Education

[Smurf]

I hate it, the education system has failed many times over, and I think that they need to rethink this "rikety" old machine that spews forth knowledge into young kid's minds. I hate the stereotypes that it reinforces, I hate it's so-called "communities" it creates and I think that it does not create a good representation of the modern world... The school that I am at right now is all of the above and I hate it so much, I feel so alone though... It does not promote creative-thinking and the teachers that the education system employs are incompotent and just plain dumb, they follow the cirriculum like lambs to their shepherd... these days it is not the teacher and the student, there is no personality anymore... just plain knowledge and stereotypical illusions being crammed into innocent young free minds... Oh and the bloody homework, a waste of time, effort and a waste of life! if you have to take you schoolwork home to finish off, or the teacher feels that they have to set homework, then doesn't that reflect their abilities as a teacher? or the failure of the cirriculum that they have to set extra work to get the message across? I hate the education system to a degree that I will protest it to my last breath, that this is what we are preparing our "Future" as? then count me out... there isn't enough thinking anymore, are we turning into machines?

[scameter]

I find it unfortunate that those who have the behavioral will and style to teach, that natural air about themselves to teach and who do it almost instinctually and who desire nothing more than to teach, are oftentimes forced into the trap that is current education: forced learning of those who do not truly wish to learn, proving a very brutal detrement to those who wish and have the natural talent to teach. Education should be through choice, not force. Or, I think people should be forced to school, but only about things pivotal to the labour world, nothing extra; and if one desires something extra, college should be available when the basic schooling is complete, and that should be where true teachers lie. I know this sounds similar to the actual educational world, but it is different; in the current system, people learn things, such as biology and algebra, that prove to have no real use in the job world and are taught until adulthood. And when one enters college, it should be a very cool, peaceful, tranquil environment that teaches patience and calm in the pursuit of learning, not forced rush in order to attain a degree to get more money; and (although this is even more far-fetched), after college there should exist places of continuing peace and tranquility for those who wish to further pursue the teaching and learning arts; oddly similar to a monastery, but with no specified spiritual or philosophical tennets other than to learn in a peaceful and patient environment for as long as is desired. This, to me, would be heaven. :)

[scameter]

Me?

[Smurf]

Education should be through choice, not force.

exactly!

Or, I think people should be forced to school, but only about things pivotal to the labour world, nothing extra; and if one desires something extra, college should be available when the basic schooling is complete, and that should be where true teachers lie.
yes yes!

And when one enters college, it should be a very cool, peaceful, tranquil environment that teaches patience and calm in the pursuit of learning, not forced rush in order to attain a degree to get more money; and (although this is even more far-fetched), after college there should exist places of continuing peace and tranquility for those who wish to further pursue the teaching and learning arts; oddly similar to a monastery, but with no specified spiritual or philosophical tennets other than to learn in a peaceful and patient environment for as long as is desired. This, to me, would be heaven.

man that would be so great! free thought in an open environment :thumbsup:

[scameter]

B) :P

[TruthSeeker]

This is funny. I was just going to post how depressed I am because of all the time I'm wasting at school. -_-

Arrgh!!!!!! :wallbash:
I work so much the whole term and in the end I have nothing. It's so unproductive! And the whole system is so flawed it's not even funny! :knockout: :cry: :(

[scameter]

Indeed it is, your situation unfortunately has many occupants, and that is wrong. People should be allowed to do exactly what they wish and only be forced into a very basic education, with no worries of money. The government should fund all necessities, like power, water, food, etc., and the individual's actual life should be their focus. :)

[TruthSeeker]

The system supresses and punishes creativity as something to be shameful of and avoided at all costs. It's so backwards.... :duh:

[scameter]

One time in my last year's school year, 8th grade, I was having extremely bad mental and social difficulties and missed about 4 weeks of school. One of the county educational social workers came to my house and talked to me (I hate/hated her). She told me, essentially, that when I'm there I make all A's, but that I'm hardly ever there; essentially, that as long as I'm there, to the government it doesn't matter how good I do or if I actually learn anything or care. Jus that I'm there, taking up space. It really depressed me, so I came back the next Monday and finished all the work I had missed in those 4 weeks in one hour and made all A's on all of it. :D

[Smurf]

woah Scam, that is a warped sense of reality on her case... bloody government, beurocracy and all that...

It really depressed me, so I came back the next Monday and finished all the work I had missed in those 4 weeks in one hour and made all A's on all of it

that's cause you're really smart Scam

I work so much the whole term and in the end I have nothing. It's so unproductive! And the whole system is so flawed it's not even funny!

and they spend half the lessons talking about how they will teach you then the other half giving you tests??? :think: something wrong there?

