Have we been wrong about what to emphasize in education?

[Drvladivostok]

It seem to be accepted as a maxim, that the purpose of education is so that all people may be able to best utilize his or her potential in order to contribute towards society. However, the emphasis of our liberal-inspired education, which is is the equal treatment of and expenctations towards all-children, is misguided by the false concept that all men have inherent equal potentials.

The Bell-curve is real, and its implication is nothing sort of devastating towards how our eqalitarian education system operates, I hope I don't have to ramble about towards the reader about no child left behind act or affirmitive action policies. Nations will only suffer if it denies thw Laws of Nature.

If we assume that all men can contribute to our society, and that human fulfillment comes from living up to our fullest potentials, therefore, an effective allocation of people based on cognitive skills, either inside or outside of the government will do nothing but benefit the wellbeing of the people.

Making a simple observation of reality is merely what you need to do to know that this conditions haven't been fulfilled, rather than subsidizing education opportunity based on race or incompetence, it would make more sense to subsidize heavilly towards scholarships.

In Particular funding programs intent towards identifying the cognitive elites in each economic classes, particularly the underclass, nowhere has deeper grief ever been felt other than by the talented mind born of poor conditions, the crab mentality is most displayed the poor. I once read of a bright british girl, unfortunately born in one of these homes, being bullied and discriminated near suicide only for the crime of wanting to go to university.

Perhaps the reason that this isn't implemented is because people like to be lied to, they want policies that brings them comfort that their own incompetence isn't a result of their genetic coding, but some other third-party fault. Not knowing that all men have different potentials.​

 

[EndogenousRebel]

I think moral pragmatism is a foundational framework for how humans decide to solve a problem.

Issue is, we haven't instilled a lot of value in updating our understanding and methodology unless something is OBVIOUSLY wrong.

What is pragmatic is relevant to a specific time and context.

Sorta like a heuristic.

I see what you mean when you critisized egalitarian idealism influencing learning outcomes.

Thing is, I think you'd would find it hard to make a case that this egalitarian insistence is indeed impractical.

It might not drive maximum economic value, but that may not be the highest purpose we are striving towards.

Of course, I think that we should indeed make sure our population at least understands algebra. Have read acclaimed works of fiction/non-fiction, * understand what an electron is, basic physics, history, ect.

Though, it would appear that there are people who naturally emerge with those "aptitudes" in the system we have now.

No other point in history had such populations of people so high.

So I guess I will just ask you directly, what exactly is the standard you think we should live up to? Is that a standard that can extend and benefit us decades into the future?

 

[Puffy]

Agreed if I understand you. My experience of schooling was that it was just an exercise in memorising a bunch of shit for an exam that I ended up forgetting entirely afterwards. Trying to teach everyone everything and the current schooling model as I experienced it is stupid. So stupid I wouldn't be surprised if it were designed to be stupid.

Education should be about identifying the unique potential and creative genius of that individual, providing them the means to practice and hone it, and pathways into apprenticeship so that they can learn more from, and transition into a job with, a master of their chosen direction.

Learning how to learn, how to manage conflict or obstacles, interpersonal skills, self-awareness and understanding, managing your emotions, managing money, nutrition and healthy lifestyle habits, etc etc. All those life skills trump being able to memorise the periodic table by miles and miles and miles and miles and miles unless you're in a specific niche that requires it.

 

[Cognisant]

Absolutely, positively, DO NOT, sort children based on their perceived intelligence.

I am a former "gifted" child and I highly resent ever being identified as such.

Rather than sorting children, create something like an education MMO RPG where children can study at their own pace, are encouraged to pursue their own development and to encourage the development of others.

 

[Hadoblado]

Education is complicated. I don't know about where you're from but over here we prioritise differentiation highly. It's a pain in the arse to implement but otherwise you have classes where most of your students have no clue what's going on. So the teacher is effectively put in the position of teaching multiple lessons at once, assessing at multiple standards simultaneously.

Equal treatment and expectations for children is generally frowned upon as ignorant and lazy.

I think if AI continues to improve, teachers will be replaced somewhat, so that each student can have their lessons tailor-made to their particular level without the enormous cost of one on one tutoring across the population.

 

[dr froyd]

besides the rare savant cases, who is "intelligent" in school? Well you would have to define it by the metrics relevant to school - being good at jumping through hoops designed by the teachers. But then there's no point to making such demarcations - whether you have all the diligent pupils in a separate room or not doesn't matter too much. I personally mostly hung out with the "dumbest" kids - they were much more interesting to be around. It didn't stop me from solving the silly little paint-by-numbers tasks we got from the teachers.

