I was inspired by Wonder’s post in Mundane Babble. Sorry if I repeat anything here that was said there.
We are currently falling behind the world in education, and have been for quite some time (does anybody know if we always have been?). As Kris mentioned, school is Garbage In, Garbage out. I’d say 80% of the things I learned in school, I don’t remember, and that might be a very conservative figure.
Here’s my solution: we pack as much of the basics as we can into grades K-8. Starting in high school, you drill down to two or three courses that are similar to college prep courses for certain subjects. By the time you finish high school, you should only be taking classes that specialize in the field you want to go into.
For instance, if you wanted to be a physicist, you’d take math, physics, and chemistry in 9th grade. Because of the elongated course times, children would learn much more quickly, and would be far more advanced going into college. Not only that, but it would teach the skill of mastery in a certain field. If you later realize you don’t like the field your in, you are no worse off than having graduated college and finding out you don’t like your degree.
I think I’ve made a post similar to this before, but I’m too lazy to try to dig it up. Your thoughts?
It wouldn’t surprise me if the increases in the simple amount of specialist knowledge in any particular branch grow large enough that it will impose a kind of educational caste system - with children being assigned to certain academic careers earlier and earlier in their lives. As it is now very few get their doctorates until their mid-twenties and beyond, and frankly a doctorate these days is just the beginning of a serious academic/practical research career. Your average wet behind the ears doctorate owner is still years away from producing original, ground-breaking work, if indeed they ever get there.
I’m not really sure how American grades fit with a British model (actually the below is from Scottish Education, which in itself is different from English, Welsh and Irish), so I don’t know how relevant my comment is, but eh…
Primaries 1-7 run from ages 5-11. So I agree a pupil should get a good mix of everything during these years. However how advanced you expect this to get I don’t know, because looking back on it, the stuff I was learning in primary 7 was pretty basic, at least in terms of science and maths. Language I think was more advanced than this, but still…
Secondary school runs for 6 years and goes from ages 12-17. For the first two years of this, there is a steady mix of everything, languages, maths, sciences, social sciences, P.E., R.E. practical subjects and the arts. (The only of which I feel can be dropped is R.E. but lets not get into that…) Obviously these classes aim to build on the foundations learned already, and to introduce new and more complex ideas. In third year, age 14, a pupil picks 8 subjects to study in more detail, of these 3 are pre-determined; English, Mathematics and a language of the pupils choosing (usually French, Italian, Spanish or German). Also the pupil must pick one science, either Physics, Biology or Chemistry, but they can pick two if they want. The remaining 4 are chosen from the wider categories of practical subjects, social sciences, and the arts. So a pupils timetable could look like this:
English (mandatory)
Mathematics (mandatory)
2nd Language (mandatory)
History
Biology
Home Economics/Cookery
Chemistry
Drama
The benefits I feel of this, are that it keeps the important basics, english and maths, whilst also retains a wide enough scope for people who either don’t know what they want to do in later life or who like to study a wide ranging curriculum. The drawbacks are the actual choosing methods mean several combinations are not permitted, (My own example is that I wasn’t allowed to study both art and music, even though I did want to go down that path at the time)
This curriculum would run for 2 years, ages 14 & 15, until, results dependent, the pupil would then whittle their curriculum down to 5 subjects at age 16. Usually the theory would be you would drop the two you performed worst in, or the two that after further study you were no longer interested in. Again English is mandatory, but maths is not. And whilst it is usually preferred to continue the advanced study of the subjects studied previously, it is possible to pick a completely new class. So if a pupil studied History in 3rd and 4th year, they could, theoretically, in 5th year drop it altogether and pick Geography instead. So our pupils curriculum would look like this:
English (mandatory)
Mathematics
History
Biology
Chemistry
The benefits of this are it is supposed to allow the continual advancement within a particular subject, the theory being that I will now be studying English at a higher level than before. The potential drawback is that a pupil may not advance, at all, and could theoretically be studying the same level of English at age 16 that they were 3 years ago. Another benefit is that it allows a pupil to refine their curriculum along the path they wish to follow, i.e. in our example the pupil clearly has an interest in Science. Again the potential downside is that pupils are often stuck with subjects they either are not good at, or don’t enjoy.
