Our Current Methods of Education are Outdated

Education has remained the same for over 100 years while society has been developing nonstop, making our current methods of educating students outdated. Our education system has dated all the way to the Industrial Revolution, and I think it is time for a change. Vera El Khoury Lacoeuilhe states that “[t]hese Systems are no longer totally fit to provide the kinds of mindsets or skills we need to build the societies of the Connectivity era”, which means that we need to update our methods of teaching to fit the way our society is developing (1).

One of the issues that our current education system has is that individuals are grouped by age (Schmitt). With this method of teaching, students are being taught inefficiently and are losing so much learning potential. Another issue is that current education methods do not cover the necessary skills that we need for our growing society, those skills being “[l]eadership, Digital Literacy, Communication, Creativity, Entrepreneurship, Critical Thinking, Problem Solving and Team-working” (Lacoeuilhe 1). Lacoeuilhe states that subjects such as reading writing and math are still important, but they cannot teach students these crucial skills that we need for our rapidly growing society (1). More issues still persist in this static education system, meaning it is in desperate need of change.

Some may say that the material being taught in schools are important and effective, and while that may be true, it is not enough. We need to find an improved way of educating students in order to prepare them for our ever-developing future.

Age-grouped teaching, outdated educational materials, and strict prohibition of artificial intelligence (AI) are just some of the issues that persist in our current methods of education. These methods have become inefficient and problematic due to our ever-growing society, which prevents students from developing with society.

Children are not all the same, and yet the school system treats those in the same age group as if they are all copies of each other (Schmitt). They all have different strengths and weaknesses, and they all learn things differently at different times, even though they were born in the same year (Schmitt). This ends up limiting a student’s learning potential, since they may already have the skills necessary to move to the next advanced material. This can also prevent some students from being able to learn the assigned material, since some may not been able to grasp the previous material, ultimately leaving them feeling rushed, not ready, and confused.

This outdated educational system also lacks the materials needed to teach students important skills. We currently have math, reading, writing, and other similar subjects, but these are not enough to teach students skills needed for the future, such as entrepreneurship, teamwork, leadership, and more (Lacoeuilhe 1). Skills like these are not the only thing students need to learn, they need to learn how to manage new and developing tools such as AI. Although schools avoid the use of AI for the reason of preventing students from cheating, prohibition of AI entirely is limiting students from preparing for the future. Many educators are fighting against AI, trying to figure out how to keep students from cheating, but they never considered that they may need to rethink what they are teaching instead (Spirlet). Current skills that are being taught in schools will be interchanged with AI, meaning that we need to update our methods and materials to teach more than just intelligence-based skills (Krishnan).

If we continue to fully avoid AI and continue teaching outdated material without adding new and developing material, students may be at risk of learning easily interchangeable skills while gaining no experience in future development. Once we decide to develop our education system along with society, we will be able to further our development and contribution to society efficiently without the headache of outdated and ineffective methods.

To improve and update the current education system, we need to change how we teach them. Some methods like giving power to those more knowledgeable about education, improving learning materials, improving technology, and implementing AI will greatly benefit the education system, making it more efficient and suitable for all students.

In order to make learning more efficient for students, we need the help of educators and child development researchers (Schmitt). Currently we have politicians and businessmen conducting how students are to be taught, all for the sake of political power and wealth, which is why our school system is inefficient and not optimal for students (Schmitt). With the help of educators and child development researchers we will be able to improve our methods of educating in a way that will benefit all students, no matter their age or disabilities (Schmitt).

It is also crucial to update our education system to consider that “social and ecological achievements are as important as the financial ones and one that leads to peaceful, inclusive and sustainable societies that students use to learn” (Lacoeuilhe). According to Lacoeuilhe, students need to learn skills such as “[l]eadership, Digital Literacy, Communication, Creativity, Entrepreneurship, Critical Thinking, Problem Solving and Team-working”, and not just reading, writing and math (1). These current and basic materials which consist of just memorization will be interchanged with AI.

Since AI will take over these intelligence-based subjects, we need to implement a “good blend of IQ (intelligence) + EQ (emotional intelligence) + RQ (resilience)” (Krishnan). We can do this by including real-world challenges for students to solve, which will require them to use their problem-solving skills, creativity, critical thinking, communication, resilience, and potentially teamwork depending on the problems.

Some may say that our current education system is enough, and that no major change is needed. After reviewing the facts listed in the mentioned sources, I disagree. We are in desperate need of change in the education system, specifically in what is being taught. A lot of the material being taught in schools is irrelevant in the real world and can leave students feeling disengaged because they cannot find the material applicable in their own lives.

According to Eric Eng, traditional education covers many subjects to give students a good understanding of the world around them and to help them discover their strengths (Eng). These subjects include history, art, music, literature, and foreign languages, which Eng claims gives students a “well-rounded knowledge base” (Eng). Although this may be true in some cases, a lot of these subjects will be easily interchanged with AI, which ends up making those subjects unbeneficial to learn (Krishnan). Continuing to teach these subjects will just fill students’ minds with information they may never use, and they will be left without any practical skills needed in the real world.

Others also claim that basic school subjects such as math are important for real-life situations such as taxes, but real-world problems that are presented in class are often staged to be solved with the material being taught (Young). Although the idea of learning various equations is to let the student adapt to real-world problems, most problems that occur in the real world are just too complicated to figure out with those equations (Young). This leaves math being inefficient in the real world, especially since our developing society needs as many efficient solutions as we can get. This is another reason as to why we need to update the material we teach and how we teach it.

So, even though some aspects of education are important in some cases, updating what we teach and how we teach is something we must do. This will not only benefit students, but also society all together. Students are not all the same, so they need to be treated accordingly unlike our current outdated method (Schmitt). We also need to realize how big an impact AI will make in our ever-growing society, and how current knowledge in school will be easily interchanged with AI since it is more efficient. In the end, we need to realize that education needs to develop students with society, or they will be unprepared and lost in the real world.

Works Cited

Eng, Eric. “The Advantages of Traditional Schooling.” AdmissionSight, 28 Sept. 2023, admissionsight.com/benefits-of-traditional-school/.

Krishnan, Karthik. “Our Education System Is Losing Relevance. Here’s How to Unleash Its Potential.” World Economic Forum, 13 Apr. 2020, www.weforum.org/stories/2020/04/our-education-system-is-losing-relevance-heres-how-to-update-it/.

Schmitt, Mary Beth. “Public Education’s Fundamental Structure Is Flawed.” UT Austin News - The University of Texas at Austin, 11 Aug. 2022, news.utexas.edu/2022/08/11/public-educations-fundamental-structure-is-flawed/. 

Spirlet, Thibault. “AI isn’t just helping students cheat - it’s exposing how broken the education system is, prominent academic says.” Business Insider, Business Insider, 31 July 2025, www.businessinsider.com/ai-reveals-how-broken-our-education-system-is-economist-says-2025-7.

Vera El Khoury Lacoeuilhe. “Are our Education Systems obsolete?” The Journal of Quality in Education, vol. 8, no. 11, Aug. 2018, p. 5. EBSCOhost, doi-org.columbiabasin.idm.oclc.org/10.37870/joqie.v8i11.152.

Young, Scott. “Why Don’t We Use the Math We Learn in School?” Scott H Young, 25 Feb. 2022, www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2022/01/24/why-dont-we-use-the-math-we-learn-in-school/.