 

[fluffy]

Past the top 1% there is no way to identify "smart" kids. Unless your parents are high class you will not get kids going to University at ten years old. And that has been happening because people sort themselves on class already. The SAT in America has been effective on this to get people separated. As for lower class students that is a matter of the tax codes. Eventually we will have brain scanners but that's not the full story. Intelligence is affected by poor diet and trauma and no meditation training, genetics cannot test students or anyone's in this case.

 

[EndogenousRebel]

Yeah, I'll reiterate that we cannot quantify intelligence, and share what my experiences was regarding instruction in schools.

I always thought that surely there would be a "optimal" number of smart kids in a class.. The good lord gave us that, so why are we discriminating? You touch anything with that equation, your bypassing a lot of other questions before reaching for "intelligence" as a helpful solution.

Say we have 1/5 students be one standard deviation from the left/right, either way, now you have to change other students, who were perfectly fine under randomness, but now displaced because they either make the room too smart of too dumb. So, fuck it I guess? Just separate them between gifted and not gifted. Remove the fog of war for the teachers. They will make the most of it surely?

From what I've gathered this practice of sorting kids by their "giftedness" is meant to make the schools/districts job easier. They rarely do these things to help the quality of your education.

If that was the case all of school would be a per-credit-hour thing like college, and you'd be done when you were done.

Even then, you want to know how and why some kids can grasp higher concepts, and you want to know when someone is lacking behind. IQ isn't always going to show that relationship beyond a statistical expectation. If you just are looking at a very biased sample size, I guess you have clarity in a sense, but that would not really make you a better teacher, if would make you better at helping smart kids.

ON MY LIFE, I did as little work as I could and they still put me in these 'advanced' classes, and then they gaslit me into feeling bad if I didn't get scores they expected. There were some that saluted me as I glided through their classes.

Only person that couldn't stand it was a Latina teacher teaching Spanish. Showing us bullshit powerpoints about eagles that break their own beaks and it grows back. I wonder what I said then that got me in the other (on-level) class that following week. Maybe I was supposed to mock it more in that print out-she passed around.

 

[fluffy]

I remember that at every stage I would receive a paper worksheet then be moved.

But then I never got a book except the one time in history class. (English class was book reports not studying grammar)

I was able to pass the sheets but never got the instructions of a book explanation.

Since I passed anyway I got to the point where I was just given work or did projects.

I wished they did do it by the books. Because I don't remember doing calculus where I could have if the book explained it. I did not know why it existed, what it was for.

So at the university I wanted to be placed where I needed to be. And do it in the stages where it was explained. But never did. I quit because they expected me to do a book report and I did not know how, I don't know why they wanted me to do it, they just said pick a book from the politics section at random, I just quit. Math was no better, I was doing plot lines from 6th grade.

The moral of the story is that I skipped stages of development and it was instructed how school was taught. Even when they had kids do things by stages I was separate and learned things not prepared for college. I did not know what things were for.

That is the biggest issue, what are things for?

I was creative but lacking some kind of self awareness I went along without considering what I was going to do later in life. That was how my mom was to. I could not approach a task I knew without knowing the reason for its existence.

The kids going to future schooling go along to get along but they don't skip stages. They decided what they wanted and had support (sometimes) and basic self awareness.

There is no reason for gifted programs that don't prepare you. I might be different but I was isolated and ignored in those classes. I had the idea that tools can do stuff but I had no reference points.

Can this be made better or improved?

All kids should be made aware that they are in school for a reason past elementary school. And we should know how each student is doing, whether they have self awareness or not. Many things determine success. I don't know all of them. I am sure studies have been done. But I was not self aware and neither was my mom and I did not do much in my life monetarily. I am getting places today but that took self development.

Kids need self development. All I is saying.

 

[Drvladivostok]

Issue is, we haven't instilled a lot of value in updating our understanding and methodology unless something is OBVIOUSLY wrong.

What is pragmatic is relevant to a specific time and context.

Sorta like a heuristic.

I see what you mean when you critisized egalitarian idealism influencing learning outcomes.

Thing is, I think you'd would find it hard to make a case that this egalitarian insistence is indeed impractical.​

You need to understand that most of the time, how we (as a collective society) view a certain concept have less to do with how we rationalize it as being 'pragmatic', but more to do with the natural prominance such idea holds by the mere virtue of being excerted by the intellectual elite, since most people like the path of least resistance they fold to the social preassure of believing it.

