Formal education tends to restrain our minds and spirits rather than set them free Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the statement and explain your reasoning for the position you take In developing and su

The effectiveness of different methods of teaching is debatable. The prompt recommends that providing education in a structured way impedes our inventiveness instead of flourishing it. Although I believe that formal education does help us to concentrate on certain problems, in my opinion, I mostly agree with this suggestion for two reasons.

First of all, a structured education system forces students to take courses that they are not interested in. Having a passion for a subject is extremely significant if one wants to thrive. Without proper motivation, one can not succeed in a field. For example, Rabindranath Tagore – a noble laureate in literature and one of the most creative poets of all time – was perfunctory to science courses during his school time and had a zeal for poetry. As a result, he quit school and started writing poems, stories that came in his mind from a very early age. He chose to go with this passion rather than formal education. If he complied with formal rules and studied subjects that are not interested to him, he would never became a prolific writer and we would forget him by now.

Secondly, formal education kills creativity by narrowing the outlook of students. In a structured system, the students are evaluated only by their correct answers and their wrong answers or approaches are not considered at all. For example, there are many different ways a mathematical problem can be solved. Even new methods can be invented through experiments and looking at that particular problem from a new different angle. So, it is crucial to exhort students to experiments and play with various problems by giving some marks even if their approaches do not resolve the issues. Unfortunately, formal education system does not allow students to experiment and even give them negative marks sometimes for using techniques that seem eccentric. Therefore, conventional methods are inimical for our pupils.

However, a system of fixed set of rules might prove useful in some pragmatic cases. Since by following rules and regulations properly, we learn how to work professionally. In that case, formal education does not narrow our mind; it actually facilitates focusing in a specialized field so that we can gain knowledge of that field deeply which is essential to thrive in a job. For example, big companies like Google always seek candidates who are connoisseurs in their field and have some job-related skills which can only be achieved by studying relevant formal courses in colleges or universities and excelling in examinations. That’s why while recruiting, employers scrutinize the course curriculum of the potential candidates. Thus, traditional education is necessary to prosper in professional life.

In conclusion, it is difficult to answer whether formal education is limiting our ability to think freely or not as many factors are involved in the analysis. Nevertheless, conventional rules hinder us to think out of the box by discouraging students to try out different approaches and oblige to study subjects that a student might not be interested in.