The Rise of Foobots

Futuristically, considering the constant advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Digitalization, in the upcoming time if one needs a job, they have to have traits of creative and critical thinking; with the right set of social skills ingrained in them. However, the forced education system that we have is producing foobots (foolish robots), coercing them to behave like machines and adhere to monotony, just like it did to the previous generations.

It is evident in recent research that children are the most productive when their learning experience is synced with their natural exuberance. It ignites energy and the element of curiosity in them. So why the regularity of attendance and being disciplined are the only factors that are religiously given importance by educators these days?

The wise academics are the ones who through their intellect, creativity and inspiration nourish minds of children to influence innate talent in them. They never encourage the culture where foobots with fixed mindsets are being produced. Instead, they motivate children to improve themselves in their weak areas and keep growing within their capacities.

These days’ educators are just suppressing inspiration, creativity and confidence by emphasizing their students to follow a fixed mindset. In this mindset, a foobot believes they were born with a limited set of skills and ability to learn and that’s it. They can only reach a certain level of potential and that’s it. On contrary in the growth mindset a child would learn to improve, becomes audacious to take up new challenges and fearlessly experiment new things.

As parents and educators, people need to realize to teach their children that in life winning is not about being an A grader all the time. Instead, it is about being able to think out of the box, to challenge the status-quo and to never quit even if they fail. Today just like electronic devices become obsolete after a certain period of time, be it individuals or the children, we all need constant upgrading. If a person becomes stagnant at any aspect of their life and ceases to adapt to new things, they get left behind.

Our government claims to induce large amounts of students to promote education, but their curriculums and assessment tests are so limited, that they make any child estrange whose mind doesn’t work as per their requirement.

Our system is only following a precedent set by previous predecessors. Collaboration and critical thinking are being discouraged whereas being disciplined and enforcement of harder rules is imposed on children that subsequently inflicts stress in them. Imagine the disappointment when a child beaming energy, excitement and imagination being confined to his classroom seat, just like some battery operated robot for the whole day. There are many schools who pressurize children with their extensive syllabus that they even take the sports periods of students, to get done with their course of the day. By doing this they ignore how baffled a student becomes due to no other activity than just sitting in the classroom. They just force children to sit on their benches all day, behaving identically and to give out the similar product. In case if they fail to do so they get punished.

When encouraged to exude their natural creativity and explore curiosity, children take more interest in learning new things and practice their spontaneity. Unfortunately, our school system is imposing redundant teaching methodologies, suppressing their natural instincts, forcing inner facts and testing the life out of them.

Our curriculums need to be re-designed with respect to the advancements and innovations of the current century, to equip children with the latest skills and knowledge, from an early age.

It is comprehensible that there is no single system for teaching children well. Although all the best curriculums have one thing in common, they pave ways for them to explore richer avenues, through their own experimentation, by developing their interests instead of programming them with something they are not interested in.

As adults we advance on different fronts of life through experience, then why is that in classrooms children are made to sit just to get their minds stuffed with hard facts and figures? Why isn’t the culture of active participation of students’ in group projects, where they can experiment and test their skills is encouraged? Why are we following the old school curriculum when there are plenty of advanced teaching methodologies to adapt to today?