One of the fundamental problems of education is that we teach too much.
Too much? The powers-that-be don’t seem to think so. They constantly think of ways to heap more and more material on students. We used to have 10 years of “basic” education. Now we have 12. We have more subjects, more things to memorize, more seatwork, more homework, more projects, and more problems.
Look at today’s teenagers. A lot of them are tired, stressed and bored out of their wits with school — even those who do well at school. Look at today’s college graduates. A lot of them do not know what to do with their lives. This is the time when they’re finally out and ready to go “apply” what they have learned and work and be “productive” citizens. But what is it they really want to do?
A friend of mine recently asked her niece, “Ok, you just graduated, now what do you want to do?”
“Sleep,” was the girl’s tired reply.
It is not an uncommon answer, as most of you who have talked to young graduates would probably know. Other similar answers are, “I want to take a break,” or “I want to find myself.”
Do you know why?
Because, as I’ve said, we bombard these kids with too much. We force so much material upon them hoping some will stick and be useful for them but the reality is that they will not use probably 90% of whatever it is they “learned” in school.
Think about it, you who have finished school, who are in your 20’s, 30’s, 40’s, 50’s and so on. Have you ever had any use of knowing the difference between monocotyledon and dicotyledon plants? If you have not gone to medical school, have you ever had to dissect frogs and name each of its organs? Have you ever had to solve a real-life problem using logarithmic functions? Have you ever had to balance chemical equations? Did you lose your job because you didn’t know the difference between pandiwa and pang-abay (which I confess I have long kicked out of my memory) or who that damned crazy woman in Noli Me Tangere was? Do you still remember what prepositional phrases are and how they differ from gerund phrases? Do you know where Portugal is on the map, and what is its capital?
Yet, these are just some of the “basics” that the so-called educational experts have deemed are important, essential and crucial for us to learn in order to succeed in life. I would wager that you could bring any “expert” here and ask them 100 random questions from the entire K-12 curriculum and even they won’t be able to correctly answer half of those.
Here is the heart of the problem. We teach our children too much trivialities. We teach them too little about finding themselves and forging their own paths.
Email me at andy@freethinking.me. View previous articles at www.freethinking.me.
I’ve been reading your articles on education with interest. The education system has room for improvement, and as a courseware developer even in the comparably tiny field of IT I knowo it’s hard to keep the courseware up to date and relevant.
Most large mammals, like whales and dolphins and apes, keep their children in the “growing up” stage longer than other animals. Humans these days have a complex culture, and there’s alot to pass on, so we also keep the children in “education” for a relatively long time.
I think part of that should be the intuitive play of children, human neoteny, observed and guided by elders who understand the culture and have a better idea of what the kids will be heading into. That said, the elders can get their future forecasts wrong; my parents and their generation pushed us to just “survive”, working hard to get by in a world that was all about war and struggle. The world we ended up living in was not that, it was an extended peacetime, atleast on the american soil, and so we were overprepared for struggle and under prepared for the relative ease and free time that we ended up with.
So education may be a little sterile and outdated in alot of cases, but I think there’s also a value to instruction by elders. I’ve found kids don’t want to be forced into a single prescribed cirriculum, but if I open up ten different topics that I am interested in, and they can ask questions and research, they can learn from me.
I went through the school system, and I thought it was a useful experience, not because of the material I learned, but because of the challenge it provided. Just in case I did have to live a life of struggle in wartime, the military-educo-industrial complex I grew up in was a crucible and an incubator. I aquired the ability to read and write, and then when I discovered the libraries, and later the bookstores, I was able to appropriate my human heritage, and raised myself in other cultures that I found in books, because I was never very impressed with the one I was born into, but I needed the leadership of the philosophers and the shamans across literature to become who I am.
My vision of education would be more like the German gymnasiums of Hegel’s time, with physical education in the mountains, independent reading, exposure to the multiple aspects of modern culture, optional opportnities as an apprentice in the various technical fields, and customized counseling on life, about the world we find ourselves in, the human condition we find ourselves in, the various responses to the situation that have been offered through the world literature of the last few hundred years; the study of what i am, what we are, what this is, where it’s going, and what should we can do.
In guitar training they say “learn the scales, then forget them!”, and this applies across all learning- take in what “scales” have been provided for you, then write your own song of life without adhering to anyone else’s “scales”, keep the work of life alive and growing in grace.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07F5JJXK8