Our current educational system is a joke. OK, this is not true of all schools; but there is no question that, as a whole, US students are falling behind the rest of the industrialized world. No Child Left Behind has resulted in dumbed-down courses so that anybody can pass – but this stymies kids of higher intelligence. When I was in high school and studying Latin, I felt hobbled when I was the only one who understood the ablative absolute; only after a lot of pleading and schmoozing was I allowed to advance on my own and then finally into the next grade up.
As if that isn’t bad enough, religious extremists are sneaking phony science into classrooms, hiding behind the very First Amendment they in fact despise. Creationism has tiptoed into schools wearing the sheep’s clothing of “intelligent design.” Children are taught that millennia of careful scientific observation and investigation are unreliable. Rejecting science for mythology hampers our understanding of how the world really works, and warps the minds of children so they are ill prepared to become real scientists, or even understand real science. This is one reason why the anti-vaxx and Flat Earth movements have attracted so many followers, and why anti-mask bugnuts are so numerous during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Critical thinking is a vital skill that most Americans lack. We should teach it in schools, we should inculcate careful thinking in children from a young age. People capable of critical thinking are far less likely to fall for con games, or be swayed by the silvery tongue of some demagogue. They gather as many facts as they can, they investigate candidates before casting votes, and they request the sources of alleged facts and figures. Neither organized religion nor the other Powers That Be can allow that!
We send our kids to college to cram their crania with knowledge, but a lot of it amounts to memorizing facts and figures rather than actually processing them. In addition, courses of study do not always prepare kids for the real world. Time and again you hear of A students who end up scrubbing floors while C students earn six-figure incomes. Finally, hundreds of thousands of people who have college degrees are unemployed or under-employed. Many institutions of higher education, and many courses of study, are simply useless.
Everywhere you look, you see advertising for colleges and universities that promises better jobs and better income as a result. People sign up and attend class, either on-line or in person, with visions of more gainful employment attending their degrees or certificates. However, they cannot always live up to their promises. Thousands of people find themselves deeply in hock and unable to pay back their student loans.
What gets the most attention at many, and perhaps most, universities? The athletes. The local football or basketball team is the pride of the town, not its outstanding students. One map of the U.S. shows that the highest paid public employee in 40 states is an athletic coach. Academics suffer in the name of sports. The typical American university would probably rather turn out one winner of the Heisman trophy than a half dozen Nobel laureates. The legendary athletes and coaches are remembered; while the scientists, artists, statespeople, and others who have truly contributed to society often get short shrift.
Here is an idea that I put together from more than one source: Bring back the apprentice/journeyman system. You wanna be a computer programmer? Apprentice to a highly skilled programmer who will show you the ropes. After proving you know said ropes, you move up to Journeyman level. (Journeyperson? Can’t leave out the ladies these days!) This could work for a wide variety of professions, from auto mechanics to lawyers to engineers to even doctors. Instead of sitting in a sterile classroom, see what goes on in the real world. My best computer education has taken place on the fly, when I used computers in a business setting as opposed to an academic one.
I have heard of schools that do without grades, either the report card or the level kind. Only about 20% of a student’s education takes place in a structured classroom, while the rest is entirely freestyle. These schools have the advantage that children don’t feel they must be grade-grubbers who kick a*s on tests. Their education is on their own, at their own rate, so they can discover where their real talents lie. Some people are even trying “un-schools” where the kids set the agenda: a visit to a museum one day, a walk through a park the next. Maybe that is the real solution to our education troubles, to make education far less structured and more adaptable to the individual needs and abilities of each student. As Plutarch stated, a mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled.
7 Responses to “SOUND OFF! 10/30/21 The Next Gandhi? Part 6 – Education: One Size Fits Nobody”
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Teaching critical thinking can be really hard. For one thing, you can’t teach it if you don’t got it. And,, even if you do have it, it can be difficult to communicate. That’s why I was thrilled to see a new teaching method (which I think should be started in gradeschool and amplified annually – it is based on rhetoric and logic, and its acronum is SPACECAT. So it even has a cute gimmick. A teacher ifeatured in one of the Open Thread Short Takes this week. got a nastygram from a parent (not a parent of one of her students – of course not) and set the class to analyzing the email as per SPACECAT. Not, of course, that it’s the only method – bt if we could only start teaching critical thinking early, it almost would not matter if we didn’t teach anything else. In my high school courses, we were all pretty good at correcting (usually substitute) teachers who spouted BS, and making our cases well.
