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Sometimes I wonder if I'm crazy for thinking this way, but I dream of the day when more people realize how little relevance the subjects being taught have. If E
by grownseed 13y ago
Sometimes I wonder if I'm crazy for thinking this way, but I dream of the day when more people realize how little relevance the subjects being taught have. If Education, and I guess by extension personal and social growth, was about cramming knowledge into kids' heads, we'd have countries filled with geniuses, and the Internet would already have supplanted schools.
Knowledge is worthless and potentially dangerous without the means to properly use it, and that, in my opinion, is where Education has a place. It's about providing the tools necessary to process and accumulate knowledge and cope with unknowns, and fair enough, basic writing/reading and calculus skills are a good start, but far from it all.
In all the countries I've lived in, I've never once seen a school system which properly addresses this problem. I find the very idea of putting children through knowledge cramming and regurgitation sessions utterly appalling. Sure, it makes for a measurable system, but what exactly are we measuring?
I'm not saying the author doesn't have a point, I'm just saying his point doesn't address the real issue. As far as I'm concerned, it doesn't matter if you're teaching kids programming or the art of growing tomatoes, what matters is that if and when they want to do so, they can.
- Nursie 13y agoI'm sorry you had such a terrible time with school. Some of learned a lot, and not just parrot fashion.
- grownseed 13y agoSorry if this is going to sound harsh, this is certainly not my intention, but I wonder how you got from my general point about Education to your comment about our personal experiences at school.
- Nursie 13y agoYou seem to have formed the conclusion that all schooling is worthless parrot-fashion recitation and cramming knowledge into the students' heads without any understanding. My assumption is that this is your experience of your own schooling, and possibly that of your experience of your childrens' schools. It's not how my education went, and I was taught subjects, but I was taught to understand them and to approach them all in rather different ways. The subjects are very relevant. Languages bed down better in younger minds. Scientific understanding is different from mathematical understanding and different again from historical understanding. So I repeat, I'm sorry if you felt your schooling was terrible, if you felt you were being asked to cram worthless knowledge into your head, that's not how it went for all of us.
- krrishd 13y agoAs a sophomore in High school, I cannot agree more. Up until my freshman year, I overachieved and excelled in academia, but had nothing to do outside of my school subjects. I would argue with people who thought school was pointless and try to convince them that each subject was necessary. After getting deeper into coding and entrepreneurship, I slowly started realizing that the time I spent on schoolwork could be used better with something more pertinent to me and my career. I started disagreeing with the things I desperately argued for at one point. Right now, I'm still doing good in school, but my performance is declining becuase I'm starting to spend more and more time coding and learning new tech. Maybe its good, maybe its bad, only time will tell.