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Essay / Cyber Age of Education - 1911
When I am asked to look back on my education, I realize that my generation is participating in a changing segment of educational history. Having started school with pen and paper, my generation went through a period where education was limited to static textbooks and handwritten sheets, but we are now in the movement towards a new cyber age. We come from a history where religious and ethnic culture played a major role in education, but our advanced technologies are now moving the major contributors to computers and electronic media. In this change, some educational techniques have worked, but not all have been successful. Early in our lives, our parents decided where our education would begin. The type of institution we attended was beyond our control: whether it was a Jewish or Catholic school, or a secular public school, our parents decided how we would begin our education based on their own religious beliefs. Looking back at our early institutions, we see how important religion was in our early education. Parents have fallen back on their religious faith for the future of their children. In retrospect, however, one may wonder to what extent this push toward a religious environment has affected our religious beliefs today. Some of us have been positively attracted to religion while others have been repelled by it. No matter what type of institution we attended, the methods of educating students constantly improved. In middle school, I remember my teacher telling my class that our generation learns faster and more than they learned at our age. His statement reflects how advanced our system has become to the extent that we are able to learn more in less time. Teachers are more effective now, and study...... middle of paper ...... huge resource for those who take their own initiative to learn. The problem with self-education, however, is certification. Students who learn on their own may have the same level of knowledge, but they do not receive a certificate attesting to their competence in the field. In the transition from our old learning styles to our developing cyber educational network, there have been both positive results and negative techniques in education that work. The efficiency of education has increased significantly thanks to the development of technologies and we are able to communicate with each other faster than ever before. However, even though we have vast amounts of information, our ability to assimilate information remains most effective through investigation and individual training. Personal interactions between students and teachers promote the best learning.