What's Education For?

[AthenaAwakened]

The greatest problem of the modern education system is that it doesn't focus on systematically preparing students for many aspects of the real challenge out there: Life itself

 

[coloradoatheist]

While I agree, isn't the issue that we've created a one size fits all educational system?

 

[AthenaAwakened]

While I agree, isn't the issue that we've created a one size fits all educational system?

That is one issue and a very important one, but not the only issue.

 

[Valjean]

To promote happiness by increasing one's understanding of and appreciation of the world.

 

[Bronzeage]

The purpose of education is to teach people to not end a sentence with a preposition.

That's what it's for.

 

[AthenaAwakened]

The purpose of education is to teach people to not end a sentence with a preposition.

That's what it's for.

That is not what education is for, however that is what your tenth grade English teacher was for.

 

[ronburgundy]

Formal school is not and can not plausibly be designed to effectively teach us everything there is to know about how to live. That's why it only takes up 25% of a child's waking hours from k-12 (half of the waking hours for only half of the days of those years).

That said, many of the suggestions make perfect sense. Math should be taught in the context of economics, although I argue that it should also be taught in the contexts of basic scientific methods related to probability, sampling methods, and basic statistics. Without this, people are incapable of understanding and evaluating scientific research or other empirical evidence and related claims.
I also agree that the more basic and established aspects of cognitive/psychological science should be taught throughout k-12. These include everything from brain biology and its massive role in how we learn, feel, and behave, to the role of context and social influence. It should include info on the various ways in which our thinking is often biased and irrational, often corrupted by emotional goals that we might not be aware of which delude us into accepting ideas that our own knowledge would tell us are false if we applied it properly. However, the OP clip mentions the most dubious and invalid areas of psychology, saying we should helping students develop maps of their own personalities and the "types of people they are best suited to be around". Personality psychology is among the softest and least validated and disputed (by those within the field) areas of psychology. The vast majority of people with Ph.D.s in research-based psychology (i.e., not therapy) would oppose such efforts unless those areas of research developed light years beyond where they are now.

Understanding human biology, health, and human psychology are of vastly more importance and utility to students than periodic tables and the majority of what they are currently learning in chemistry, physics, and even biology courses. Also, psychology deals with human thought and behavior, which is something all kids have experience with, and it would be easy to craft lessons that illustrate the latest understanding in ways that even young grade school kids would grasp and likely be interested in.

 

[Valjean]

The purpose of education is to teach people to not end a sentence with a preposition.

That's what it's for.

Or to use split infinitives...

 

[AthenaAwakened]

The purpose of education is to teach people to not end a sentence with a preposition.

That's what it's for.

Or to use split infinitives...

Good Catch

 

[Togo]

The purpose of education is to teach people how to learn. How to find out, discover, and understand things, so that when necessary they can do it for themselves. A system that leaves people with a strong desire to never open a non-fiction book again has largely failed in this goal.

The easiest way to achieve this is to spend a lot of time learning in a lot of different ways, typically by studying very different subject areas, so that you have a basic grounding in as many different ways of thinking as possible.

- - - Updated - - -

The purpose of education is to teach people how to learn. How to find out, discover, and understand things, so that when necessary they can do it for themselves. A system that leaves people with a strong desire to never open a non-fiction book again has largely failed in this goal.

The easiest way to achieve this is to spend a lot of time learning in a lot of different ways, typically by studying very different subject areas, so that you have a basic grounding in as many different ways of thinking as possible.

 

[noble brown]

The current education system and it's purpose hasn't evolved much from its original intent, when compulsory education was first proposed. At the risk of over simplifying the goal was to prepare the citizens for industrialization and as a side note to engender in the common people less political engagement. Work, obey, consume.

 

[DrZoidberg]

The greatest problem of the modern education system is that it doesn't focus on systematically preparing students for many aspects of the real challenge out there: Life itself

Fuck I hated that video. I disagree with the basic premise. Schools are for teaching us self-discipline and also just cramming shit into it. The brain is like any muscle and people are inherently lazy. By exercising the brain in any way we get smarter. It doesn´t really matter what we fill it with. Any information does the trick. But while we´re doing it we might as well prepare us for high end jobs.

