers' wish: Once Upon a School was a TED Talk about education. Eggers was talking about a study center with a twist. The twist is that not only can students really concentrate on homework without the distractions found at home but they also can work side-by-side with real writers. The students could have personal help with school work. This ensures that they understand the material they are learning in class. When they know the material, know it, not just are able to regurgitate it, students will be more willing to participate in class. When students are confident in their education and knowledge, they move past the idea of learning for class and teacher, but instead they want to learn and want to complete those education gaps. They are able to feed off each other and share their knowledge, with students of the same age, students of an older age, published writers and volunteer tutors all in close vicinity. They were all helping each other. If students can become more interested and engaged in their learning because of simply giving them one on one help, then why is it that more school systems do not have, adapt or use this obviously successful method to teach any students?

I think that education could go and be more heavily well liked if students felt like it was their choice to learn. If they feel as though the education is their own, and not something being forced down their throat, then students will be much more willing to learn. This related directly to intrinsic motivation. As Dan Pink says in Drive, carrots and sticks do not work in education or in the long run. Is that not what teachers and educators want to do? If feel like teachers should learn with and from their students, not teach at them. Students who love to learn will continue their education into college and this will improve every community. One by one, our local communities will improve and then our world and future is so much brighter. If every single child in the public, charter or private school system had a personal tutor and a place to concentrate and expand their knowledge, then our global community will improve exponentially until we have a world with every child educated and wanting to improve their international home.   

This is not the only free tutor center in America. There is also many other places in the nation participating with the same idea. Students across the nation are becoming interested in school and class work, without even knowing it. Because these tutoring stations are behind fun, gag shops so that students are not entering with the mentality that they are being forced to attend this learning area, but rather a fun place to work on writing. This also relates to one of Pinks points, that design is important. Some schools have tried something like this idea because they have colorful walls and paintings all over the school. But there is still the idea that they are going to school and are stuck in bright, white, bland classrooms; I know that is how I feel. Perhaps if school was taught outside or in engaging rooms, it would feel more like a helpful learning environment to better their education and less like a prison cell. If the design of the curriculum and student schedule was more flexible and less bell-orientated, perhaps the students would be more willing to give up their time and stop fighting it. I know that when I get up at 6:00 am every Monday through Friday, I do not think, “Oh yay! I get to wake up earlier than the sun to learn about parabolas and subordinating conjunctions!” I know that on late start days, I am at least more willing to get out of bed. But that is because it feels like treat, like a carrot. I quickly lost interest in getting up early because I was being forced to, not because it was a suggestion.

Education is highly based on carrots and sticks, a system that has recently been proved that does not work well under long-term circumstances. Students will be motivated to learn under their own terms, not because they think that they have to. The educational system that most school environments use is defective and needs to be changed. Why have we not yet changed it? Why are we still letting students and young children be unintentionally manipulated into hating school and think of learning as a chore? These ideas of education needs to change, it needs to be reinvented to fit the modern day and way of learning. We need education to adapt to the current time to benefit more children overall in the long run.