RyansWorld: Student-led learning

'''Special Note: Please note that this scenario is meant to be read as entertainment, not as an accurate prediction of the future. Also note that the viewpoints and opinions that may come across in this scenario are not necessarily the viewpoints and opinions of the author.'''

Unlike the traditional Western model where the teacher starts off the lesson, a student-led learning model means that the student initates the lesson teaching by asking a question and the teacher answers back.

The Japanese government would make this a core product of their Young Adult Leadership Program; a program designed to turn lazy Wikipedia users and YouTube watchers into the next generation of Japanese intelligentsia. If a person fails to accomplish all of his/her primary objectives by their 20th birthday; they are institutionalized in psychiatric hospitals and are often sent on weekends to do the menial tasks that tomorrow's leaders simply refuse to do. Japanese society wants as many people to be "leaders of their own destiny" and don't want people to be "simple followers who don't know how to print documents from an E-mail program or to operate a CD-ROM drive."

Summary


This model is proven to be superior and encourages students to give questions to a teacher instead of being arbitraily asked questions by the teacher. By the year 2025, this method will be commonplace in North American and European high schools, college, and the upper levels of elementary school. The teacher-led model will always be used in pre-Kindergarten through fourth grade. From fifth grade to doctoral level, a student-led learning model will be de rigeur regardless of the course (science, history, geography, math, etc.). This will ease the transition of the Global Intellectual South in the expansion of the computer skills needed to acquire a high school diploma or GED.

Various states and provinces that provide the education for most of the countries in the Americas will adjust to this new philosophy the quickest while the Marxist-Leninist enclaves in the Eurasian Union will try to clamp down on this new learning method as "anarchy," "rule of the mob," and "Wikipedia-style learning in the classroom." The first cities to fully embrace student-led learning are New York City, Los Angeles, Windroit, Baltiwashington and Toronto where these methods are first taught on children that had difficulties learning from the teacher-led method. After the student-led model was passed on school-wide (and later city-wide), other school boards began to replace the traditional teacher-led learning model with the student-led learning model very gradually. Valley Heights Secondary School will help play a role in Southern Ontario's ascent to the Singularity thanks to the student-led model.

People who see this coming see it as the same as Galileo trying to prove the world that the sun did not rotate around the Earth (and that the Earth is the center of the universe). The Spanish Inquisition will be briefly revived to enforce a teacher-led class model in all of Spain's schools before being ordered by a female Pope to disband themselves. Teacher's colleges will adjust older teachers to the new philosophy and teach future teachers in the advantages of a student-led class model as opposed to a teacher-led class model. It is often said that student-led classes helped initiate the questions that singlehandely sparked the Singularity. The school experience also became more democratized as the teachers (representing the few) were finally completely accountable to the students (representing the many) and had to answer their questions without waivering even once.

Comparison between student- and teacher-led learning

 * In teacher-led learning, the teacher initates the discussion and is always assumed to be correct. If a teacher claims that Nostradamus helped America defeat the Spanish, the moon is purple, or that Napoleon Bonaparte discovered Japan and liberated them from the Hebrews, his viewpoint is regarded as correct and undisputable. In student-led learning, the answer that is considered the most correct by a consensus is the correct answer in the classroom. This turns most classrooms from enlightened dictatorships into miniature republics.
 * In teacher-led learning, students can be kicked out of class at the discretion of the teacher. In student-led learning, expelling a student for the duration of the class is done in a similar fashion to a vote of no confidence in most parliaments.
 * At least one reference from Wikipedia will be required in all essays and assignments. By the year 2025, Wikipedia will become the second most popular web site in the world. In the traditional teacher-led learning, Wikipedia references are like an afterthought.

Do you support student-led learning? Yes. Somewhat. No.