A Return to Holistic Education

This is an excerpt from a paper I wrote for an English class I am taking:

One of the saddest failings in the modern educational environment is the focus on fact-based knowledge. In most schools ranging from elementary all the way through to some post-secondary levels, students are being taught according to whatever test will be administered in each subject. If it is not going to be on the test, students are unwilling to learn and teachers are unwilling to teach due to the emphasis placed on the test scores and quantity, instead of quality, of knowledge. This situation is also compounded by the fact that each subject is usually taught in isolation of all other subjects. The mass of facts that students must learn in each subject is so extensive that it has also been said that no single person could effectively teach all of the subjects that students are required to learn.

We need to return to a more holistic approach to education as was the norm in ancient and Renaissance times. A scholar or student during these periods would have been taught not only facts but would have been more accustomed to critical thinking to be able to solve problems that did not come out of a book as well as seeing the interconnectedness that exists between and within all disciplines of knowledge. A return to that type of education would find more students getting excited about learning rather than seeing school as simply a drudgery of facts and isolated knowledge to be regurgitated on demand then forgotten because they have not been shown how this knowledge could help them in life outside of that particular subject.