I certainlyagree that sorting classes by age does not work well. In som ways it’s comfortable – but comfort is not necessarily a good thing for education.
Thanks for this thought-provoking article!
I don’t think there’s one size of education that fits every student either. People learn in different ways so they need to be taught in different ways too. And people do not have the same capabilities; some brains are art orientated, others are language orientated while others are mathematically orientated etc. where the key is that no orientation is better than the other. As long as we insist that SAT scores compatible with technical university education are the best, many people will not be allowed to maximise their particular capabilities to the fullest.
Education should cater to both the different learning styles and different talents, which may demand different school types to accommodate this educational diversity. Children should be tested without bias during all of their education, not to get them a pass into a university but to adjust schooling to make sure they can get the maximum out of their education at the speed that suits their learning. To get the optimal results a nation needs to invest a lot, i.e. very much more than now, in educational diversity.
Critical thinking may not be for all, but all should learn how to think for themselves to some level during their personal educational journey. People are social beings that, especially when younger, (desperately) want to belong to a group, socially, culturally, religiously… and often do so by unconditionally adopting the group’s way of thinking or its ‘truths’. Some level of critical thinking should guide them through that.
The best thing I learned in school was how to study, how to research, how to find the answers to my questions. That meant relying on scientific and factual evidence and sources. I have to question the veracity of the information available on line, which most young people rely on.
Does a person really have to know equations, if they have a computer device to give them the answer? A religious education is factually wrong on so many issues it’s no wonder people are susceptible to believing in the kind of garbage Trump and right wingers spew.
People do have a right to educate their children the way they want, just as they have the right to raise idiots. Unfortunately, we all have to live dealing with those idiots. Some might say it’s to bad we have to live with those idiots voting, but then, I never believed in an IQ requirement to vote.
The ability to study and research is right up there too .. but as your own experience teaches, it’s not very useful especially today without thee criticsl thinking skills. You may notice I try to explain a bit when I use a source that’s new or unfamiliar, and when I don’t go to the original source for some reason like a paywall, I will include where it’s originally from. All of you are smart enough and educated enough to do that vetting – yourselves – but why should you have to when you need to know the content. And sometimes even a flawed source can be correct – when the material is unrelated to its flaws.
Important skill sets indeed Freya. I don’t recall any class assignments or discussions designed, perhaps, to develop critical thinking until middle school history and journalism, with some more in high school. I’ve often thought Nixon and Reagan’s attacks on academia was because enough college students had developed those skills to see through the lies about SE Asia and that Bush might have pushed an effort that left no time for such skills development in the classroom to stop something similar arising over WMD myths.
I had no grades through 4th grade at the college laboratory school I attended; my parents got teacher reports and recommendations quarterly. Had no clue how well I was doing other than when put with a higher grade group for a subject while participating in the ungraded primary experiment (was told to go to 4th grade after 2 yrs. and to work harder on my cursive handwriting neatness). When we moved and I got grades, so many were in subjective areas (citizenship was one) that I couldn’t understand how or why they varied and then one teacher said it was because during breaks/recess/lunch I spent my time with friends that were not in my class and not in the college track I was in…that appalled me that social engineering (without knowing the term then).
When UCSC was still young and more attached to UCB, it had no grades just written evaluations yet somehow when people transferred or went to grad school (especially if at UCB) they were miraculously translated into grades for a GPA.
When I was nearing completion of college the research focused on how companies most valued a liberal arts education because it provided a variety of thinking skills that graduates could use for solving problems, etc. as workers and that that was more important than core business info. that could be trained in. 20 yrs. later executive staff said they hired based on people skills because core business info. could be taught/trained.
All this has seemed strange to me since the origin of public schools was for government to teach future workers basic skills so the employers/companies wouldn’t have to teach/train them.
Thus I see the see-saw between employers wanting skills for their profits, etc. to be provided by our taxes vs. politicians not wanting those skills to limit their power, etc.
Good post – & good comments! Thanks!
In the 21st century, learning to analyse, to check back as far as possible the sources and whether these in fact have vested interests – these are the skills most needed for adult life!
But for education to equip youth with such skills, both teachers & parents have to adjust the way they think about education – and the way they handle information & knowledge. And that’s frightening for those who fear questioning their own “knowledge”. Uncertainty can be scary …
Comment from Mitch –
Education, or football, which brings in more money?Critical thinking, or religious dogma, which has the more insistent lobbyists? Which is the more organized?
Mitch