A Good Education System Frees the Student to Learn What He Will

     I believe in an education system that teaches you how to think, more than one that dictates what you must think. What do I mean? What are they required to think? Well, we require them to learn the concepts of science, the history of America, the principles of mathematics. Don't get me wrong, those are all good thing to learn, and we should not want to take them out of our education model.
   But, learning how to think is even more important.
   Was it Isaac Newton who said, "If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants"? Newton would have been nothing if he had just learned from these giants, but failed to do anything with the knowledge they gave him. Greatness is not in having knowledge, but in taking it to the next level. You must take the thoughts of giants, and advance them even further.
   I would suggest, having the student play chess can further intellectual capacities as much as memorizing scientific theorems. As a person plays that game, he learns to consider options and possibilities: If I move my knight here, then my opponent will move his bishop there -- or will he move his pawn to challenge my knight?
   He learns how to think.
  That Isaac Newton learned how to think, even as a chess player does, is evident in another of his quotes: "To every action there is always an equal reaction."
   Stand on the shoulders of giants? Another way to fulfill Newton's advice, is to place the student in with other thinkers, letting him not just stand on the shoulders of great people he learns of in textbooks, but also on the shoulders of those in the class who also have greatness. One of the grand things about college, is that intelligent people are brought together, where they can share, and collaborate and bounce ideas off each other. This is an element we are not utilizing to the extent we should. Greatness feeds on greatness. So, let the students collaborate together on projects, and the brightest students will often gravitate to each other. Look at history, at how great minds have known each other, and competed on or shared in endeavors.
    Restructure our education system to where it is not so structured. Instead spending all of the time just learning core standards, have the heart of the system be in freeing the students to undertake projects of their own choosing, perhaps with no grading involved. Creativity comes not from following steps, but in choosing your own. Let the student learn not what you would dictate, but what he chooses to learn.