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How about schools not try to prepare compliant workers and instead try to teach children how to learn and think? History, art, music, mathematics, science, lit

How about schools not try to prepare compliant workers and instead try to teach children how to learn and think? History, art, music, mathematics, science, literature... you know, an education, not training.

itronitron 9y ago
I went to such a school. Organizations really should focus on hiring non-compliant workers (or at least not filtering them out) as they will drive the organization forward.
junkscience2017 9y ago
This is a popular response whenever the topic of education is brought up...I hate to trot out the now-hackneyed term "privilege"....but really. Very few people in society have the privilege of treating education as a route to becoming cultured. The storied universities you cherish were built by the rich for the rich, it is only recently that we have determined that the masses desperately need a grounding in romantic literature. Is it important to you that your accountant know Chaucer? Does your favorite artist really need to know chemistry? In the end you have to feed yourself. I don't want to be responsible for feeding you and you don't want to be responsible for feeding me. If that means you learn something applied that is only useful for ten years and requires you to learn something else useful in the next ten years, so be it. As it stands, why do people put such an emphasis on what someone studies as an undergraduate? Personally, I love reading history...read dozens of dense history books a year, and consider myself a decent self-taught historian. My degree is not in history. Why does it need to be?
- epalmer 9y ago
  Note that I am a IS staff worker so my perspective is limited but I also have a recent grad from my school in my family with my oldest daughter. So some of what I speak of is personal and up close. I work at a liberal arts university and hear this from faculty: "We don't care about skills, we care about the ability to learn". The problem is that today's learners need to be super learners. They need the ability to do divergent thinking, then need to work collaboratively in teams. Working this way is a skill. They need to be able to solve a wide body of problems safely where failure does not impact grades. https://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_changing_education_paradigms https://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_changing_education_pa... But they don't encourage this sort of learning. And don't even mention the "skill" word which is considered evil. I hear the 500 year old liberal arts model woks just fine. While our business school quietly is working on these skills and the students are finding great jobs and starting businesses successfully and more all while the liberal arts side is ignoring the future.
  - ataturk 9y ago
    The biggest problem I see with higher education right now is that they aren't doing any of the above--they talk big about being open to all viewpoints and ideas. In reality, there is only one set of "acceptable" viewpoints, one set of ideas. It's an echo chamber lacking diversity of thought and lacking in self-reflection. Indoctrination is closer to what exists. While I have no hatred for Liberal Arts at all, it's a self-perpetuating system that is perplexing. For one simple example: I constantly run into marketing people who majored in English but who can't write!
jseliger 9y ago
People on the Internet say this all the time, and while I agree in theory, in practice it's very hard to translate: https://jakeseliger.com/2011/01/24/why-dont-students-like-school-daniel-t-willingham https://jakeseliger.com/2011/01/24/why-dont-students-like-sc.... The whole Willingham book is excellent. Teaching taught me that the number of students who want to learn how to learn and think is small, but the number of such people who congregate on sites like Slashdot (and now Hacker News) is quite large. Schools will worry when their funding sources are at risk, and we're (realistically) so far from that world that I doubt any of the powers that be in schools give a damn.
rumcajz 9y ago
Even better, teach them how to do democracy. Otherwise we'll have one hell of the time solving all the problems in front of us.
- ionised 9y ago
  Civics and Ethics (and probably personal financial education) should be mandatory as part of the school curriculum from around 12 years of age and onwards.
ionised 9y ago
> How about schools not try to prepare compliant workers and instead try to teach children how to learn and think? That would upset the policy makers and their paymasters.
tomjen3 9y ago
Many years ago I read "An underground history of American Education", written by a retired two times New York teacher of the year, which argues that the US system (and really most of the education systems in the West) are based on the system Prussia developed to create their army and the entire goal is to create compliant soldiers, workers and consumers. The book did sound a little conspiracy theorish, but on the whole it was rather interesting and well there is an entire unschooling movement exactly trying to undo/avoid the damages of the school system. On a personal basis I didn't get my love of reading, computers or math from school, and mostly it was a waste of time. Did learn the official way to touch type though, so there is that.