Don't think that you are immune to propaganda. Remember that it wasn't intense education that made most of the German withdraw their support for the Nazis in mid 1945.
​

Thing is, I think you'd would find it hard to make a case that this egalitarian insistence is indeed impractical.​

Politically impractical? of course, the idea of egalitarianism is essentially one where it gives people the feeling of significance (regardless of it's truth), it is certainly very convenient for the fundraiser to lobby policies that are automatically popular.

Impractical of developing human potentials? Assuming that your version of egalitarianism includes the predisposition that all men are equal in ability, selective affinity based on arbitrary aspects, and discrimination towards competence, then how can it not be?

Are all men ought to be equal before the law and is equal before God? Yes. Do they have the same potential? No.​

So I guess I will just ask you directly, what exactly is the standard you think we should live up to? Is that a standard that can extend and benefit us decades into the future?​

I don't wanna sound cliçhe yapping on meritocracy, but I find that these days the incentives we excert in trying to achieve meritocracy is what's preventing it. I mean am I insane to believe that race should not be a factor in any admission?

But them again, we need political will to turn 180 degrees, I guess only China and the Gulf countries can make strong descision these days.​

 

[Drvladivostok]

Absolutely, positively, DO NOT, sort children based on their perceived intelligence.

I am a former "gifted" child and I highly resent ever being identified as such.

Rather than sorting children, create something like an education MMO RPG where children can study at their own pace, are encouraged to pursue their own development and to encourage the development of others.​

I feel like giving children freedom to 'learn at their own pace' and giving them the freedom to find their own means is a nice way to get kids slacking off, I mean let's face it, when we were kids school is a chore, and if it were up to us we'd play PS2 and play all day. Children generally haven't developed the discipline and comprehend the value of hard work.

I think rather than purely by intelligence, children ought to be classified by competence and grade, the feeling of seniority would not allow disregarding age to sort children, but each age group ought to have multiple competency level.

Glazing kids based on their intellignce will only bury the seed of complacancy and fear of failure, so it is to be avoided, maybe we ought to drill in 'with great power comes greart responsibility' shit into them.​

 

[scorpiomover]

It seem to be accepted as a maxim, that the purpose of education is so that all people may be able to best utilize his or her potential in order to contribute towards society. However, the emphasis of our liberal-inspired education, which is is the equal treatment of and expenctations towards all-children, is misguided by the false concept that all men have inherent equal potentials.​

Yes and no.

It's true that some kids have better natural talents at maths than others. But the kids who are worse at maths, are also usually better than the maths kids at skills like woodworking, painting, etc.

Most children show several talents, but each in different areas.

The Bell-curve is real, and its implication is nothing sort of devastating towards how our eqalitarian education system operates, I hope I don't have to ramble about towards the reader about no child left behind act or affirmitive action policies. Nations will only suffer if it denies thw Laws of Nature.

If we assume that all men can contribute to our society, and that human fulfillment comes from living up to our fullest potentials, therefore, an effective allocation of people based on cognitive skills, either inside or outside of the government will do nothing but benefit the wellbeing of the people.

Making a simple observation of reality is merely what you need to do to know that this conditions haven't been fulfilled,​

Mainly because they're trying to teach everyone as if they are all clones, rather than humans that are equally capable but in different ways, each equally as valuable as the others.

rather than subsidizing education opportunity based on race or incompetence, it would make more sense to subsidize heavilly towards scholarships.​

It would be useful to have scholarships in every field of human endeavour.

In Particular funding programs intent towards identifying the cognitive elites in each economic classes, particularly the underclass,​

That used to be the case. The Eleven-Plus was designed to identify those in the lower classes who were exceptionally academically skilled and would be excellent choices to study advanced education in theoretical matters in a university.

nowhere has deeper grief ever been felt other than by the talented mind born of poor conditions, the crab mentality is most displayed the poor. I once read of a bright british girl, unfortunately born in one of these homes, being bullied and discriminated near suicide only for the crime of wanting to go to university.​

That normally happened in the UK, in communities where the soldiers used to perform brutal killings of anyone involved in any sort of revolt.

Usually, the people who liked to study books, came across books preaching the values of democracy and "power to the people", and then eloquently convinced the people with their words, to rise up against their oppressors. Then the soldiers would come in, stick their bayonets into babies, gang-rape the mothers and daughters, kill the fathers and sons and stick their heads on pikes, and then burn down the homes as a warning, to any who thought of doing the same.

After a while, everyone in those villages had a strong association between someone reading books of higher education, and their families being tortured and slaughtered.

Perhaps the reason that this isn't implemented is because people like to be lied to, they want policies that brings them comfort that their own incompetence isn't a result of their genetic coding, but some other third-party fault. Not knowing that all men have different potentials.​

If you fear that someday, you might be out of a job and without money, you can keep up with your industry, and make sure that you have a backup profession that is always in demand, just in case. Then you're never without work.