[scameter]

that's cause you're really smart Scam

:wub: :wub: :wub:

There is definitely something wrong. But because of the current extreme standardizational, capitalistic, materialistic, monetary-focused society of today, nobody truly cares about anything but themselves and money, so making everyone exactly the same, even if it does entirely deter humanity's progresseion and prosperity, especially that of the individual.

[TruthSeeker]

The system is just way to focused on obedience, on being a "go employee", like a machine that systemetically does the same thing over and over again! It's depressing! It teaches no virtue nor encourages creativity! If you deviate from the curriculum, you are a bad student and should be punished with lower grades! It is soooo backwards! :knockout:

[scameter]

Indeed I agree, mainly because of what I said before. Standardization and capitalism has and is truly ruined/ruining society.

[TruthSeeker]

Nice! Which one is his girlfriend?

[lenin32]

I think that the best way to solve the current education problem, we need to allow those that do not want to learn, to not learn. Why would that be so bad? Why must we force information on people that arent open to it in the first place?
Not only will they not learn, but they will slow down the learning of those that do want to learn.

[TruthSeeker]

It's not so much that some people don't want to learn. Some people simply don't like the educational system. And those people are precisely the ones that improve the social systems that rule our society. That's the main reason why they don't like the educational system, which teaches how to live in the system whether then teaching how to improve it. <_<

[Kether]

I think that the best way to solve the current education problem, we need to allow those that do not want to learn, to not learn.
We should try to find out why they don't want to learn, and then try to engineer the system so that they do; we shouldn't just give up on people who don't, at present, 'want' to learn. What would happen to these 'hopeless cases'? What kind of life would they lead?

[TruthSeeker]

I don't think the whole system is compatible with those people, Kether. Altough some are able to adapt....

[scameter]

here is scams school

My school?

I think that the best way to solve the current education problem, we need to allow those that do not want to learn, to not learn.

I personally think that we should force people to learn the basics; perhaps just as much as current school teaches. But, instead of forcing people into continuing to learn what they care nothing about in college, their learning should be selective on what they wish to learn. And if those who do not want to continue their education from the basics, so be it; it is their life. But, I think teaching everyone the basics of education is best to allow them vision into the entirety of education.

[Smurf]

aww It is user posted, I can't see Scam's school :(

[scameter]

:(

[TruthSeeker]

those 'hopeless' cases often are quite capable even brilliant in a non ordinary way...or interested in non ordinary things...

in fact those people who are outside of the norm are usually the ones who come up with the best ideas because of not in spite of their differentness...
That's exactly what I said....

[Smurf]

We should try to find out why they don't want to learn, and then try to engineer the system so that they do; we shouldn't just give up on people who don't, at present, 'want' to learn. What would happen to these 'hopeless cases'? What kind of life would they lead?

hmm yeah I was thinking that too, perhaps if they don't want to learn, or they've had enough and they just want to live their lives now... then that's ok? You can't spend the rest of your life in a school, most of your learning is from outside influences...

[CSwriter1]

No one likes the exercises of learning how to play the piano, but it is wonderful to know how to play the piano. It is after we learn the basics that we can enjoy what we have learned.

In the US in 1958 congress voted to replace liberal education with education for technology for military and industrial purpose. This was suppose to last only 4 years, but obviously we never returned to liberal education. I think it was around 1960 when we began teaching teachers to be completely impersonal, and to treat every child the same. This was suppose to prevent favoritism and discrimination. Actually, this is the equality of military service, where human beings are extensions of weapons. This is good for the military but not for human beings with families and living communities where personal motivations direct their lives.

Our personal motivation was once the people we care about. Today it is money and what money can buy. This social change brought about by the change in public education has serious negative consequences.

This change in education comes from Germany, and is directly related to Bush's New World Order, as it was what brought Hitler to the New World Order. You see, these men are just on stage, but behind the curtians is a whole production crew, determining what will happen and how this goal will be achieved. Public education is like a genii in a bottle.

The defined purpose is the wish, and the students are the genii. It was, in the US, to have good citizens and liberty, avoiding authority over the people. However, as early 1917 military people wanted our schools to imitate Germany because Germany was a proven military power. But at this time, national defense depended on patriotic citizens who were willing to defend our democracy, so we retained the education for citizenship. Not until the military technology of WWII, and precisely the ability to fly over seas and drop nucler bombs, did education for technology become more important than education for citizenship. This is why changed the wish for the genii.

I would love to raise public awareness of this, and through mass awareness, return public education to liberal education. There is a chance many students would appreciate the change. For sure I desire the social change. The social ramifications of the change in public education have been very bad.

[TruthSeeker]

Very well said! :)

Do you have any sources?

[MidnightSun]

Yes, education is now used to gain cash get the bigest house and get the fatest :D

One for all and all for one has been changed into i for myself.

