Why "œOne Size Fits all Education" Might not Work Anymore

Education is the basic foundation of every modern culture and country. Equipping the coming generation with the required skills needed to thrive in this fast-moving world is an essential element to ensure the development of a nation and the progress of us humans as a species. Teaching methodologies and systems should also evolve with the changing times and one criticism that the global educational fraternity has been getting for some time now is following the ‘one size fits all’ type of education. Not every student is the same as the other and educational institutes should be able to cater to a wide array of students by offering them a unique platform that can be used by the students to identify and develop their natural abilities. The traditional educational system only emphasized on offering a curriculum that will, in the end, find who can pass and fail the given subjects but time has shown that not every student will have the same amount of knowledge in all the subjects. The goal of educational institutions should be to help the students identify their areas of interest and guide them to become experts in those specific fields. To tackle this scenario, many educationalists have come with the ‘differentiated learning’ approach that performs far better when it comes to diversifying the learning scenario and catering to a wide variety of students.

One of the major issues that the educational sector now faces is the unemployability of their students and the majority of the students who graduates now doesn’t meet the industry requirements which showcases a major drawback of the ‘one size fits all’ educational model. This is one of the many disadvantages of this mode of education and some of the are various other reasons that make the ‘one size fits all education’ model an outdated approach is:

• Rigidity of the Curriculum: The teaching curriculum plays a major role in the success or failure of that specific educational system. The more flexible the education system, the easier it will be to incorporate changes and improve the quality of education. Curriculums that cant adapt to changes will not be able to offer efficient learning opportunities for their students which, in turn, will affect the progress of the students. Another issue that this pose, is that in a monotonous teaching curriculum students’ interests will not be given ample consideration and they will be forced to mug up all the contents that are taught in the institutions.
• A Universal Evaluation System: Yet another issue with the ‘one size fits all’ model of education is the common grading system. All the students are evaluated and graded through common parameters and again the unique skills of the students are not taken into consideration and are not encouraged. This will lead to some students passing out with flying colours and many others left with poor grades that hinder their opportunities to go for further education in a specific institute or a program that they like. All this results in the degradation of the entire education system and educational institutes will turn into a place where clones are being manufactured instead of nurturing individuals that are able to think freely and showcase their own skills.
• Monotony in Teaching Methods: We now talk about integrating various new approaches to diversify the teaching-learning process and increase the quality of the overall efficiency and effectiveness of education. With the ‘one size fits all’ approach, not only does the educational institution incorporate new approaches but they will also resist any new changes arising in the teaching fraternity. This will also result in the stagnation of the educational sector which will result in generating students who are less motivated and under-equipped to work in the modern competitive professional realm. 

The ‘one size fits all’ approach of education has long been outdated and this industrial model of education will deny the students to enhance their unique skills and by doing that identifying their fullest potential. It is high time now to drop this traditional model of education and implement new educational models that coincides with the individualistic nature and talent of the students.