But a lot of people tend to protect themselves by trying to gather as much money as possible, so it won't ever happen that they'll need money in the first place.

In the same way, most people can develop their skills so that they'll be bound to find a job and a partner sometime, as long as they keep looking.

But a lot of people would prefer to ensure that everyone else believes that they are superior to everyone else in every way, so they'll never have any competition in the first place.

So they fear treating everyone else as their equal, and try to ensure that others are treated less well than they are.

 

[ZenRaiden]

Schools are waste of time.

Just learn to understand.

Once you understand something you are ahead of the curve in every domain.

You can learn the details and bullshit later.

 

[Hadoblado]

Understanding some things is practice for understanding other things. The content you learn in school is secondary. Trig isn't on the curriculum so that people can measure triangles in their day to day.

 

[fluffy]

Understanding some things is practice for understanding other things. The content you learn in school is secondary. Trig isn't on the curriculum so that people can measure triangles in their day to day.

I agree that one thing should come after another. To not have gaps in knowledge.

I think that what I learned was sporadic and sparse. I saw a documentary that told me what complex numbers are used for 2 months ago. I assume trig is about what NASA does to align satellite and ships at sea? And manufacturing?

 

[Hadoblado]

I mean more broadly. Kids learn trig not because they're going to work for Nasa, but because it supports the development of their cognitive faculties. If we were teaching them math they would use, we'd focus a lot more on tax and budgeting or whatever. A familiarity with trigonometry teaches a fundamental understanding of spatial inter-relations, even if you forget the math.

 

[dr froyd]

Understanding some things is practice for understanding other things. The content you learn in school is secondary. Trig isn't on the curriculum so that people can measure triangles in their day to day.

truest shit ever

 

[Old Things]

Nothing is going to trump a lack of trauma and being personally responsible.

 

[scorpiomover]

Trig isn't on the curriculum so that people can measure triangles in their day to day.

True dat.

People NEED trig in their day-to-day life. E.G. parking a car is all about trig, as is putting in a shelf, designing a kitchen, lifting and moving heavy objects.

If you apply trig to pool (as I did in university), you suddenly get really, really good at pool. You also start lining up your shots like the professional pool and snooker players do.

It also makes shooting really, really, easy, as well.

Throwing a ball is mostly about figuring out what direction and speed to throw it, so it will land where you want. Catching a ball is mostly about figuring out where the ball will land, so you can be there ready to catch it. Both need trig to do that.

But most people are not taught how to apply it to their day-to-day life.

Understanding some things is practice for understanding other things. The content you learn in school is secondary.

Yes. You learn to accept what you are told, on the basis that it was developed by clever people like scientists, even if you don't understand how it would actually work in real life.

So you buy hair products sold by actresses like Jennifer Anniston, because it was made by clever people called "scientists" and uses clever scientific-sounding things like hyaluronic acid.

So when your government proposes quantitative easing to solve your country's problems, most people are already used to hearing clever scientific ideas that they don't really understand, but can follow along enough with to have the gist of what is probably the right answer, and so tend to go along with them without really understanding what they're agreeing to.

I mean more broadly. Kids learn trig not because they're going to work for Nasa, but because it supports the development of their cognitive faculties.

Well, not that really either.

If you look at the kids who are good at maths, they're all the kids who study logic or physics or do logic puzzles, for hours, every day, in their spare time, for fun.

Likewise, if you teach kids how to use trig to be better at playing pool, then every time they play pool, they're doing trig in their heads, and developing their cognitive faculties. In a month of playing 3 games a day, they've played 90 games, and probably used trig in their heads at least 10 times a game. So that's 900 times that they've used trig in the 1st month! By the end of the year, they'll have used trig 10,800 times!

If they study abstract cases that have nothing to do with anything they'd do, and then have to answer 2 questions and never have to look at it again for any reason, they've only done it 3 times!

If we were teaching them math they would use, we'd focus a lot more on tax and budgeting or whatever.

Beggars the question of why we don't teach kids trig AND tax/budgeting. You probably wouldn't have to teach them any more lessons either, as you could combine arithmetic and algebra with tax/budgeting. The kids would probably also become a LOT better at arithmetic and algebra, because they'd be using it all the time.

A familiarity with trigonometry teaches a fundamental understanding of spatial inter-relations, even if you forget the math.

Well, not really, because if the maths kids were great at spatial inter-relations, they'd be great at baseball, and would be great pitchers and great catchers, when the maths kids are usually lousy at ball games.