education

[strangeguy]

Observing many youths in my country makes me wonder, what is education all about..
Lack of character, substance and critical reasoning..
It seems that many people are sent to schools to be industrialised and not educated.
Or many its just tthat the majority of the human population are made so?
Suddenly plato pops up in my mind.
Only few are able to break away from their chains and went outside of the cave.
Its pity that modern education, by no means, ease the liberation of the mind.
So much for modern huh...

 

[TheScornedReflex]

School was a joke.

 

[strangeguy]

Hmm... Well
Pretty much, nowadays...

 

[The Introvert]

To become truly educated, it takes both a desire to be so and the means to acquire it.

Unfortunately, the two don't seem to be coagulating (at least where I'm from) too much right now. You could make an argument for either side, but when it comes down to it, both the system and the students are at fault.

I (along with you) hope that this changes soon.

 

[SpaceYeti]

School is tax paid day care.

 

[joal0503]

education is a system designed to produce little obedient people who will obey and submit to authority.

this breakdown is just kickass

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U

 

[Fghw]

School was a joke.

School is a joke.

 

[Fghw]

education is a system designed to produce little obedient people who will obey and submit to authority.

this breakdown is just kickass

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U

Great video by the way.

 

[Coolydudey]

School passes on knowledge, and the info required to pass exams (technique etc.). The traits any of you could describe will be consequences of this fact.

The only way to bypass that would be for school to be layered, with different students doing different things at different levels... Good luck with getting that to happen!

 

[Valentas]

As Paul Graham stated in his essay, he as everyone else from adult world, feel regret that they wasted so much time. Now, after having finished school, I finally know what he means. :\

And yes, school was a joke, though in my country there are schools where you can learn a lot of extra stuff: car mechanic skills, work with wood, and these are combined with regular classes...but it's rare. 10/10 for Ken Robinson. But only for his speech. Strong words do not mean anything unless action against this bullshit is taken.

Another video for you to think about stuff: Mike Rowe, Discovery Channel - "Dirty Jobs" .

When you'll listen yo second link, you'll hear that dirty jobs are easy to get and some guys, farmers etc, earn big bucks, while we are all dumbed down to believe that higher education is what parents want for their children.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRVdiHu1VCc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qo-cUZ2aRKc

In the second video he nails it pretty much bullseye.

 

[Absurdity]

I can only really speak meaningfully of the education system I was exposed to. The most distinguishing feature is that there were two tracks: gifted kids and the unwashed masses. The gifted kids were thoroughly vetted and then eventually whoever was left went to a decent college. The other kids were just scooted along and then dumped after graduation to get a shitty job or go to a shitty college.

Learning anything at all seems to be a side effect of the education system. It primarily exists for identifying promising individuals to be fed toward higher education, and then just works on disciplining the rest for a life of bullshit.

I think history is the most important subject taught to both segments in school because it teaches the generally accepted narrative regarding the country. In the US's case: pilgrims, courageous revolution, "manifest destiny" (rarely mentions any Native Americans being exterminated), civil war, and then maybe mention WWI or WWII but most kids will just watch Hollywood movies about the latter and be effectively informed. Save the issues of the Holocaust and slavery for English class, where the actual events don't matter, just the hand wringing. Little to no substantive coverage of current events because the officially narrative has yet to be constructed regarding them. Overall message is America is good and "exceptional" and we deserve to rule the world.

 

[QuickTwist]

I hate meds. Stopped taking antidepressiants and stimulants in high school but I fear I am still going through adverse effects because of use. Who knows what the meds I'm on now are doing to me.

I want to know how this epidemic of self medication is related to this.

 

[walfin]

Observing many youths in my country makes me wonder, what is education all about..
Lack of character, substance and critical reasoning..
It seems that many people are sent to schools to be industrialised and not educated.
Or many its just tthat the majority of the human population are made so?
Suddenly plato pops up in my mind.
Only few are able to break away from their chains and went outside of the cave.
Its pity that modern education, by no means, ease the liberation of the mind.
So much for modern huh...

Every time I see a post like this I'm reminded of this cartoon:

Education has indirectly suceeded if people can think sufficiently critically to condemn it.

That said, school indeed was largely pointless and stupid.

 

[yogurtexpress]

i wrote this little editorial for the consideration of my college newspaper...

Does being a good student make you a smart person? This is a question many people have asked but few have really examined. In an interesting episode of "Penn & Teller: Bullshit!" the magician duo threw down a bunch of names of people who never went to college. Some of the names included George Washington, Thomas Edison, Ben Franklin, Joseph Pulitzer, Mark Twain, Bill Gates, Ernest Hemingway, Ray Kroc, Whoopi Goldberg, and Groucho Marx.

The episode touched upon some of the more obvious reasons to not go to college (the cost of tuition, the fact that you can get most of the textbooks for free at the library, etc.), but personally l feel that one of the main reasons to not go to college is that it is increasingly becoming a less welcome place for intellectuals.

Now, how can that be, if common knowledge dictates that an intellectual should do well in college? Well, now that businesses are stepping in and influencing political decisions, such as the cutting of the arts and sciences programs, college is slowly becoming just a place where you go to regurgiate information that your professor reads to you for three hours a week. Freire referred this phenomenon as "the banking model of education." The student is stifled of all creative thought, and wound up like a toy to repeat instructions without ever questioning them. It's the way of the business world, after all, so why not prepare us early?

This is why standardized testing (which is quite dull and sometimes confusing for truly intelligent people, due to its tendency to scatter a bunch of unrelated questions on a scantron rather than asking you to analyze a specific concept) has become a very popular model for people with very few original thoughts in their heads. Now, I'm not trying to downplay the importance of knowledge for knowledge's sake, even if Einstein once argued that imagination is more important. It's just that when our goal as students is based around repeating facts and not applying the information usefully, I have to wonder where the real intelligence is being fostered these days. Even when we're instructed to write papers, our thoughts are required to be a certain length: because the point isn't how well you say something, but how well you can fulfill a certain set of requirements.