Evolution of Education in Europe and the Current State of Colombian Education

Introduction

The purpose of this project, is bring some data and information of the changes that the education has been have in the last years, how does those changes affect the society in general terms and the differences in the education from the European countries comparing with Colombia education. How all those changes have been positive or instead have affected our society. But first we need to know what is education, and there is a lot of meanings that have been changing as time goes, but according to the Cambridge dictionary the education is “the process of teaching or learning, especially in a school or college, or the knowledge that you get from this” But other sources indicate that the education has to bring you the capacity of learning new things, solving problems and question about everything in our society. In the traditional educational process, the educator, teacher or instructor teaches about general sciences as maths, physics and chemistry and the student just has to pay attention to the professor, but that system can be dangerous because now a day the student doesn’t think and only learn how to memorize a lot of information but doesn’t know how to use that information. Every system is in constant evolution even the educative model, that’s why people start to have to capacity of adaptation to new changes in a very competitive world. How the e-learning has affected the educational model and the quality and prices of the education.

History of Education

The education comes from the old ages in big civilizations as the Babylonians, Indians, Chinese and so on. But as we will focus only in the differences between the changes the education has been in the last years, we will consider the history of the education from the middle ages until now. According to the article education in the middle ages by John Simkin, “In 1330 only about 5% of the population could read or write. It was extremely rare for peasants to be literate. Some lords of the manor had laws banning serfs from being educated. It was usually only the sons from rich families that went to school.

There were three main types of schools in the 14th century: the elementary song-school, the monastic school and the grammar school. The elementary song-school was usually attached to a large church in a town. At this type of school young boys were taught to sing Latin hymns and songs. If there was an educated priest available, the boys might learn how to read and write. ” So, we can see the differences between education five centuries ago, when most of the population barely received some education and the education was only for rich people. As we know, education goes hand to hand with the evolution of the human being, since all societies, however primitive they may be, rely on teaching. We could assure that education assumes its origin in primitive communities and the point of reference is found when the human being passes from living a nomadic lifestyle to establishing himself and being sedentary; where he already benefits from his first tasks, such as hunting and fishing, agriculture and the gathering of his food and especially his survival.

“In Western countries, education systems are rooted in the religious tradition of Jews and Christianity. A secondary tradition derived from the education of ancient Greece, where Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, were the most influential thinkers in their educational conception. The Greek goal was to intellectually prepare young people to assume leadership positions in the tasks of the State and in society. In later centuries, the Greek concepts, would serve for the development of the arts, the teaching of all areas of philosophy, the cultivation of the ideal and the promotion of athletic instruction” (Eugenia Vazquez, History of education 2010)“ During the High Middle Ages (twelfth century), the ideas of scholasticism were imposed on the educational environment of Western Europe. Scholasticism, which used logic to reconcile Christian theology with the philosophical concepts of Aristotle.

The Scholastic Masters were the French theologian Abelard, and the Italian philosopher and theologian St. Thomas Aquinas. The influence of these professors attracted many students and had a huge impact on the emergence of northern European universities since the 12th century. The First was the University of Paris. ” (Eugenia Vazquez, History of education 2010)“The nineteenth century was a period in which national schooling systems were organized in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and other European countries. The new independent nations of Latin America, especially Argentina and Uruguay, looked to Europe and the United States looking for models for their schools. The advent of public education is often confused with the emergence of modern republics, such as France, for example. The public school, responsible for training citizens through free basic education for the entire population, began to spread significantly in the nineteenth century. ” (Eugenia Vazquez, History of education 2010).

Educational Model System

We will consider one of the most commons models or systems of education used now a days. The actual educational system is one in which basically the student must learn a lot of concepts and a lot of information and then present all those information in a final test which will decided if the student approve or not the subject. The teacher or educator wants to define goals or set objectives to their students to introduce students to quality drafting production requirements and try to teach them some literary analysis methods.

The Process to Provide Information to an Student usually Consists on:

1. Provide information Provide the information to the learner through the various educational media. Typically, the student has a textbook or other material to read. You also give a lecture, explaining the material
2. Reinforce with exercises Reinforce what was learned by giving homework exercises and practice, as well as exercises in class. This is also done in a correspondence course or in distance learning, and in a lesser degree in online lessons.
3. Review information then give answers to the exercises, along with explanations, to clarify the information and to help review the material. This helps the students retain the information and skills learned.

Verify Knowledge

Usually give the students a test or exam to verify what they have learned and to measure the success of the instruction. Most often, testing comes after several lessons. If the student passes the test, it is assumed he or she sufficiently knows the material or has competence in the subject. All those processes are the usually taken or used in the actual educational model in west countries.

