What's The Point Of Education?

[RC Patriot]

Lately, I've been seeing more and more stories in the news about the failures of public education. Some are academic, such as how our nation's children test against the rest of the world. Some are social. And this is the area that bothers me most. I recently read a story about a New Hampshire man being arrested, ostensibly for "Disturbing the Peace," after he exceeded his two-minute time limit to protest a book during a school board meeting. The book was "Nineteen Minutes," by Jodi Picault, a romantic novelist. Part of the book describes a graphic romantic encounter between two adolescents. The man's daughter was assigned the book in her 9th grade English class, parents were never informed or given an option to opt-out, and the father, naturally, was furious. Other stories of "sex-ed" and teaching about "alternative families" abound, but my main question is...

 

What is the purpose of education?

 

Cynicism aside, do you think the public school system supports that purpose?

 

What option do you think does best support the purpose of education?

Edited May 7, 2014 by RC Patriot

[PhuturePriest]

The point of education is to educate and brighten minds. The U.S. school system at large fails to do this. Why? Because it was modeled after an education system to raise children to be factory workers. This is why you spend twelve years of your life doing school and not have any skills by the end of it. This is why college and trade schools are a necessity. More and more people are questioning it, and I sincerely hope we're seeing the last few generations that have to suffer through such a colossal failure of a system.

[CrossCuT]

To make money - not by the students mind you...

Edited May 7, 2014 by CrossCuT

[RC Patriot]

To make money - not by the students mind you...

 

I'm guessing you disagree with this goal... So what should the purpose of education be?

 

What incentives can we offer educators to provide a quality education?

Edited May 7, 2014 by RC Patriot

[CrossCuT]

 I was just discussing the school system with some work friends at lunch.

 

Not only what you said FP, but school doesnt cater to everyone learning styles. As a society, we label anyone who drops out, fails out, or simply doesnt go in the first place to be stupid, lazy, or other negative stereotypes. The problem is that the education system does not cater to all learning types. Certain people will thrive in the current system, and others will not but that does NOT mean that those who did not succeed were stupid etc. 

 

And along those lines, some people have disabilities like anxiety, depression, or the like that will prevent them from being as successful as they COULD be. As someone who suffers a great deal from anxiety, I can tell you its not just a silly little mind issue that you can just wish away with happy thoughts and it can be extremely debilitating. 

 

 

Some people will thrive in our education system, and they have historically been deemed as the elite and the smartest where as everyone else are the stupid people who have to work at McDonald's. Its ridic! Not only are we failing so many children and youth who try to go through this system, but we are conditioning ourselves to treat people like poo. 

 

Also...tuition has gone up like 800% since the 70s...... 

 

 

 

sorry rant over. *rips out hair*

[RC Patriot]

The point of education is to educate and brighten minds. The U.S. school system at large fails to do this. Why? Because it was modeled after an education system to raise children to be factory workers. This is why you spend twelve years of your life doing school and not have any skills by the end of it. This is why college and trade schools are a necessity. More and more people are questioning it, and I sincerely hope we're seeing the last few generations that have to suffer through such a colossal failure of a system.

 

What do you mean by "educate and brighten minds" exactly?

 

Just to pass on what I learned from college Intro to Ed class, the US school system during the 40's and the early years of the Cold War was quite strong in the sense that it really pushed for excellence in science and math. As the threat of the Cold War dwindled, schools became more about "life experience" and classes such as "Home Ec" were born... Not that I disagree with you, I'm just not sure it takes in the whole picture.

[RC Patriot]

Not only what you said FP, but school doesnt cater to everyone learning styles. As a society, we label anyone who drops out, fails out, or simply doesnt go in the first place to be stupid, lazy, or other negative stereotypes. The problem is that the education system does not cater to all learning types. Certain people will thrive in the current system, and others will not but that does NOT mean that those who did not succeed were stupid etc. 

 

And along those lines, some people have disabilities like anxiety, depression, or the like that will prevent them from being as successful as they COULD be. As someone who suffers a great deal from anxiety, I can tell you its not just a silly little mind issue that you can just wish away with happy thoughts and it can be extremely debilitating. 

Some people will thrive in our education system, and they have historically been deemed as the elite and the smartest where as everyone else are the stupid people who have to work at McDonald's. Its ridic! Not only are we failing so many children and youth who try to go through this system, but we are conditioning ourselves to treat people like poo. 

 

Also...tuition has gone up like 800% since the 70s...... 

 

 

 

sorry rant over. *rips out hair*

 

So... you're saying there is no "one-size-fits-all" solution?

 

I had a somewhat heated debate over facebook with some friends who told me that the answer to my objections to public school was to get involved in School Board decisions and vote. But, I agree with you... even if 50%+1 of the students in your cartoon there were monkeys, the fact is, you're still leaving the rest behind. So what's the answer?

Edited May 7, 2014 by RC Patriot

[Nihil Obstat]

Why is there no option for "Public school, Catholic"? Because that was my school up until post-secondary.

[RC Patriot]

Why is there no option for "Public school, Catholic"? Because that was my school up until post-secondary.

 

Curious... how does that work?

[Nihil Obstat]

Curious... how does that work?

Fairly simply, There is a publicly funded secular school system, and there is a perfectly parallel, publicly funded Catholic (called 'separate') school system which is identical in all respects except that the students all take uselessly vague religion classes each year (and it is difficult at times to call these courses even nominally Catholic), once in a blue moon they will go to Mass, and the teachers are kind of sort of supposed to be faithful Catholics - but not really, in case anyone gets offended by that.