Also, a young child doesn´t know what they´re best suited for and neither does anybody else. The best option is to teach them a little bit of everything and let them figure it out on their own. Which is what we´re doing now.

On the psychology and philosophy. All extremely speculative stuff. Don´t teach that to kids.

Relationships... come on. Kids suck. They´re not mentally ready for learning that stuff.

I normally like de Botton. Not in this case.

 

[noble brown]

Schools are for teaching us self-discipline and also just cramming shit into it.

Half right. If schools were about teaching self-discipline then they would be teaching psychology and sociology. Which you find inappropriate. I mean how do you learn self-discipline effectively without self-knowledge? But they do just cram random shit into your head, well not really random but essentially.

The brain is like any muscle and people are inherently lazy. By exercising the brain in any way we get smarter. It doesn't really matter what we fill it with. Any information does the trick. But while we´re doing it we might as well prepare us for high end jobs.

I know its popular to make this comparison but its not very accurate. The idea that it doesn't matter what you shove into the brain is, is shocking to me. I know this guy whom everyone thinks is smart because he can recite all kinds of information. He excelled at school where rote memorization was the goal and obedience was key. But the half-wit couldn't problem solve himself out of a wet paper bag. To be fair he may not have been a half-wit at all but that is how he was conditioned to "think" so no one will ever know. If you teach kids just to memorize information then that's the process the brain gets accustomed to and once the brain gets accustomed to a certain pattern it becomes difficult to get it out of that rut. So it is very important what and how you teach.

Also, a young child doesn't know what they´re best suited for and neither does anybody else. The best option is to teach them a little bit of everything and let them figure it out on their own. Which is what we´re doing now.

Oh we could figure out whats best for kids. Its not like the developing mind is something magical. The best option would to apply what we've learned from various sciences to the social arena and also to further develop the sciences.

Relationships... come on. Kids suck. They´re not mentally ready for learning that stuff.

Kids are actually very good at relationships. Better then most adults imo.

 

[Nexus]

The current education system and it's purpose hasn't evolved much from its original intent, when compulsory education was first proposed. At the risk of over simplifying the goal was to prepare the citizens for industrialization and as a side note to engender in the common people less political engagement. Work, obey, consume.

This is certainly the true purpose of modern education although we are given many false and lofty reasons.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Half right. If schools were about teaching self-discipline then they would be teaching psychology and sociology. Which you find inappropriate. I mean how do you learn self-discipline effectively without self-knowledge? But they do just cram random shit into your head, well not really random but essentially.

I don´t see the point in teaching self-knowledge before their brains are fully developed. Otherwise it´ll be a moving target. It´ll only confuse them or worse, teach them stuff they interpret wrongly. Also, teachers can be complete fucking idiots. All children have a weak ego. Do we really want to place these kinds of tools into the the hands of a teacher who may not know what they´re doing?

I do see a value in teaching kids ethics. That´s pretty simple and manageable.

The brain is like any muscle and people are inherently lazy. By exercising the brain in any way we get smarter. It doesn't really matter what we fill it with. Any information does the trick. But while we´re doing it we might as well prepare us for high end jobs.

I know its popular to make this comparison but its not very accurate. The idea that it doesn't matter what you shove into the brain is, is shocking to me. I know this guy whom everyone thinks is smart because he can recite all kinds of information. He excelled at school where rote memorization was the goal and obedience was key. But the half-wit couldn't problem solve himself out of a wet paper bag. To be fair he may not have been a half-wit at all but that is how he was conditioned to "think" so no one will ever know. If you teach kids just to memorize information then that's the process the brain gets accustomed to and once the brain gets accustomed to a certain pattern it becomes difficult to get it out of that rut. So it is very important what and how you teach.

This is a known problem today, and we´ve known about it for a long time. But it´s not clear what we can do about it. The problem is the teachers. They´re simply not smart enough. If they are they´re already doing it. But most teachers aren´t good enough. So they aren´t.

