The power of education | Rufaro Hoto | TEDxUniversiteitVanAmsterdam
[Music] education is the passport to the Future for it belongs to those who prepare for it today Malcolm X those of you see to the crowd today please raise your hand if you believe in that statement just as I thought it's mostly unanimous this is because education is the fabric of society that binds us together that helps us understand each other and that helps us understand the world today I'm going to begin with a story a story quite dear to my heart a story about my parents both my parents grew up dirt pool in Zimbabwe my father grew up in a village on the outskirts of Zimbabwe and my mother grew up in the high density areas of Harari the capital city although my parents grew up dirt poor that wasn't the reality they were going to face for the rest of their lives as I am a living Testament to that fact as I stand here with you guys today my father was a mathematical genius growing up he was academic Ally sound in every other subject but for him math was King my mother had the reading ability of an 18y old when she was 12 she would often tell me how she would read a thousand page books in the libraries of St Dominic's in M days I mean if I could read a thousand page book in M days I think my exam result would be vastly different so you see my father went on to graduate The Bachelor of mathematics from the University of Zimbabwe and went on to be one of the first actuaries in Zimbabwe as well he then currently he is now the CEO of a top insurance company in Zimbabwe my mother out of high school went to work in banking and now is in top Management in insurance company as well what I'm trying to illustrate here today is that this is the great power of Education the power to lift people out of poverty Garner Innovation raise awareness and more but education can continue to improve it can be better how can it be better I look at it like this education is like a river when it flows it's beautiful and the water is drinkable but when it's stagnant it's dirty and you really don't want to drink that water so let's explore how education can continue to flow and be beautiful education has followed a similar system and structure over the last 100 years in the sense that education has become more accessible it has led people to reach higher education and people have been climbing up the educational ladder as we've been going up in education you move from early childhood education which is nursery school and you move from Nursery School to primary school and then to high school in these periods of learning you go from lesson to lesson and information is passed onto you from teacher to student from this information that is passed on to you you have to study for this exam in a timed fashion in periods of learning people have different study methods some people study by reading the book some people study by cramming 10 years worth of past papers and some people use their like colored pens to like write notes and then they highlight and also colored pens and their books hoping that the colors will magically make them remember all the content of the exam this is the education of the classroom and long hours the pros of this system are it makes you disciplined and punctual it allows you to have a grading certification whereby when you're graded you get to compete with your phow peers which Fosters a lot of competition the certification part of it is that you have a recognizable statement that that you can take anywhere in the world allowing you to start from where you left off this is the certification element these are the three best things about the current education of the classroom and long hours but I can't talk about the pros only if we want to talk about improving education I've got to talk about the cons the cons of the education system right now is that it is not Innovative for the student it is merely the p of information from teacher to student secondly the large classrooms we have lecture halls with 300 people in them and this lectur is sitting at the bottom of the classroom shouting to the guy at the back over there trying to speak to him when he speaking to his friends saying man I want to leave this lecture man then you have the one curriculum the idea that you have to focus on a certain set of subjects that makes sense to some educational policy guy and when you follow that you will come out with a certain type of degree the lastly one test the idea that we all test in the same way we follow a certain set of rules we follow a certain set of subjects and we then follow a certain grading criteria of those subjects this doesn't allow for people this is not as accessible as we would hope to be because not everyone tests in the same way for example you can't expect a monkey to know how to swim and it's never been in water yes I know it's a weird comparison but what often happens with people because of this kind of testing is people don't really interactively engage the information however instead they move to use the cpf method during the exam now I'm not sure if you know the cpf method it is but it's cram pass and forget the education of the classroom and long hours now now that we've looked at all of this how can we move forward how do we gauge where we want to go and what we want to bring out of the future you see we have to look at the definition of Education itself education is the passing of information the acquiring of knowledge and the learning of skills values beliefs and habits when we look at the core definition we have to really explore how can we shake it so that it can come together so I believe there three concrete steps that we can tackle to really achieve a better educational future number one develop an autonomous system that accounts for the individual differences among people number two we have to teach teachers to to interactively engage with their students and not merely pass information on and number three we have to Foster critical thinking within our students you know the little kid in like fourth grade who's always asking questions that has to continue throughout the educational experience but as most of you would probably guess or if any educational advisor is in here that is an initiative on the top of many boards in here in the Ed in the educational system in the sense that these initiatives are already trying to be tackled but what really is the problem why why do we not feel like there's a movement happening to tackle these initiatives this is because everything is largely slow there's a bureaucratic process it starts at the top with governmental initiatives being made these governmental initiatives uh come down the bottom and finally get to the universities the schools the municip alties by the time it gets to this point new initiatives are coming around and new initiatives are trickling down do you see the problem the problem here is speed so as Ted Talk is about giving that one idea I believe that we need to decentralize education what I mean by this is we need to move the educational decision-making power away from the top and bring it back down to localities municipalities and the people who are involved in the day-to-day teachings of the education and the students this is important because it will leads to faster decisions being made and policies being implemented faster this allows us to truly realize the power of education so let's tear apart the old fabric bring about this new Fabric and re-envision a powerful education for the future thank you [Applause]