Old Dave,
Your objectives are admirable, and your analysis of our current dilemma appears to be accurate. You articulate your ideas as a well-rounded and well-educated person. Unfortunately, I believe that you are recommending the re-invention of the educational wheel, without a practical way of implementing your goals. I don’t mean to b…
Your objectives are admirable, and your analysis of our current dilemma appears to be accurate. You articulate your ideas as a well-rounded and well-educated person. Unfortunately, I believe that you are recommending the re-invention of the educational wheel, without a practical way of implementing your goals. I don’t mean to be critical or argumentative, and I am not “old” (I am only 80) but the ideas and philosophy for teaching “critical thinking skills” are legion and legendary, and our success rate is dismal, to say the least.
If I’m reading you correctly, what you would hope to have is the “rare” top tier people as “effective educators” in teaching and a “role model education system” designed and built by citizens in collaboration with government to teach children “how to learn” and love learning and have a passion for learning.
There are several problems with this. First is that critical thinking skills are not taught. Secondly, children are designed to learn and have a love of learning and a passion for learning until our manipulation, interference, and neurotic controlling habits beat it out of them (metaphorically speaking, except for some brutes and sadists who actually utilize corporal punishment). Third, an “education system” “…available to everyone” is a Utopian fantasy that has never existed and never will exist.
Your prescriptions involving ending corporate personhood, reconstituting rights and freedoms, and collaborating with decision-makers so they can accomplish their purposes are splendid, albeit a bit idealistic at this stage. However, getting us to that point will take more than a superfragilistic expiladocious educational apparatus controlled by the state and gifted to students whether they want it or not.
Schools can serve some extremely valuable services and there are instances where learning occurs, critical thinking skills are modeled, developed, or encouraged, and extraordinary educators convey their knowledge in a way that contributes to education. You appear to be someone who got something from the experience, although I would credit a few teachers, your family, and yourself more, while giving the schools none of the credit. The best teachers are forced to circumvent the rules.
But children MUST be respected as creators of knowledge and as capable, intelligent, intuitive, perceptive, and motivated learners. The idea is to facilitate when possible and to get the hell out of their way the rest of the time.
There are innumerable concepts and strategies for good schools and good learning opportunities. Those ALL absolutely require autonomy for teachers as well as for students. Free schools and other alternative format have existed for generations. But there are no right formulae for all to emulate and apply. Some children will reject academics altogether, at least during childhood. It is foolhardy to force anything on them and then try to test and evaluate and sort and rate on ludicrous scales.
Before we do anything else, we MUST end the failed experiment and stop the destruction of spirit and intellectual curiosity and creativity. Compulsory attendance has zero redeeming features and no reasonable logic to support it. Until we get that into our collective brains/minds and consciousness, we will continue to have things such as corporate personhood, gridlock in government, rampant xenophobia, fear mongering, and increasing ignorance.
At the risk of oversimplifying your positions and arguments, I believe they fall into two categories, either “it’s just not how we do things” or “it’s too hard to make the changes that we need.” I could not agree more that our government does not do things the way that it should, and that it would be hard to transition to a role model democracy. I also believe that our government should meet its purpose of promoting our general welfare using best practice-based solutions, and doing less than our best is insane. I think that your knowledge and observations on education provide important input to the discussion, and any suggestions that you might have to make our government meet its purpose would be appreciated. There are no good reasons for why we cannot build and sustain a role model democracy with a role model education system. However, there are plenty of bad reasons.
We may be too far apart in our perspectives to be of help to each other. I am not good with jargon and am not clear on what you are saying. I believe you are challenging my assertions that mass education is not a possibility and that no adequate system, public or private, can be created to deliver education on a platter to our youthful citizens to prepare them for adulthood, citizenship, and all that those things entail.
I regret that my earlier posts were on the audio side and that folks responding here to the print version probably have not seen them. I was unfamiliar with how things were set up, but I did pontificate at great length on several occasions with clarifying (ostensibly) commentary.
I have not ever said that education is not attainable or that we cannot assure plenty of opportunity. My position is that 1.) schools were never meant to provide education; 2.) groups do not learn or become educated; 3.) the separation of school and state is no less crucial than the separation of church and state; 4.) there are ample models, alternatives, approaches, and theories of pedagogy already available which cannot be made compatible with the authoritarian bureaucracy necessitated by attendance law, and I repeat again, 5.) coercion and education are antithetical.
Government has an extremely important role in providing support to both schools, which cannot operate with education as their primary function, and to individual education, which is a private, personal, and often ‘subversive’ activity. The federal government should provide oversight to guard against discrimination, abuse, exploitation, or fraud. However, government has no business requiring schooling or education, and it certainly has no damn business in designing curriculum or administering behavioral expectations and standards.
There is a reason I claim to be an educational heretic. If you have not by now decided that I am a lunatic from the fringe or some edge of left field, I have two manuscripts that I will send to anyone who requests them. I have yet to find a publisher, and it is looking as if they will be published posthumously, if ever. Indeed, I received another rejection in my mailbox just now after I received your message.
