Education has two primary functions: to establish hierarchy and to prepare students for the academic realm.

The former, hierarchies is, on the whole, a great idea. When I mean hierarchies, I do not refer to power politics, or the ‘patriarchy,’ I refer solely and exclusively to the socio-economic system where a chain of command is shaped by experience, talent and work ethic. It is an efficient and effective system because each and every individual involved in it can maximise their talents whilst being reminded that they can always be more. It motivates all to be active and passionate in order to raise their socio-economic position whilst simultaneously contributing to society from such efforts.

The latter role of education, to prepare students for further academics, is good but also limited. Academia has many notable merits; in particular it serves the vital role of understanding the world in which we live – its strengths and weaknesses, how it operates, and what it is. Yet the primary problem with the academic realm is that it is unfortunately a small self-contained bubble that at best operates as an advisory body to select committees and politicians. 

The function and benefits of education, however, should not be limited to hierarchies and academics, those should be its by-product, not its most notable. Rather education should be about getting students to engage with the present, looking at the world’s problems and contemplating solutions to them. Being educated should not mean being effective at regurgitating engrained arguments and memorised facts; but to be active in looking at problems, utilising knowledge and interpretation to come up with possible solutions.

Being educated should not mean being effective at regurgitating engrained arguments and memorised facts

For students, education should be exciting and enthralling – not something they are forced to do, or because it is where they can socialise. The poor state of education has been illuminated by the pandemic: if education was truly as brilliant as it could possibly be, students would have mourned and felt deflated from leaving it prematurely, not rejoicing at being freed from it due to a plague enveloping the globe that snatched the life from their loved ones before they got the chance to even say goodbye. 

When a student writes in an essay-based subject (like Politics, Geography, History, or English), they should not be doing so ‘because it is what the exam board demands’ or it is ‘what you have to do,’ but because they want to. Because they appreciate that an essay is the forum for intellectual discussion; where they can engage with problems in the world that they care about and can write solutions to. All essay-based subjects, in fact, should be centred around this premise: finding solutions.

For example, Geography should be engaged with climate change, teaching students about why it has happened and what has been done to counter it, students then can write essays on what the next steps should be. Or in Economics, students should be taught about the types of economic systems that exist – or have existed – and are presented with the problems that the economy has been facing since the 2008 Financial Crash, to which they can write potential solutions to – ranging from tweaking capitalism to completely overhauling it.

The solutions that students provide likely will not be overly effective, but that is not the point. Education is not about being ‘right,’ it is about getting students to engage with their intelligence and actively looking at the world’s problems and thinking about ways to solve them. 

In truth, the world is falling apart

Such a mentality is urgent because, in truth, the world is falling apart – environmentally, economically, and socially – and it is not going to get better any time soon. Part of the problem is that everyone is so engaged with spreading the word of its problems that no one actually thinks of how to solve them. It is the plight that social media and “clicktivism” has entrenched – encouraging everyone to share stories about racism, humanitarian crises, sexual (and domestic) abuse and harassment – but never on how to actually solve such issues.  Indeed, most people are more likely to kick down a solution, than to actually think of one. This can only be changed if education changes.

In the UK, there are, officially, 67.1 million inhabitants; should education be reformed to make people consider solving problems, (rather than moan about them, or wasting their energy on a pointless and essentially intellectually-void 50-minute ‘essay’) then if each person considered just one solution to one problem then there could be 67.1 million solutions to the problems the UK, and the wider world, faces. Imagine the difference: the world would genuinely become better, and all of us would be happier, active, and intellectually ambitious. It would inspire an ever-going cycle of meaningful progress where we are challenged to always be better, enabled to fulfil our potential and to stretch ourselves, as well as appreciate how far we have come as individuals and what we have achieved for the world. 

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