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You learn by living life, indulging your curiosity, exposing yourself to new perspectives, and getting knocked around a little bit. School not only does not facilitate this process, it inhibits it.
You learn by living life, indulging your curiosity, exposing yourself to new perspectives, and getting knocked around a little bit. School not only does not facilitate this process, it inhibits it.
By these meager standards, one would not even need to learn to read.
I would not consider illiteracy consistent with a concept of "maximizing intellectual growth."
The economic wargame is a continuation of the military wargame by other means.
That is why we should have a National Recommended Reading List. A good list would create a LEVEL PLAYING FIELD. We give lip service to the concept but who really wants it? Children who have no idea what is going on must deal with a system managed by adults playing games against each other.
The Screwing of the Average Man by David Hapgood
That is the best book I have ever seen that really explains what is going on. But it does not make a big deal of planned obsolescence. 20 years before the Moon landing engineers could design planes capable of 400+ mph. So why do we keep redesigning cars 40 years after the Moon landing? What is so great about them? Are we going into debt for useless variations in junk to play status games with each other?
So why isn't accounting mandatory in the schools and economists computing and reporting the depreciation of all of the junk?
So is school really, mostly a waste of time so the majority can be kept ignorant of knowledge that could empower them?
Maybe the only solution is to spread information ourselves because the educators will not. Are all of the English Lit teachers going to admit that they are useless?
psik
Lit teachers would argue that the very place to learn empowering knowledge is in literature, and they would be right. Literature is where most of the world's most empowering and revolutionary ideas began. Unfortunately, I don't think most literature teachers in the lower grades understand half of what they are reading.
Oh, and if they did they wouldn't be allowed to teach it anyway because it's not on the test.
This might be a fair thing to say to an adult, but we're talking about school-age children here. If we can't expect them to have the mental maturity to vote in federal elections, I don't think its fair to expect them to figure out that school's a load of crap and think of a way to beat the system.
Lit teachers would argue that the very place to learn empowering knowledge is in literature, and they would be right. Literature is where most of the world's most empowering and revolutionary ideas began. Unfortunately, I don't think most literature teachers in the lower grades understand half of what they are reading.
Oh, and if they did they wouldn't be allowed to teach it anyway because it's not on the test.
Yeah, the study of literature got a robot to Mars.
Let's face it. Most of what we learned in school is utterly useless for the majority of us. In ordinate amounts of time are being given to esoteric ideas and concepts which could be given to more useful and practical things. Why is this. Why is finding the area under a curve more important than being able to understand how mortgages work. Why are long dead English play writes more useful than how to write a proper business letter. How come it is completely acceptable that we not know how our political system works but unacceptable that we don't know what the integral of 89x - 32j as x tends to 8.
You can make this argument about virtually any subject that is taught in K-12 and in most college classes. Beyond basic reading and writing, what should a student learn in school and how many years should be devoted to that? People will even argue against basic math since they say a person almost always has access to a calculator. I have had high school math teachers argue that memorizing multiplication tables is not necessary and many students today never do master basic arithmetic.
This country thinks that a student should be entitled to a HS education and a bachelor's degree. Much of what is taught in schools and colleges today has not changed much in the past 80 years. Sure, we have computers, iPads and Smartboards but when you look at the math, history, science and English courses, how much is different from the 1930s or earlier?
Is most of what we learned in school utterly useless for the majority of us, or is school the practice for learning more advanced and specific skills that we will need in our careers? Take people like accountants, engineers, nurses, doctors and lawyers, for example, could these people start their career training earlier in their lives? Why does a lawyer have to attend 12 years of school and get a bachelor's degree before he or she can start learning the trade of being a lawyer? Or is there value in the traditional model that has stayed virtually the same for the past 80 or 90 years?
One of the reasons why what we learn in school might be utterly useless is everyone is forced to learn much of the same information. This carries over into college with core curriculums. Here is a quote from one university's website.
Quote:
All students must fulfill the requirements of the university’s core curriculum,
also known as the Liberal Studies Program. The curriculum involves a range of 43
to 51 credits, divided among Learning Skills, Knowledge Areas, and Liberal
Studies Electives.
There is a cost for all of this education. Is it necessary? Does it increase the standard of living or make the US more competitive in the global economy? When you add the bill for education to the bill for health care, the US can't maintain the status quo. Our economy can no longer support the current level of spending on these two items plus national defense. So what should change? Is the current education model at the current rate of spending the best we can do? What should students be taught and for how long? Are the majority of high school students capable of learning algebra, geometry, biology, and chemistry? Should we expect more from our high schools as far as educating our best and brightest students in math and science? Should more emphasis be place on writing skills? What books should students be reading? Is there too much emphasis on reading and interpreting classical literature? Have computers and other technology improved the education process?
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