The final year of secondary education, 6th year age 17, again dependent upon results, the pupil has the option of choosing a minimum of 3 subjects, but can if they wish do 5. At this level, the pupil can theoretically pick 3 completely new subjects (for instance I choose Administration, and Psychology both subjects I had never studied before), or they can continue the subjects they studied the previous year, but at a higher level, or they can choose to re-start some of the subjects they had previously dropped (for instance the pupil in the example could take up drama again). What often happens is that pupils re-sit subjects they had failed, or not gotten as high a mark as hoped, in the previous year. This 6th year is good in that if a pupil does know what field of study they wish to do, they can progress further along that, and also if they don’t, they can choose new subjects to find what interests them.
Also it should be noted that a pupil can leave school at the end of 4th year, age 16. Entry to university or college is open at this age, but like everywhere is result dependent.
Essentially by the age of 18 a pupil should have gone through a well founded grounding in all the basics, developed a variety of subjects further, and then specialised in a few.
My own personal problems is that whilst I was genuinely interested in things, Art, Music, History, and also good at most subjects, I never, and still don’t, knew what I wanted to be ‘when I grew up’
So whilst your suggestion would be good for people who always know they want to be a doctor, vet, whatever. For others it just leads to more pressure and panic. I know many people who’ve wasted years studying something they don’t like or want to do.
Tab, while I can see what you mentioned as a possibility, I can’t imagine it would be inevitable. I’m sure somebody more clever than I could think of checks to put in place to ensure this didn’t happen, unless it was pressure from parents.
Hume, you bring up good points. I also have no idea what I want to do yet, and I’m assuming most people don’t know for most of their lives, if ever.
I guess it would be a good idea to at least keep the option available to choose new courses, or take a variety of courses, but there is no option in the U.S. school system to really delve into something if you know what you want to do, and I think there should be. If you know you want to be a physicist, you should have the option of taking a two and a half hour course on physics to accelerate your education before reaching college.
But what about people who really really want to be doctors, physicists, etc., but sadly just are not intelligent enough. Don’t you think they should continue other subjects as well?
Ideally, yes. But I don’t think the demand for doctors would be met if only the most intelligent were allowed to be doctors. I’m sure, just as with all professions, there are lots of mediocre doctors out there.
Some people are born with a special talent or ability, and don’t have to work as hard to achieve their goals. Other people might not be as intelligent, as you mention, but if their heart desires it enough, they will work harder to compensate, and eventually work their way up to mediocrity, or maybe more.
See MagnetMan’s thread on Home Schooling. Not to be critical… but what I’m reading in this thread is facile and entierly inside the box; the critique of the education system in this thread seems to me to be entirely within the parameters of method and objective already employed in the propaganda factories (schools).
I don’t see the difference between a familly whose traditions meant all [male] members worked down the local coal-mines, generation in generation out, and a familly in which everyone works as chemical engineers or whatever.
Technology/science will never stop becoming more complex, more involved, more esoteric, whereas poor little monkey man stands still. In the time of Newton, one man could know all the knowledge of mankind, now…? Your lucky, if you read none-stop, if you can keep up with one small facet of any branch of the sciences.
It’s only the current cult of the individual that keeps children’s education broad-based in the West - I’m sure other cultures’ wouldn’t even blink before shoving their child down a particular academic chute, and probably pay through the nose for it too.
It’s a no-brainer: Your child becomes exceedingly well-trained in a particular discipline, graduates much earlier, goes into a specialized position at 18, having not fallen foul of the temptations of teenage sex drugs and rock n’ roll. And makes a tonne of money.
What’s the opposing argument…? “That children should have their right to choose ‘who they will be’ respected.” Yeah. Left to their own devices, most children just become robots of a different breed to their parents, but robots all the same.
I’ll argue for the broad-based education every time. Several have already mentioned that they’ve gone to school, supposedly been “educated” and they still haven’t a clue what they want to do when “they grow up”. OK, you can’t stay suspended in mid-air forever, but the complexity of society makes it damned difficult to decide what you like, what will allow you to make a living, what will sustain your interest for a lifetime, etc. There has to be a happy medium between becoming a professional student at 40 and a trained factory robot at 20. Where is that happy medium? It depends on the individual. Some people know what they want to do for the rest of their lives at age ten. Some may be thirty. Some, like me, may never figure it out. This is why the “liberal arts” degree is so important in a “one size fits all” education system. If you don’t know what you’ll need when you finally decide what you want to do, then you need EVERYTHING.
Nothing is sadder than the person who finds at age forty that they hate their career and either live the rest of their lives resenting every day or having to tear up the world to change it. Not everyone is cut out to be a renaissance person, but most are more than capable of continued growth in interests and direction. It is the broad-based education that allows an individual to continue to explore their curiosity about the world and make wise choices in their career paths.
