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Literature in formal education is all about reading for comprehension, critical thought, and discussion of ideas. The antidote to Fox News, pretty much.
I am also of the opinion that English literature is over-mandated. I might agree with requiring one semester of it, but not 3 or 4 years. The reason is that studying fictional literature, by definition, means studying something that never happened in the real world. To some extent it might be useful in order to build up a person's philosophical reasoning abilities, but 4 years? And at the expense of non-fiction, which IS about the real world and not about made up scenarios?
If I come up with a fantastically implausible hypothetical scenario and use it to create a thread here on City-Data to discuss urban planning or economics or law, I will get jumped on almost immediately for discussing something without relevance to the real world. And yet by insisting on studying fiction, rather than nonfiction, you are doing exactly the same thing - you are studying something that is not part of reality.
Why the double standard here? (Sorry for the diatribe but I really hated being forced to read fiction in school when I was more interested in history and science.)
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Originally Posted by GeoffD
You can train a monkey to do math. I remember as an undergrad taking a modern physics course. Quantum mechanics. Relativity. Things that are very removed from the Newtonian physics world I live in. I had the probability theory math training to "do the math" for the quantum mechanics part and get an A in the course but I never was able to comprehend the system I was modeling mathematically. It's probably the most useful undergrad course I ever took because I learned that there are ideas out there that I can't easily grasp.
Not a valid comparison. Relativity and quantum mechanics are facts. Novels are not fact - they are fiction.
Quote:
Originally Posted by GeoffD
Education is supposed to be hard. It's supposed to challenge you. If you're any good, it's not just rote memorization. It's teaching critical thought and analysis. The problem with US K-12 is that it has been corrupted to teach to the low-middle. When I was doing K-12 in the 1960's and 1970's, my school system culled the top 10% to 15% of the class and put them in accelerated classes. It did a pretty good job of simulating the education you'd get at a high end prep school. That program was killed a few years after I went through it in the name of political correctness. The only way you can get that kind of education these days is through a high end private school or to move to a really wealthy town stuffed full of tiger parents. The really bright middle class kid is denied the opportunity. Bill Gates has been trying to change that. There are now a relative handful of competitive entrance public schools that cater to bright, motivated children. It's a small start but that really has to spread to every city & town in the country.
I am also of the opinion that English literature is over-mandated. I might agree with requiring one semester of it, but not 3 or 4 years. The reason is that studying fictional literature, by definition, means studying something that never happened in the real world. To some extent it might be useful in order to build up a person's philosophical reasoning abilities, but 4 years? And at the expense of non-fiction, which IS about the real world and not about made up scenarios?
In 1941 Robert Heinlein was the guest speaker at a science fiction convention. The theme of his speech was the future.
He had self guiding cars that could drive themselves on the highway in his book Methuselah's Children. Now we have self-driving cars in an advanced state of development though maybe not quite ready for prime time. We also have people like Steven Hawking warning us about Artificial Intelligence.
I think properly selected science fiction could be very important in education though I do not consider the Literary Intellectuals to be very good at selecting that material. Also some science fiction makes science more interesting than some science teachers.
This is certainly not the best known but what I think is one of the best Artificial Intelligence works of science fiction available. No matter what, today's school kids will have to deal with technology called AI in decades to come.
He had self guiding cars that could drive themselves on the highway in his book Methuselah's Children. Now we have self-driving cars in an advanced state of development though maybe not quite ready for prime time. We also have people like Steven Hawking warning us about Artificial Intelligence.
I think properly selected science fiction could be very important in education though I do not consider the Literary Intellectuals to be very good at selecting that material. Also some science fiction makes science more interesting than some science teachers.
This is certainly not the best known but what I think is one of the best Artificial Intelligence works of science fiction available. No matter what, today's school kids will have to deal with technology called AI in decades to come.
There's nothing wrong with science fiction, and Heinlein, and others of that ilk. Unless science fiction becomes a bit of an obsession (as Katarina is pointing out). Real science is better than science fiction. And real science is what schools need to be focusing on.
90% of everything is crap! Lots of stuff called sci-fi is junk. I did say there had to be selection.
Asimov made a very funny comment also. Lots of science fiction foreshadowed the Moon landing but no one predicted that millions of people would watch it on television.
Some kids don't want to waste more years sitting in a classroom with stuff they most likely won't use after high school. Plus they barely have any valuable skills when they enter the workforce. Why I think high school should offer college prep or vocational training on top of math and english. When was the last time anyone found the Pythagorean theorem useful?
Actually, I don't think accounting is a difficult class. I just do NOT believe that everyone needs to know double entry bookkeeping.
It is not a question of NEEDS to know, it is a matter of would it be more beneficial to THEM to know then to not?
It is probably more beneficial to banks and creditors for them to NOT KNOW.
If accounting had been mandatory since 1960 would we have had the housing bubble in 2008? No one can possibly know. But how could it hurt? Is 4 years of English Literature more useful for everyone?
And why should anyone do bookkeeping with dirt cheap computers everywhere?
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Manual vs Computerized Accounting
Ever since Lucas Pacioli wrote about and spread the knowledge of double entry accounting in his “Summa di Arithemetica” in 1494, modern manual accounting was born (Hendrickson, 2007), though manual accounting has existed in many forms since ancient times. In contrast, computerized accounting systems are a more modern invention, as the first computer was invented between 1943 and 1946 (“Great Events in Accounting & Business History”, and Arthur Anderson first computerized the payroll of General Electric in 1953 (“Great Events in Accounting & Business History”, (n. d. )). Powerful personal computers were not readily available to the average person until the 1980’s and 1990’s. Manual accounting, for the purposes of this paper, is the completion of the accounting cycle by hand without the use of a computerized accounting system.
Who needs as much computing power as General Electric in 1953?
But this $9 CHIP computer is more powerful than any multi-million dollar organization could buy in the 1950s. So why should anyone do bookkeeping. The software should handle all of that. The users just need to understand it.
But computers and accounting must be complicated and mysterious.
The hilarious thing is that LAWASPECT website does not allow copying off the screen. They even give you a message saying it is forbidden. All you have to do is Ctrl-U and access the source code of the webpsage and copy from there and delete a little HTML. But NO! Mystery and Security must be maintained.
Are you kidding? I bet I could have gotten a high school diploma at 16 if my grade school and high school were run competently. Why waste 2 years learning stuff of no use. Yeah, we can never have enough essays on Catcher in the Rye.
Some kids don't want to waste more years sitting in a classroom with stuff they most likely won't use after high school. Plus they barely have any valuable skills when they enter the workforce. Why I think high school should offer college prep or vocational training on top of math and english. When was the last time anyone found the Pythagorean theorem useful?
And yet age 15 (?) you think they're fully ready to be integrated into the work world.
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