An anonymous commenter asked me to look at this article (warning - PDF file) - specifically the paragraph highlighted above.
Click to enlarge if needed. The other thing you can do is hit "(Control) ++" on you computer. That enlarges the screen. "CTRL" followed by minuses "---" will bring you back to normalcy.
So as for the content, I disagree whole-heartedly with the first-sentence premise, with the idea that the educational system has *worked well* for anybody.
Just because the academic creme of the crop is smarter than their peers (or financially successful) it doesn't imply that they are ABSOLUTELY learned.
Yeah smart people can (by definition) and have overcome to an extent the horribly stunting effects of mass schooling, BUT that doesn't mean they couldn't have accomplished so much more in an educational vehicle other than the *system*.
Hint: a more liberal, er liberated, homeschooling curriculum.
You should see my 3.85 year old son do addition and subtraction. All kids have 10 fingers, do they not? Today we started "super adding"; we started *multiplication*, the simple adding of *groups*.
Meanwhile, at the local community center we send him to twice a week...
They made such a big deal about a "counting book" the kids were constructing.
It went all the way up to number 5!
All kids, hardly just mine, are capable of so much more than society and their parents expect of them. I talk to *educated* people all the time who don't do anything with their young children in the way of reading, writing, math, etc. The reasons they give me are all hogwash, all the same - they believe that learning will happen soon enough; it will be shepherded by *someone else* in a mass educational environment. "Let the kids have fun and enjoy their childhood", they say, er self-justify.
Why are adult minds so closed?
We can thank the very *system* that caponized them.
As a society we desperately need to break this regenerating cycle of outsourced thought.
2 comments:
First of all, I did not intend to post that anonymously. Second, you and I are looking at different things. I was specifically looking at the bit about kids doing well if they were part of a connected group. I am relating this to my own very mobile childhood here. I think that was dead on. Most kids are not connected and are left adrift in the school system, particularly the public school system-even the "good" schools.
I am with you as far as capabilities and expectations and all that, that is just not what I was looking at here.
Slow,
Real busy today. Remember it's my perogative to conclusion-jump after a single sentence!
As for the second part that you wanted to talk about, well we'd have to mix a lot of ideas to discuss that. Though generally speaking I am really souring on all aspects *group*.
I'd go back and read more of what you sent but my reading material is piling up something fierce. I have innumerable unread emails, magazines, and just an overwhelming amount of stuff to read on the market meltdowns. Apologies.
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