Finally, education isn’t a “thing” that you acquire, it is a process, and the broad-based education is a process that let’s you find your own way no matter how old you are or what you did last week.
Nothing is sadder than a person reaching forty in their career…? So, they’ve lived till forty, and their biggest problem is “not liking their career”. No money worries apparantly, nor relationship problems, nor children minefields. Everything hunky-dory except “Oh dear, this career just doesn’t allow me to express the authentic me-ness of me.”
Oh boo-hoo.
C’mon, I can think of waaaay sadder things than that. Want me to try…?
Yes, all very nice. But we don’t live in the world of “all very nice.”
But what is an individual…? Is he or she something isolate from society…? More precisely, something separate from their local socio-economic enviroment…? However hard a brother from the ghetto or a yokel from the sticks might want to be an astronaut, on an ‘individual’ level, does that mean it would be advisable to encourage them to pursue that end at the expense of any other recourse…?
Why not simply push him or her into the local off-licence of broken dreams with a coupon for a free bottle of wild turkey…?
As Kurt Vonnegut said: “It is not enough to simply succeed - others must fail.”
Whoever said that the medium was happy…? Our society doesn’t like mediums. It is set up to harbour specialists. A ‘medium’ lathe-operator is a bad lathe operator. Would you trust your kid’s teeth to a ‘medium’ dentist…?
Education, for the larger demographic, is exactly a thing you aquire, a means to an end, that being the right qualifications. Bad as it is, most education systems are not holistic, but compartmentalist - tuned toward an exam result.
But that’s okay. After you’ve got a job, and a house, and a wife with ginormous bazooms, then you have the leisure time to become a dilettanté, just like us. A process of sorts I suppose.
It’s a hell of a lot more than a collection of individuals, it’s also the conceptual and physical structures that allow them to cohere around joint works of mind and labour. Try pulling a plow with two ‘individual’ oxen or shire horses. The only reason we have a society at all, or an internet upon which to discuss its convolutions, is the constant pursuit of specialist knowledge and skill-sets.
Do you remember that Multi-tool I bought…? Combo of bottle opener, knife, pliers and screwdriver…?
The trouble is, pretty as it may be, the screwdriver - it isn’t a very good screwdriver. The pliers, they’re not very good pliers. The bottle opener - fine for beer-bottles, lousy for wine. The knife…? Not bad, but not as good as that Buck knife I bought a year or two back. You see my point - it’s fine for the jobs that require only a mediocre tool, or if you haven’t anything better lying around. But our society is no longer like that. Where is the ‘odd-job-man’ now…? On the fucking scrap-heap with all his mates, that’s where.
And that’s what work is for. And all it’s for. The whole ‘work is fun’ bit I never got. I suspect deep down, neither does anyone else. You work for cash, you take that cash home and fulfil whatever dreams you have it can afford. Remember that sad 40 year old of yours and his distasteful career…? Sadder still is the man who wins a couple of million on the lottery and says “It won’t change me - I’ll be in work tomorrow as usual.” Poor unimaginative fool. Work not of your choosing is the price you pay to stay in society.
But I stray from the point.
The last time I went home I did the tourist thing with my wife and kids. And in every museum or cafe we visited I saw the same thing: bored shitless young people whose ‘broad’ education has effectively dumped the poor shiftless bastards onto the service industry - for the rest of their boring, pimpled, single-parented lives.
They could have been more perhaps, if what finite intelligence they had, had been funnelled into a single area of expertise, rather than spread around like so much tomato sauce, on the greasey burgers they now spit surreptitiously into.
Buck makes a lousy knife. Try a Spyderco next time. Can you get them in that godforsaken hell-hole of a country?
Kidding. I’m kidding.
And now the boredom of youth is due to education as well?
Is there anything that isn’t caused by public education?
The odd-job man wasn’t making a fortune in your undefined, mythical past, Tab.
Garbage in, garbage out.
College types are more abundant than ever. People with “specialised” education are more numerous than ever. Should the elementary schools be teaching engineering?
Education begins with school. It doesn’t end there.
Education begins with a toddler tripping over stuff and bashing its knee and learning to try not to do that again.
School is bunkum. I learnt more skiving off and reading books/watching documentaries than I ever did attending lessons. And I got brilliant grades across the range of subjects offered.