:P

[Smurf]

totally agree, (don't care Fu)

that teachers are not taught to promote free-thought could be argued as keeping everything even and giving everyone an equal chance?

but it is a problem that they do not promote active thinking as an extra-cirricular program... I am working on this at my school at the moment

[TruthSeeker]

One for all and all for one has been changed into i for myself.
Maybe that's why it feels so lonely.... <_< :uhoh:

[scameter]

:) It's so interesting.

[CSwriter1]

Is the quote feature working for others? It isn't working for me.

I was asked about my sources of information. My favorite source is old text books. They taught, it is better to be kind than rich, and if we are rich, we should share. They taught morality, including business morality. What has been going on for the last several years, just wouldn't have happened if education had not changed, because social pressure is very powerful, and we were creating a society with a much higher morality than we have today.
We did this without religion and through public education.

All teachers begin with a desire to teach and to help young people grow. They spend many years in college and pay a lot of money for this right to teach. I know not all teachers appear to love teaching, but trust they once thought it was the best thing to do with their lives. Then things went wrong. Schools are often underfunded and we expect way too much of teachers. We put way too many students in a class room, and the control over teachers is strangling.

Please don't think people don't care. They care. They just don't know what to do. Everything was done with good intensions and now we are caught up in them and don't know any better. However, more and more people are asking if something is very wrong and if there is something we can do better. I think things will have to get worse before they get better, but sharing our ideas prepares the way for a better future.

[scameter]

People don't care. If they did, this world would be based on love and understanding, instead of greed, power, terror, and money.

[TruthSeeker]

Well, people are not really uncaring and bad, scam. Deep inside, everyone loves. The problem is that we created a monstruous system that is eating us alive. We should control the system, but in reality, the system controls us. We should control the government, and yet, the government controls us. We should control the corporations, and yet, they control us. We have failed ourselves with a system that only sustain us and do it barely.

And CSwriter1, thanks for your posts. I love hearing about the history behind everything because my brain is not capable to remember so many details... :lol:

And the history tends to reveal very interesting things that I have missed... B)

[CSwriter1]

How do we convey our caring to one another? Specifically to education.

How many students does a teacher deal with each day?
How much time and energy does a teach have for each one? Many teachers have 30 students a class, 5 or 6 classes a day. That is about 150 students to know, and know their parents and sisters and brothers and possibly grandparents, and there illnesses and other troubles, and why each child might be doing poorly today. Do you have the energy to think that much about 150 different people, not to mention all the teachers and the school board you must get along with, and your own family and their friends, and possiblely everyone in a church or whatever other organizations to which you may belong. Please, no human being on earth has enough energy for all of this.

And yet I care about you, and assume everyone in your life does as well. If I heard something bad happened to you, I would feel awful, and if something good happens, I will feel good. People have been discussing religion, and look at this-- we are all connected. We don't know much about each other, but mystically we are responding emotionally to each other. We are sad when another is sad, or happy for another when things go well. How much more do you want? What does this have to do with religion? We need away to explain this connection with each other that is beyond our comprehension. Something is happen here that is bigger than you and I.

In our schools, we might look at what people do together to experience this communal sharing of our existence. If we are all being self centered and competitive, or looking down on some and looking to up to others, what might we all be experiencing? In the 1950's text books stressed getting along with each other. This was more important than education for technology. If we are together, then all our needs are not up to our parents to fulfil, or all up to the teacher to fulfil. Together we meet our needs and get things done. Give your teachers thank you notes and see what happens. They are each as a lone as you are, and so much is expected of them. Can you care about each one of them, as much you want them to care about you? Please, give this a though and share what you think. I really want to know. I don't know all things and need to know what I can learn from you.

[TruthSeeker]

In our schools, we might look at what people do together to experience this communal sharing of our existence. If we are all being self centered and competitive, or looking down on some and looking to up to others, what might we all be experiencing?
Yes, indeed!

In the 1950's text books stressed getting along with each other. This was more important than education for technology. If we are together, then all our needs are not up to our parents to fulfil, or all up to the teacher to fulfil. Together we meet our needs and get things done. Give your teachers thank you notes and see what happens. They are each as a lone as you are, and so much is expected of them.
Yes, very true... :)

But instead, many children go hungry in this world, every day..... :(

[scameter]

Well, people are not really uncaring and bad, scam. Deep inside, everyone loves.

:lol:

The problem is that we created a monstruous system that is eating us alive.

And who created this horrible system? People.

How do we convey our caring to one another? Specifically to education.

Except for the fact that we are forced into education, and that our system has become dumbed down from the past, and that we learn just enough so that we can be productive citizens to make money to pay taxes to the government.

And yet I care about you, and assume everyone in your life does as well.

I wish that were so. My mother surely didn't.

We need away to explain this connection with each other that is beyond our comprehension.

