The most significant
thing that I got out of reading this text is that I understand what reasonable
arguments there are against today’s American education system. I know that many
people are dissatisfied with the American education system, for example, the
fact that many people resent the number of standardized tests that students
have to take and are only increasing in number per year. But I never really
heard a logical reasoning behind why the education system came to be like this,
and why so many people are dissatisfied with it when it has been basically the
same format for so long. This essay really clarifies the difference between
credentialing and crowdsource thinking, although the author does give unclear
examples (especially when talking about crowdsource thinking examples). The two
are simply different methods for finding a solution to a problem, where
crowdsourcing gets the group to work together, sort of like an assembly line
where everybody’s role is equally important. Credentialing is the ideology that
the expert should be the leader and the expert’s opinion is most important,
thus the expert can provide more to the group in terms of finding a solution.
The author then
goes on to give statistics, numbers, and facts that support and endorse the
method of crowdsourcing, even listing it as a reason as to why the US rankings
in education is declining and we are not a strong forerunner anymore. Then, she
gives two anecdotes, one about her mother-in-law and the other about a
struggling student who, thanks to crowdsourcing is now no longer perceived as
“that struggling student” but a creative artist who still struggles with
standardized tests, but is much happier and is doing better in class.
I found it
interesting (off topic) that Thomas Jefferson was one of the advocates for the
education system to be this way, to conform young people because he was very
democratic and I thought one of the ideals of democracy was to accept the wide and
varying opinions of the people! But if people are evaluated only in a specific
way when everybody has unique strengths and weaknesses, fewer opinions from
different perspectives will come out. But, just my opinion, though.
Truly, from a democratic viewpoint that embraces a wider range of public base, a standardized education system can be demoralizing. Yet, I have to highlight the distant time period when the system was establish. As Davidson emphasizes, the standardized system was provided for children of the rural area to gain a basic knowledge base, but not to advance and specialize in their respective attributes. After all, the industrial revolution hasn't urbanized the country and a standardized education system seems to be the most efficient way of delivering fundamental knowledges. And that is why Davidson proposed a new teaching style: the general public needs to work together to create a multi-directional learning. But I noticed that you refer to "crowdsourcing" as "an assembly line", which is associated to uniformity, the contrary of Davidson's proposal. Does this imply that crowdsourcing can potentially aid the specialization through the process similar to an assembly line? Consequentially, the two terms shouldn't be so distinctively placed in two opposing ends.
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