Problems or disadvantages of the current educational systemThere is a problem with the actual educational model, every time students are forced to memorize a big text and then copy that information in a piece of paper but it is supposed that the education is for thinking and getting new ideas not for memorizing a lot of things and repeat it in a piece of paper. We have to mention that the educational model has not change enough as the world is changing, the students are supposed to be for obey the teacher as they will do in the future in a company obeying their boss with out any personal opinion or a critic thinking about the problems that a company or a society can have. So it is like the schools are preparing the students just for obey orders and that is not the nature of the education. For example in some modern careers as designers, they do have to talk with each other and they need to manage their own time and be more independents of course giving everything at time. So, the solution could be stop teaching how the behaviour of a student should be and focus in the learning of the student. Also, the arts field cannot die.

E-Learning

The e-learning is a different way how people learn by using electronic technologies to access educational curriculum with no need to go into a classroom. There are many terms used to describe learning that is delivered online, via the internet, ranging from Distance Education, to computerized electronic learning, online learning, internet learning and many others. We define eLearning as courses that are specifically delivered via the internet to somewhere other than the classroom where the professor is teaching. It is not a course delivered via a DVD or CD-ROM, video tape or over a television channel. It is interactive in that you can also communicate with your teachers, professors or other students in your class. Sometimes it is delivered live, where you can “electronically” raise your hand and interact in real time and sometimes it is a lecture that has been pre-recorded. There is always a teacher or professor interacting /communicating with you and grading your participation, your assignments and your tests. eLearning has been proven to be a successful method of training and education is becoming a way of life for many people around the world. ” (Sasha Gunt, elearningnc. gov).

The digital solutions came with the technology development around the world and we can consider in how that can change in the education environment, at the point that it doesn’t matter who you are you can get education for free in any part of the world just by having access to internet. This means that the e-learning became in a solution for the people who doesn’t have a lot of resources for paying an university and still can have a good quality education. Also, for the people who work or travel around the world this is an excellent tool to do it and there is a lot of platforms where you can take your classes, have your exam, approve and get your diploma as in a traditional university.

There is a lot of advantages of studying online as:

1. You are able to have different resources in different formats
2. It is a very flexible option to study anywhere
3. You can study any hour of the day, then you can make your schedule
4. People get more independent by learning by his own
5. You have different sources of information on internetThere are a lot of careers that your can do online, the main problem is that sometimes you don’t have enough practical practice, but that is depending of the career chosen.

There are also some disadvantages of eLearning as:

1. The online assessments could be limited to some questions that are only objective in nature.
2. There is also the problem of the extent of security of online learning programs.
3. Anyone could make the projects and the presentations instead of the student itself
4. The assessments that are computer marked generally have a tendency of being only knowledge-based and not necessarily practicality-based.

Education in Colombia

Now a day we keep using the same educational system than 150 years ago when not only Colombia but all south-American countries were looking for a model for education, the look was focused on USA and Europe. In Colombia the education system is based in the American education model, this is because USA has a big influence in our country. However, in Colombia there is a lot of factors that difference the education from the United States and Europe and is the prices and the quality of the education in those areas. 10“Despite this progress, equal access to education and education quality differed significantly across regions and social classes, particularly beyond the primary level. New initiatives have been launched in the past two decades to address these issues. In 2002, the government launched a comprehensive education improvement program called Revolución Educativa. This reform called for a complete transformation of the education system with an emphasis on improving quality and increasing coverage. Additional efforts include the 2010 mandate by the Colombian Constitutional Court that all public primary schools should be free of charge.

In 2012 the mandate was extended to public secondary schools. In 2015, Colombia’s education budget increased by 5. 75%, reflecting President Juan Manuel Santos’ goal to make Colombia Latin America’s most educated country by 2025. Recent data show an overall increase in educational access and attainment, especially in low-income populations, indicating that students from all economic backgrounds are benefitting from increased education opportunities. ” (Education in Colombia, wes)11“The mobility of Colombian students to the U. S. more than doubled from 1997/98 to 2001/02 reaching a record high of 8, 068. A ten-year decline followed with the exception of the academic year 2008/09 when mobility again increased. Colombian mobility seems to be recovering with student numbers having increased in the past three years. Colombia is now the twenty-fourth leading place of origin for students coming to the U. S. , and it is the fourth largest sending market in Latin America after Brazil, Mexico and Venezuela. ” (Education in Colombia, wes)As we can see the mobility has been increased in Colombia and it is estimated that it will continue growing. Only 2% of the students has been abroad but this is a lot comparing the quantity of students there are now and the percentage of mobility students there was 10 years ago

The educational model in Colombia has been improving in all those years but there is still a lot of steps we need to consider to keep improving. If we compare the education in Colombia to Europe there is a big hole in the standards of quality and the prices compared to the salary of the country. Maybe the biggest difference from my perspective between European universities and Colombian Universities is the schedule and the classes, in Colombia you have to attend every class, but in Europe is a little bit more independent, it is up to you if you attend the lectures and that is not a requirement to approve. In conclusion Colombia is in a good way and is improving but all the educational model has to change in order to make students think free.