That is the impossible truth conveyed, or attempted to be conveyed but clouded by the church, by religions.

But instead, many children go hungry in this world, every day..... :(

While the people allow the government to spend billions on militaria for wars to give them yet more money.

[CSwriter1]

I want to get back to education. One thing I wish everyone understood is expotenial growth. That is the amount of time it takes for a population to double.

Imagine a pond only half full of frogs, and a few months later, completely full of frogs. This is a huge change in a very short time, and that is how it is for human populations. Today, everything may seem fine, but a few years, when the expotential growth thing happens the population can be in crisis.

Why should we know this? Because gathering information and planning is how to prevent crisis. At least in the US the only thing people are paying attention to is growth. Their economic system demands growth, so everywhere people want their cities to grow. They are not considering expotential growth and limits.

Now when that crisis hits, if we feed everyone, what will happen when there is another doubling of the population? We will have twice as many people to feed, and perhaps this is not the best way to care about people? It sounds terrible, but may be the most caring thing to do, is not make the problem worse.

Scameter, have you determined how you are going to express your caring about others yet? That is what your education is good for. We used to teach that, but for caring reasons became focused on the economy. Our foucs on technology and economics has meant having the knowledge and wealth to assist needy people. It is good, but we have forgotten this about caring for people, because we are talking about money, instead of human values.

[TruthSeeker]

I think economics should still be taught. Specially the basics, because it's pretty hard stuff for most people. A lot of what you said there is intimately tied to economics. It's very unfortunately that everyone is focused on the old economic growth model and forget that the world has changed and that we need a better system that creates balance and sustainability within our resources, rather then just growth, growth, growth. America has this annoying thing about itself in which people believe bigger is always better... <_<

But anyways... larger population is not the problem. The problem is how much population you have relative to land and other essential resources. If there was more land and resources, you could have more growth. That's precisely what happened in the 1400's. Two huge continents were discovered, allowing the European nations to expand their economies.

[Smurf]

Yes thank you Cswriter, I agree completely. We have strayed from the more important things in life, sticking to the money side of things... I hate it so

[scameter]

Scameter, have you determined how you are going to express your caring about others yet? That is what your education is good for. We used to teach that, but for caring reasons became focused on the economy. Our foucs on technology and economics has meant having the knowledge and wealth to assist needy people. It is good, but we have forgotten this about caring for people, because we are talking about money, instead of human values.

:D The education system isn't, nor was it ever, developed for people to care and assist other people, through money or technology; it was meant to make productive citizens for a government that wants money, and to give the individual the chance to prosper in such a situation.

The problem is how much population you have relative to land and other essential resources.

Not really. If science was able to prosper as much as it possibly could, with no economic restriction, neither would be a problem. It is money that is the problem. We throw away sooo much "extra" food every year, because it didn't sell. Imagine if food was simply given out, instead of being required to be bought?

[TruthSeeker]

CSwriter1,

I think you might be interested in this...

"Paulo Freire contributes a philosophy of education that comes not only from the more classical approaches stemming from Plato, but also from modern Marxist and anti-colonialist thinkers. In fact, in many ways his Pedagogy of the Oppressed may best be read as an extension of or reply to Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth, which laid strong emphasis on the need to provide native populations with an education which was simultaneously new and modern (rather than traditional) and anti-colonial (that is, that was not simply an extension of the culture of the colonizer).

Freire is best-known for his attack on what he called the banking concept of education, in which the student was viewed as an empty account to be filled by the teacher. Of course, this is not really a new move — Rousseau's conception of the child as an active learner was already a step away from the tabula rasa (which is basically the same as the "banking concept"), and thinkers like John Dewey and Alfred North Whitehead were strongly critical of the transmission of mere "facts" as the goal of education. Freire's work is one of the foundations of critical pedagogy.

More challenging, however, is Freire's strong aversion to the teacher-student dichotomy. This dichotomy is admitted in Rousseau and constrained in Dewey, but Freire comes close to insisting that it should be completely abolished. This is hard to imagine in absolute terms (there must be some enactment of the teacher-student relationship in the parent-child relationship), but what Freire suggests is that a deep reciprocality be inserted into our notions of teacher and student. Freire wants us to think in terms of teacher-student and student-teacher, that is, a teacher who learns and a learner who teaches, as the basic roles of classroom participation.

This is one of the few attempts anywhere to implement something like democracy as an educational method and not merely a goal of democratic education. Even Dewey, for whom democracy was a touchstone, did not integrate democratic practices fully into his methods. (Though this was in part a function of Dewey's attitudes toward individuality.) However, in its early, strong form this kind of classroom has sometimes been criticized on the grounds that it can mask rather than overcome the teacher's authority."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paulo_Freire

Cheers,
The Seeker :tao: