Project-based learning is a fairly recent education philosophy that has proven to be controversial. When applied, curriculum and teaching styles are adapted to incorporate much more group work and projects in order to work towards an answer to a complex question or challenge.
This method has been thought to increase children’s creativity and critical-thinking skills, and this hypothesis has been backed up by test results. However, there are major drawbacks to implementing this method of education style. Teachers have to switch to an entirely new way of thinking and teaching, and it is difficult to test children effectively while following this philosophy. Additionally, there are many children who would simply struggle with this style of learning. As mentioned, project-based learning requires group work. As many students find out, there is often one student within the group who ends up doing the majority of the work on a project. If this were to happen, it would mean that some students would fall dramatically behind while only some were able to grow from the project; it should also be noted that the students who learn are also probably stressed out and resentful as they have been required to bare the brunt of the work. Group projects simply don’t work, because, unfortunately, groups often look more like this:
than this (the intended result and work distribution):
For these reasons, schools should not make curriculum that centers around project based learning. It adds unnecessary stress on teachers and students, and cannot be consistently and effectively tested. It’s an excellent idea, and hypothetically it could produce some nice results, but there is just too much room for human error to risk the education of the posterity.
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