OpenEd Week1: Right to Education;"Access" Sufficiency; Mandate Education

The “right to education” is a basic human right to a certain age or level in personal manner; and also I agree with Tomasevski that to obtain certain educational level is considered as a duty to the individual and the whole society. Therefore, it is necessary for the government to mandate education through that certain age or level. While on the contrary, the government can’t temerariously mandate education on people who may not be able to afford their time or money, or various rational reasons. I disagree with Tomasevski that government should mandate what education can be given to people. The chances to get open access to free, high-quality educational is determined by the area you are at; or you might get a lot more if you get the open access such as internet, mobile-phone unboundedly. It is hard to estimate if the open access is sufficient or not because of the unmeasured demanding from people of different fields.

According to Tomasevski’s mention of international treaties, the core components of the right to education are agreed universally. The problems about individuals of which age or level have the human right to obtain certain level of education are solved by different countries’ governments based on their characteristics. For instance, in China, legally mandated length of compulsory education is nine years; in other words, the compulsory education goes into effect until about end of middle school. Most of the elementary schools abolish both official and unofficial school fees which often result in the exclusion of girls from education. Students from poor families can apply some financial aid from schools to waive all the educational charges from higher levels. There are still some situations that students have to quit schooling. Recently, a large group of children called “left kids” which means those kids parents are both gone for drudgeries in another cities those is far from home; their kids have to stay at home to take care of themselves and their siblings. What the Chinese governments do for those “left kids”? As far as I know, the governments usually send some educated people such as school teachers to those kids family; talk with their parents or relatives if parents not at home about the right of free and compulsory education; try to convince the kids back to school. If turn up with a financial problem, the persuader will report the situation to the local government; most of the time, they should find a way to get the kids back to schools; in addition, some students quit going to school because they can’t get good grades; and more, some students may attend the military when they are about 13 t0 14 years old. Those situations attest to Tomasevski’s idea that children should have the right to education; but they often can’t get educated.

I strongly agree with Tomasevski that Education should be compulsory until children reach the minimum age for employment. Countries’ list in Table 6 by the legally mandated length of compulsory education, ranging from 13 years to 4 years can hardly tell the development degree of those countries. In my opinion, how many years free and compulsory education provide by one country’s government is based on this country’s economic ability and also the degree on consideration of the education to this country. It seems an ideal goal for children to get compulsory education until the minimum age of beginning work; but it is still possible to achieve. I hope one day it can be realized in the whole society.

As in the real world, low-educated students can’t get good jobs; well-education is required for people who want to get dreamy jobs. Which education defined as high-quality and cost free to attain is still questionable. If the governments mandate education to people of certain age or level; they should first find a group of educational experts which are the instructional technologist to qualify which education can be suitable to this certain age or level. Therefore, governments have to allocate a part of money to hire the experts, support their researches, find good teachers, and gather teaching materials or information and so on. I believe that to prove high-quality is a long-term project and complex or complicated path to get to the qualified education. Instructional technology is necessity on this path.

Open education is a good embodiment of instructional technology. People of different age or level from all over the world can access to their internet instead of sitting in one classroom for gathering data or any other information. By contacting people from different fields, students can learn knowledge out of the textbooks or print outs. After information collection, students will have their own ideas can write on their own blogs or wikis for sharing information and idea exchange. When people have questions or comments, they can also teach others to solve the problems. Students can also become teachers but might not be instructors. Tomasevski indicates that often technical schools are seen as useless. By reading a classmate Greg’s blog, he poins out that

"in places where it is seen as useless, let's improve it. Where there is didactic learning that is mind numbing, let's adjust what is taught and improve students’ outlook."

I really like his idea that keep improving and adjusting the instructional technology because the technology is not a changeless issue; it can always been meliorated.

In China, the education we attain at school is called “spoon-feed” education. We sit with amount of students in the same classroom for years using the stated textbooks by the government, without contacting the people outside the classroom; we all get the same information or teaching materials provided by the teachers; we can’t even go out for a related job experience if we are not old enough because we are the consumers. Opposite opinions of the teachers might be looked upon disrespect the teachers. Comparing with the students from other countries; we are lack of the abilities of real practice. Recent years, open education has brought into our country by MIT; this almost brings in an educational revolution. The organization of China Open Resources for Education tries to transit the concept of traditional education to the new open education idea. I hope this transition can be achieved in the near future; and the children or even adults will be beneficial their whole lives. :-)