But that said. Rote learning is also good for the mind. It´s better than not doing it.

Also, a young child doesn't know what they´re best suited for and neither does anybody else. The best option is to teach them a little bit of everything and let them figure it out on their own. Which is what we´re doing now.

Oh we could figure out whats best for kids. Its not like the developing mind is something magical. The best option would to apply what we've learned from various sciences to the social arena and also to further develop the sciences.

I´m not sure what you mean here?

Relationships... come on. Kids suck. They´re not mentally ready for learning that stuff.

Kids are actually very good at relationships. Better then most adults imo.

Let´s agree to disagree. All evidence I´ve seen supports the opposite conclusion.

 

[noble brown]

You may be right about teaching self knowledge and ethics. To a point. It all depends on what you mean by kids. I know my 12 year old can handle certain treatments of both subjects but my 6 year old would completely miss it. I shouldn't have suggested that I know what exactly we should be teaching and when. But I do suggest that we should be investing a lot more effort into discovering the most effective methods of teaching. It should be treated as a science if you will. The science of teaching.
I agree teachers are a huge issue. Hopefully that would be one of the first if not the first aspect of our current system to be reformed. But that being said it is not the only issue. I think it's clear that what we are teaching is only exacerbating some of the fundamental social issues we have. I believe that the key to a more civically engaged and responsive society is not to emphasize obedience and information recollection but to place an emphasis on thinking critically . Blind obedience is the the single most destructive trait to democratic discourse.
As far as kids and relationships I mean to say that they are much more intuitive about relationships. Perhaps if you're interested I could find some links to better explain what I mean.
I think it's fundamental to reevaluate what we think the function of education is. From there the path will be just slightly more illuminated.

 

[DrZoidberg]

You may be right about teaching self knowledge and ethics. To a point. It all depends on what you mean by kids. I know my 12 year old can handle certain treatments of both subjects but my 6 year old would completely miss it. I shouldn't have suggested that I know what exactly we should be teaching and when. But I do suggest that we should be investing a lot more effort into discovering the most effective methods of teaching. It should be treated as a science if you will. The science of teaching.

Pedagogy. They´ve got conferences and everything. A search on Google Scholar gives me over a million published scientific articles in the field. It´s not like we´re not doing this. We are.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedagogy

I agree teachers are a huge issue. Hopefully that would be one of the first if not the first aspect of our current system to be reformed. But that being said it is not the only issue. I think it's clear that what we are teaching is only exacerbating some of the fundamental social issues we have. I believe that the key to a more civically engaged and responsive society is not to emphasize obedience and information recollection but to place an emphasis on thinking critically. Blind obedience is the the single most destructive trait to democratic discourse.
As far as kids and relationships I mean to say that they are much more intuitive about relationships. Perhaps if you're interested I could find some links to better explain what I mean.
I think it's fundamental to reevaluate what we think the function of education is. From there the path will be just slightly more illuminated.

I both agree and disagree. The modern day crisis IMHO is not blind obedience, but a democratisation of the truth. A lot of people equate equal voting rights in a democratic election with that everybody´s opinion is equally valuable. I´d say out number one issue right now is getting people to trust figures of authority who actually know better than them. It´s the Dunning-Kruger paradox. In order to be able to evaluate figures of authority they need to have a pretty good understanding of their fields. As our scientific understanding accumulates this is getting increasingly hard. This is a problem that only will get worse as science progresses. I´m not sure how that can be solved.

Home schooling parents teaching their kids to question the theory of evolution is also teaching them critical thinking. We can´t teach people to question all authority. That would lead to Idiocracy.

I know I sound like a hypocrite now, but I think we need to teach kids a mix of critical thinking, the questioning of authorities as well as blindly trusting certain figures of authority, and hope they will be able to make the best of this as they grow up. Which is the system we have now.

 

[Togo]

I both agree and disagree. The modern day crisis IMHO is not blind obedience, but a democratisation of the truth. A lot of people equate equal voting rights in a democratic election with that everybody´s opinion is equally valuable. I´d say out number one issue right now is getting people to trust figures of authority who actually know better than them. It´s the Dunning-Kruger paradox. In order to be able to evaluate figures of authority they need to have a pretty good understanding of their fields. As our scientific understanding accumulates this is getting increasingly hard. This is a problem that only will get worse as science progresses. I´m not sure how that can be solved.