itronitron 9y ago

I went to such a school. Organizations really should focus on hiring non-compliant workers (or at least not filtering them out) as they will drive the organization forward.

junkscience2017 9y ago

This is a popular response whenever the topic of education is brought up...I hate to trot out the now-hackneyed term "privilege"....but really. Very few people in society have the privilege of treating education as a route to becoming cultured. The storied universities you cherish were built by the rich for the rich, it is only recently that we have determined that the masses desperately need a grounding in romantic literature. Is it important to you that your accountant know Chaucer? Does your favorite artist really need to know chemistry? In the end you have to feed yourself. I don't want to be responsible for feeding you and you don't want to be responsible for feeding me. If that means you learn something applied that is only useful for ten years and requires you to learn something else useful in the next ten years, so be it. As it stands, why do people put such an emphasis on what someone studies as an undergraduate? Personally, I love reading history...read dozens of dense history books a year, and consider myself a decent self-taught historian. My degree is not in history. Why does it need to be?

epalmer 9y ago
Note that I am a IS staff worker so my perspective is limited but I also have a recent grad from my school in my family with my oldest daughter. So some of what I speak of is personal and up close. I work at a liberal arts university and hear this from faculty: "We don't care about skills, we care about the ability to learn". The problem is that today's learners need to be super learners. They need the ability to do divergent thinking, then need to work collaboratively in teams. Working this way is a skill. They need to be able to solve a wide body of problems safely where failure does not impact grades. https://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_changing_education_paradigms https://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_changing_education_pa... But they don't encourage this sort of learning. And don't even mention the "skill" word which is considered evil. I hear the 500 year old liberal arts model woks just fine. While our business school quietly is working on these skills and the students are finding great jobs and starting businesses successfully and more all while the liberal arts side is ignoring the future.
- ataturk 9y ago
  The biggest problem I see with higher education right now is that they aren't doing any of the above--they talk big about being open to all viewpoints and ideas. In reality, there is only one set of "acceptable" viewpoints, one set of ideas. It's an echo chamber lacking diversity of thought and lacking in self-reflection. Indoctrination is closer to what exists. While I have no hatred for Liberal Arts at all, it's a self-perpetuating system that is perplexing. For one simple example: I constantly run into marketing people who majored in English but who can't write!

jseliger 9y ago

People on the Internet say this all the time, and while I agree in theory, in practice it's very hard to translate: https://jakeseliger.com/2011/01/24/why-dont-students-like-school-daniel-t-willingham https://jakeseliger.com/2011/01/24/why-dont-students-like-sc.... The whole Willingham book is excellent. Teaching taught me that the number of students who want to learn how to learn and think is small, but the number of such people who congregate on sites like Slashdot (and now Hacker News) is quite large. Schools will worry when their funding sources are at risk, and we're (realistically) so far from that world that I doubt any of the powers that be in schools give a damn.

rumcajz 9y ago

Even better, teach them how to do democracy. Otherwise we'll have one hell of the time solving all the problems in front of us.

ionised 9y ago
Civics and Ethics (and probably personal financial education) should be mandatory as part of the school curriculum from around 12 years of age and onwards.

ionised 9y ago

> How about schools not try to prepare compliant workers and instead try to teach children how to learn and think? That would upset the policy makers and their paymasters.

tomjen3 9y ago

Many years ago I read "An underground history of American Education", written by a retired two times New York teacher of the year, which argues that the US system (and really most of the education systems in the West) are based on the system Prussia developed to create their army and the entire goal is to create compliant soldiers, workers and consumers. The book did sound a little conspiracy theorish, but on the whole it was rather interesting and well there is an entire unschooling movement exactly trying to undo/avoid the damages of the school system. On a personal basis I didn't get my love of reading, computers or math from school, and mostly it was a waste of time. Did learn the official way to touch type though, so there is that.