A Creative Approach to Higher Education picture

David Pogue, speaking at the University of Oklahoma on Thursday about how American education needs to change its teaching methods in order to stay in competition with the top educational nations.

A Creative Approach to Higher Education

David Pogue, Yahoo technology expert, explained that American education excels in creativity, but lacks in concrete understanding, on Thursday at the University of Oklahoma.

 

Pogue visited OU with the intention of speaking and giving his insight to whoever wanted to watch him; however, he left having opened the eyes of many Americans to their youth's education. He talked all about how America excels in creativity and innovation, but lacks in areas of more concrete studies and practices. He showed how weed-out classes push kids away from science in their early years. "This has to change," Pogue emphasized. He even gave examples of how different schools have given a softer landing to freshmen coming into science based majors in college. Some colleges would give no grades for the first semester, or three classes that could be chosen at any time to simply be a pass fail; consequently, these schools were rewarded with a 90% graduation of the original students in that major, compared to the 50% before these changes.

 

Pogue elaborated on the creativity of Americans by saying, “America has always been strong on innovation and creativity, and this makes Americans needed. (People) will take an American scientist over a higher countries’ scientist because of the creativity aspect.” However, if we give these students more of the soft landing into college they need, the more will stay in these Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) majors. “Each test answer is right or wrong. There’s no finessing it,” Pogue said. This can scare kids into dropping their STEM majors before they really even know if they are good at them. “Because,” as Pogue continued to explain, “we are afraid of what we do not understand.”

According to infoplease.com, America is 25^th in Math for student’s intelligence and 20^th in Science (http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0923110.html) This puts America well behind the leading countries and leaves them looking up and continuing to fall behind the leading educational countries. America must find a way to compete with these countries and ultimately, become one of them.

Sylvia Wood, a nanny for an OU professor, attended the Pogue presentation. “I think students should be encouraged to struggle through things,” Wood said. She continued to say, “That way, when they do get through it, more of a focus can be put on getting through problems and not giving up.” Also, Wood added, “I do think the open ended questions and finding new solutions is very valuable, because otherwise we are just stuck in what we already know.”

Pogue presented an idea that America has to better its approach to education. “(America) is doing great in the thinking outside the box. I think the problem is that our children are not getting through the schooling system with the harder stuff down. Right now the real push is in the first year of college to give people more of a soft landing. But if you are wanting to be a scientist or mathematician you have to learn the equations and be able to master them. You can’t coast on just the creativity.” Creativity and ingenuity will always bring new inventions and creations, but America has to better its teaching methods to be one of those top nations, as Pogue showed. The best method for a successful education system is a mixture of creativity and a mastery of concrete practice in subjects like math and science.