I don't have your extensive knowledge of education so knowing the best ways to actually foster learning and critical thinking skills for our citizens, and whatever else is important, is something I would go to you to describe, as in, what is the purpose of education? I only wanted to note that if our government was to meet its purpose, we need to have the educational solutions that are a role model for other countries. How to do it is another subject I would defer to you to define, and if you could explain it to a 5th Grader, then you might have something.
Rather than me explaining my thinking to a fifth grader, a better way to approach this might be to ask a fifth grader for her thoughts or his perceptions. I am not being facetious, and I am not someone who overly romanticizes childhood. But it seems a bit absurd to imagine that adults can design, organize, and impose an educational regime without an intimate knowledge of and awareness about the feelings and opinions of the students. You know, democracy and all that.
Once again, there is no shortage of amazing ideas, methods, and scientifically valid approaches. The sad truth is that the best laid plans of mice and men are blocked. Researchers and theorists make their recommendations; grand experiments or models are launched with great fanfare and excitement; the studies are carried out and documented and everyone agrees that the ideas should be applied elsewhere, and that success has been achieved, and then everything sort of fades from view while more study and more funding is called for. The Black Hole has swallowed another fabulous program.
This happens ad infinitum because there is a demand for more specific data points and irrefutable evidence of the benefits (which take time and are too subjective to be measured) and the programs always involve exceptions to the regimentation, rigidity, authoritarian control over individuals, and less of the wasteful nonsensical evaluation and testing. Meaningful innovation and amelioration demand that power be relinquished and control be given up to allow a greater degree of liberty and independence, which simply cannot happen within the strictures of compulsory attendance law. The brick wall does not give. Change is put off for another time and place.
If one could ask a fifth grader who has not been too thoroughly indoctrinated and who is made comfortable with honest opinions and feelings about school, one might get an earful. I would venture to say that most would not have difficulty understanding that children who are forced to participate are likely to resist or rebel. I suspect that one might hear about arbitrariness, boredom, frustration, hypocrisy, massive amounts of time wasted, drudgery and unstimulating assignments, excessive work in and out of school, and endless testing.
Education has been totally conflated with school, which is a huge problem. People who know nothing about education are defining what education is for others and setting up parameters. If education is the good that we value and if we recognize that education is essential for democracy, then we must finally realize that laws and government are too clumsy and demanding to be the means by which we get to where we want to go. If coercion is any part of the process and if formulae are being followed by the providers, we will always find ourselves with more indoctrination and less education.
Old Dave,
Your objectives are admirable, and your analysis of our current dilemma appears to be accurate. You articulate your ideas as a well-rounded and well-educated person. Unfortunately, I believe that you are recommending the re-invention of the educational wheel, without a practical way of implementing your goals. I don’t mean to be critical or argumentative, and I am not “old” (I am only 80) but the ideas and philosophy for teaching “critical thinking skills” are legion and legendary, and our success rate is dismal, to say the least.
If I’m reading you correctly, what you would hope to have is the “rare” top tier people as “effective educators” in teaching and a “role model education system” designed and built by citizens in collaboration with government to teach children “how to learn” and love learning and have a passion for learning.
There are several problems with this. First is that critical thinking skills are not taught. Secondly, children are designed to learn and have a love of learning and a passion for learning until our manipulation, interference, and neurotic controlling habits beat it out of them (metaphorically speaking, except for some brutes and sadists who actually utilize corporal punishment). Third, an “education system” “…available to everyone” is a Utopian fantasy that has never existed and never will exist.
Your prescriptions involving ending corporate personhood, reconstituting rights and freedoms, and collaborating with decision-makers so they can accomplish their purposes are splendid, albeit a bit idealistic at this stage. However, getting us to that point will take more than a superfragilistic expiladocious educational apparatus controlled by the state and gifted to students whether they want it or not.
Schools can serve some extremely valuable services and there are instances where learning occurs, critical thinking skills are modeled, developed, or encouraged, and extraordinary educators convey their knowledge in a way that contributes to education. You appear to be someone who got something from the experience, although I would credit a few teachers, your family, and yourself more, while giving the schools none of the credit. The best teachers are forced to circumvent the rules.
But children MUST be respected as creators of knowledge and as capable, intelligent, intuitive, perceptive, and motivated learners. The idea is to facilitate when possible and to get the hell out of their way the rest of the time.
There are innumerable concepts and strategies for good schools and good learning opportunities. Those ALL absolutely require autonomy for teachers as well as for students. Free schools and other alternative format have existed for generations. But there are no right formulae for all to emulate and apply. Some children will reject academics altogether, at least during childhood. It is foolhardy to force anything on them and then try to test and evaluate and sort and rate on ludicrous scales.
