It seems odd to me that education hasn't improved with time. I've looked at my father's old textbooks and even though the diagrams, pictures and aesthetic appeal has greatly improved the content is basically the same.

The education system is required to cover a broad range of topics: math, physics, chemistry, biology, history, english, etc... All these topics are served via taxtbook and sometimes workbook, to students. Does this prepare them for a life without a textbook to explain every issue with exact precision?

Students should be tought how to question and search for answers. The current system does not encourage doubt, which is the primary factor in questioning. Sure there is a chapter in most science books about the scientific method, but the doubt continues no further. We do predetermined experiments, follow formulas, commit to a specific reresentation of the past, and adhere to a structure that doesn't accept deviation.

Schools don't stress the student's ability to search outside of textbooks and the dewey decimal system. Are students encouraged to search outside of the guidelines imposed by the system? Teach them how to search both in outside resources and within themselves, and you provide them with a tool that could propell them in any direction they choose. The knowledge they acquire on their own could spark interests not otherwise spawned from the formal education. Currently, the education system is based upon giving students fish in the form of textbooks, but they should refocus their efforts to teaching the students how to fish.