I'm not sure it's a crisis at all. People have always bewailed the ignorance of the mob. But if you think of examples of people promoting unfortunate opinions, they aren't limited to the ignorant. Global warming denial has the legs it has not because people have democratised truth, but because of a combination of vested interests opposing any recognition of the phenomenon, and a political ideology that opposes government restriction on private action in principal. It's not because people have insufficient respect for authority.

Similarly, I'd suggest that authority needs to be questioned, and to stand up to questioning. Getting research scientists who experiment on animals to justify this is important. It's a pain for them, of course, and their critics are generally ignorant people who don't know what they're talking about, but that doesn't mean they don't have a point.

I think the point about questioning authority is that it is used for a number of different things, from challenging authority, to resisting authority. The point should be to question authority, to put the onus on authority to provide an answer, and on the questioner to consider and try to understand that response. The key point is not the asking of the question, but the understanding and evaluation of the response. The point is to teach people to come up with ways to evaluate the pronouncements of others on subjects they don't entirely understand.

 

[DrZoidberg]

I'm not sure it's a crisis at all. People have always bewailed the ignorance of the mob. But if you think of examples of people promoting unfortunate opinions, they aren't limited to the ignorant. Global warming denial has the legs it has not because people have democratised truth, but because of a combination of vested interests opposing any recognition of the phenomenon, and a political ideology that opposes government restriction on private action in principal. It's not because people have insufficient respect for authority.

Do you seriously think that the Global Warming debate would be a debate at all if people had more respect for science?

Political ideology trumping science is exactly what I´m talking about.

Similarly, I'd suggest that authority needs to be questioned, and to stand up to questioning. Getting research scientists who experiment on animals to justify this is important. It's a pain for them, of course, and their critics are generally ignorant people who don't know what they're talking about, but that doesn't mean they don't have a point.

I think the point about questioning authority is that it is used for a number of different things, from challenging authority, to resisting authority. The point should be to question authority, to put the onus on authority to provide an answer, and on the questioner to consider and try to understand that response. The key point is not the asking of the question, but the understanding and evaluation of the response. The point is to teach people to come up with ways to evaluate the pronouncements of others on subjects they don't entirely understand.

Still.. always Dunning-Kruger paradox. The only way for a scientist to truly be able to explain is for them to teach you everything they know. It´s impossible and unrealistic. We give scientists the benefit of the doubt because we have faith in the scientific method. It´s a question of trust. So not completely blind faith. But not far from.

I agree that figures of authority should be challenged. I think that this will result in something better than not doing so. But we shouldn´t forget that this will also result in us dismissing scientists who are right simply because they´re not good communicators. Worth noting is that scientists are often bad communicators. It´s a problem.

 

[noble brown]

The effects of most cognitive biases can be significantly mitigated with a comparatively small amount of the right information. Usually it has to do with informing the subject of the bias they're being observed on. With illusory superiority and specifically w the dunning study, if my memory serves me correctly, they were able to show that a bit of subject tutoring was able to have the same effect. A scientist need not explain everything he/she knows.
On a related note, the recent increase in scientific denialism has much more grounded root cause then cognitive biases. Most of the denialism, if not all, is based out of fear and distrust not a lack of communication. The fear is an emotional response riled up by various interested parties but with out the distrust existing first the fear mongering would not be quite as successful. The distrust is an aspect that not many deniers can put their finger on. In fact if they could they wouldn't be so fanatical about it. The distrust comes from the fact that the scientific community has been commodified. It used to be a purely intellectual endeavor. Of course the scientific communities being composed of humans too, they are also subject to the same cognitive biases as we are but I'm digressing. The commodification of the sciences has bred much distrust in their findings and in the integrity of the whole community.
Question all authority. If it can't be justified then it is not deserved. We should be educating the people to the point where this is a propitious element of our public discourse and not a negative one