Before we do anything else, we MUST end the failed experiment and stop the destruction of spirit and intellectual curiosity and creativity. Compulsory attendance has zero redeeming features and no reasonable logic to support it. Until we get that into our collective brains/minds and consciousness, we will continue to have things such as corporate personhood, gridlock in government, rampant xenophobia, fear mongering, and increasing ignorance.
At the risk of oversimplifying your positions and arguments, I believe they fall into two categories, either “it’s just not how we do things” or “it’s too hard to make the changes that we need.” I could not agree more that our government does not do things the way that it should, and that it would be hard to transition to a role model democracy. I also believe that our government should meet its purpose of promoting our general welfare using best practice-based solutions, and doing less than our best is insane. I think that your knowledge and observations on education provide important input to the discussion, and any suggestions that you might have to make our government meet its purpose would be appreciated. There are no good reasons for why we cannot build and sustain a role model democracy with a role model education system. However, there are plenty of bad reasons.
Old Dave,
We may be too far apart in our perspectives to be of help to each other. I am not good with jargon and am not clear on what you are saying. I believe you are challenging my assertions that mass education is not a possibility and that no adequate system, public or private, can be created to deliver education on a platter to our youthful citizens to prepare them for adulthood, citizenship, and all that those things entail.
I regret that my earlier posts were on the audio side and that folks responding here to the print version probably have not seen them. I was unfamiliar with how things were set up, but I did pontificate at great length on several occasions with clarifying (ostensibly) commentary.
I have not ever said that education is not attainable or that we cannot assure plenty of opportunity. My position is that 1.) schools were never meant to provide education; 2.) groups do not learn or become educated; 3.) the separation of school and state is no less crucial than the separation of church and state; 4.) there are ample models, alternatives, approaches, and theories of pedagogy already available which cannot be made compatible with the authoritarian bureaucracy necessitated by attendance law, and I repeat again, 5.) coercion and education are antithetical.
Government has an extremely important role in providing support to both schools, which cannot operate with education as their primary function, and to individual education, which is a private, personal, and often ‘subversive’ activity. The federal government should provide oversight to guard against discrimination, abuse, exploitation, or fraud. However, government has no business requiring schooling or education, and it certainly has no damn business in designing curriculum or administering behavioral expectations and standards.
There is a reason I claim to be an educational heretic. If you have not by now decided that I am a lunatic from the fringe or some edge of left field, I have two manuscripts that I will send to anyone who requests them. I have yet to find a publisher, and it is looking as if they will be published posthumously, if ever. Indeed, I received another rejection in my mailbox just now after I received your message.
I don't have your extensive knowledge of education so knowing the best ways to actually foster learning and critical thinking skills for our citizens, and whatever else is important, is something I would go to you to describe, as in, what is the purpose of education? I only wanted to note that if our government was to meet its purpose, we need to have the educational solutions that are a role model for other countries. How to do it is another subject I would defer to you to define, and if you could explain it to a 5th Grader, then you might have something.
Dave,
Rather than me explaining my thinking to a fifth grader, a better way to approach this might be to ask a fifth grader for her thoughts or his perceptions. I am not being facetious, and I am not someone who overly romanticizes childhood. But it seems a bit absurd to imagine that adults can design, organize, and impose an educational regime without an intimate knowledge of and awareness about the feelings and opinions of the students. You know, democracy and all that.
Once again, there is no shortage of amazing ideas, methods, and scientifically valid approaches. The sad truth is that the best laid plans of mice and men are blocked. Researchers and theorists make their recommendations; grand experiments or models are launched with great fanfare and excitement; the studies are carried out and documented and everyone agrees that the ideas should be applied elsewhere, and that success has been achieved, and then everything sort of fades from view while more study and more funding is called for. The Black Hole has swallowed another fabulous program.
This happens ad infinitum because there is a demand for more specific data points and irrefutable evidence of the benefits (which take time and are too subjective to be measured) and the programs always involve exceptions to the regimentation, rigidity, authoritarian control over individuals, and less of the wasteful nonsensical evaluation and testing. Meaningful innovation and amelioration demand that power be relinquished and control be given up to allow a greater degree of liberty and independence, which simply cannot happen within the strictures of compulsory attendance law. The brick wall does not give. Change is put off for another time and place.
If one could ask a fifth grader who has not been too thoroughly indoctrinated and who is made comfortable with honest opinions and feelings about school, one might get an earful. I would venture to say that most would not have difficulty understanding that children who are forced to participate are likely to resist or rebel. I suspect that one might hear about arbitrariness, boredom, frustration, hypocrisy, massive amounts of time wasted, drudgery and unstimulating assignments, excessive work in and out of school, and endless testing.
Education has been totally conflated with school, which is a huge problem. People who know nothing about education are defining what education is for others and setting up parameters. If education is the good that we value and if we recognize that education is essential for democracy, then we must finally realize that laws and government are too clumsy and demanding to be the means by which we get to where we want to go. If coercion is any part of the process and if formulae are being followed by the providers, we will always find ourselves with more indoctrination and less education.