[PhuturePriest]

Fairly simply, There is a publicly funded secular school system, and there is a perfectly parallel, publicly funded Catholic (called 'separate') school system which is identical in all respects except that the students all take uselessly vague religion classes each year (and it is difficult at times to call these courses even nominally Catholic), once in a blue moon they will go to Mass, and the teachers are kind of sort of supposed to be faithful Catholics - but not really, in case anyone gets offended by that.

 

Let's all applaud the Church of Nice for accomplishing these wonderful tasks.

[Nihil Obstat]

That, and almost certainly coupled with a rather distasteful deference towards the uncompromisingly secular Canadian government.

[4588686]

To give students the intellectual tools to express their full potential and lead meaningful lives and to critique and understand the various power structures and hierarchies that they encounter in their life.

[GregorMendel]

Much like any complicated social problem, there really is no specific facet that can be pointed at and deemed to cause of our problems. FP is correct, in that our nation's k-12 system is constructed like an industrial era preparation program, which allows us to frame two specific characteristics in systems-based language. The first characteristic to consider is the content of the curriculum, or the information that we provide our students in class. The second is the result of learning said content, specifically the skills and abilities gained from instruction.


The first characteristic is obvious, as most of us were asked what we learned each day by our parents when we came home from school furthermore we must acknowledge that the aspect of content has become greatly emphasized, enabled by our modern wealth of knowledge and the demands of our new "information economy". It is the second characteristic, however, that we as a society struggle with and would seem to identify as the failure of our current system. While "information", or rather discovery, drives innovation, we are only able to capitalize on such advancements given our abilities of "constructive action". We are then tempted with being consumed by the dilemma of what specific skills education should produce; This instinct leads us to precisely the wrong question to dedicate our energies upon.


The question we would seek to address concerning what information our students should consume to develop predetermined skills we predict would be useful in the future economy describes a scenario that the educational theorist Paulo Freire referred to as "educational banking". Within this paradigm, a hierarchy is established in which instruction flows only from teacher to student, disabling dialogue as well as the ability to remonstrate the curriculum, with the goal of figuratively "filling" as student with the information deemed necessary. The result is a "culture of silence", in which students blindly accept the information being taught (veracity, hopefully, would not be at issue, but rather the value of the information learned), from which we should not be surprised produces few novel ideas and lesser constructive abilities to capitalize upon them.

To best counter this system, Paulo Freire promoted his concept of "Critical Pedagogy", which Ira Shor best describes as:

"Habits of thought, reading, writing, and speaking which go beneath surface meaning, first impressions, dominant myths, official pronouncements, traditional clichés, received wisdom, and mere opinions, to understand the deep meaning, root causes, social context, ideology, and personal consequences of any action, event, object, process, organization, experience, text, subject matter, policy, mass media, or discourse"

By employing the ideas of Critical Pedagogy, one may be literally 'critical of the pedagogical' system of a current state of education, improving upon the system of educational banking by enabling the influx of new ideas, a deeper reflection of old ones, and most importantly fostering dynamic relationships between instructor and student. This would hopefully improve our students' quality of education via a vastly more efficient technique of introducing novel information as well as fundamentals of novel skills related to such ideas.



SO, to ask what the point of education is, to me, seems like a moot point. Anyone can offer up a goal of knowledge related to skill or vice versa, but its not the car's gps thats faulty in our country, its the engine, the process in which we are driven towards the future. Implementing big ideas to reorient ourselves like critical pedagogy require dedication to the notion that education is a hugely important and fascinating field, which we consistently shrug off by failing our teachers. One of the more significant differences between those at the top of the UN's educational index (New Zealand, Finland, Denmark) and the rest of the world (United States ranked 21st, which is the highest non-discipline educational rank you will find us at) is not only our difference in teacher pay, but the culture of education which it fosters. In Denmark, teachers are professionally equated with traditionally revered occupations like engineers, and while salary still doesnt approach equitability, the investment in teacher training and educational research encourages the highest performing students to consider such a career. Perhaps as our knowledge base and available technologies advance, so to should our attitudes about education and effective instruction.

[RC Patriot]

What a great post, GregorMendel. Thanks for putting so much thought into it.

It sounds like "A Pedagogy for Liberation" :)
That book was recommended reading in my Linguistics 400 class. I'll have to go back and read it.

The paradigm which we are fighting against is given power by popular consent in a democratic system. In order to compete against this paradigm, we would have to gather popular support. In order to gather popular support, we would need models of success to which we could point. But in order to get those models of success, we need to have the freedom to pursue those models, which takes funding, which again takes popular support.

I think what you describe is, on a high level of abstraction, a very worthy goal. But the truth is, we all have different goals for the education of our children and for ourselves. Some would like an education from a Catholic perspective, others from a Muslim, others from an atheist. Some don't care a bit about religious perspectives, and really only care that they are being prepared for jobs in emerging markets like health care, science, and technology. For others like myself, entrepreneurship is important, and I bristle at the suggestion that we should be preparing our kids to get good jobs.

So rather than arguing over how state-run public schools can achieve the goals of transitory politics, why not let individual parents decide for themselves?

 

Alas, I'm sure this comes with all its own challenges....