School Needs to Change: My Ideas for Better Education

  It’s impossible to ignore how outdated our education system is here in Portugal. I’ve mentioned it in other articles: school is still set up for students who are good at memorizing and can perform well in front of an audience, especially in oral assessments. Since forever, teachers have told us, “You need to know this because it’s on the test.” I’ve never heard, “You need to know this because it’s actually useful in real life.” Never. Always “this is on the test or the exam” and “you don’t need to know that because it’s not on the test.” The result? There’s no incentive for students to actually learn. They memorize just to be graded and then they can forget.
  Another problem is that we talk about the same things for 12 years. Just look at History: from Year 5 to Year 9, we repeat the material twice - the first time focusing on memorizing dates and names (like that’s going to stick with us for years!) and the second time just slightly more in-depth. It makes no sense. If we learned everything later on - as I mentioned in the article “Why Does a Difficult Subject Seem So Easy Later?” - it would be so much easier.
  Besides that, the curricula are huge and packed with useless content. And no, I’m not one of those people who say History or Portuguese is useless - we absolutely need to learn from history’s mistakes so we don’t repeat them, and we need to know how to write and speak. But in every subject, we’re forced to memorize things that are completely pointless. Memorizing the dates of kings, for example, didn’t add anything to my life - it only caused me frustration when I had to do it. To make matters worse, each school year is treated like a separate entity, without a single skill taught continuously over the years.
  But since it’s not enough just to point out problems - because everyone does that or has done that - my sister-in-spirit and I came up with a few ideas to improve the education system and at least partially solve these issues. I know this would mean a complete overhaul of the system as we know it today, requiring many years and a lot of money, but they’re just ideas. Probably no one will even try to put them into practice, so here they are.
  First of all, we need to start by changing what’s going to stay. I’m not in favor of removing subjects, but I do believe we should cut a lot of useless content from the curricula, leaving only the essentials and thus significantly lightening students’ schedules.
  With lighter schedules, we could introduce new subjects covering as many areas as possible so that kids could truly discover their passions and interests over the years.
  Also, classes - both new and existing subjects - would become much more interactive and engaging. From the first year on, participation and fun in learning would be encouraged, so students wouldn’t feel pressured later on with oral assessments, and they’d genuinely be interested in what they were learning, instead of just studying for the exam.
  It might sound counterintuitive, but I also believe the difficulty of assessments should increase gradually all the way to university. That would fix the brutal shock between cramming the night before tests (and getting average or even good grades) and arriving at university where you have to study every day to keep up. Adjusting the difficulty over the 12 years would give students more incentive to learn and prepare them to handle stress - which is crucial.
  Speaking of stress, another thing we should teach is how to handle assessments. We get to high school and are suddenly thrown into project presentations without ever being taught how to manage that. So, from an early age, students would learn to speak in front of the class, to avoid leaving projects to the last minute, and to structure an assignment - from the index to the conclusion.
  And finally, there’s a somewhat controversial idea (because my sister-in-spirit doesn’t completely agree with me, thinking it’s too complex
), but I believe we should have an app where students could create their own schedules. Classrooms would work like they do in universities: the teacher would be teaching the subject all day in the same room, and students could drop in, regardless of their assigned class. The weekend before, students would build their schedule, making sure all their required subjects were included - and there would be a visible limit on classroom capacity. This would give more flexibility to those who don’t like doing the same thing every week and would allow those who prefer routine to keep the same schedule. It would also help balance school with other activities and commitments, because life isn’t (and shouldn’t be) just school. Plus, it would create more space for extracurricular activities - which should have much more emphasis - and there would be a place every week (online or in person) to collect feedback and ideas from students.
  Of course, I know this app idea might be too modern for what we have today, so it would be important to set some limits. Up to a certain age - probably Year 9, for example - parents or guardians would be responsible for helping create their child’s schedule or, if they preferred, they could simply accept the pre-set schedule from the school (or from the app, in case of AI), just like it works now. Additionally, there would always be an option for all students to receive the schedule already made by the school, ensuring that no one would be left out due to lack of time or not having access to the app. This way, no one would be forced to use the personalized schedule system, but those who wanted to could.
  And that’s it - these are my ideas to, in my opinion, 100% improve the education, experience, and outcomes of students who, rightly so, have to live this reality for at least 12 years. I think this would make them more focused, happier, and less stressed, because nothing would catch them off guard - they’d always be truly prepared for whatever came their way.
Oh, and finally: vote for me for president in 2027 (just kidding!).
What changes would you make to the current education system?