I'm not shitting on teachers for playing the hands they've been dealt. I'm talking woulda coulda shoulda if wishes and buts were candy and nuts every day would be Christmas. I understand that education is what it is and its better to get some basic standards taught than nothing at all. I also know my own reality is that the teachers who made a difference in my life focused on bigger pictures than 1492 Columbus Sailed the Ocean Blue. It is what it is but I know what made me a better person. I have empathy for teachers and have done legal work supporting teacher unions but on the other hand I want my kids to learn to think more than I want them to memorize facts. The facts have uses but critical thought is, in my opinion, more important.
I do this with my own children, by the way. My oldest boy (11 in November)is a math and science kid and that isn't my strong suit, but we'll watch astronomy shows and I'll challenge him on the whys and hows and expand on concepts like light from distant stars leaving the source before dinosaurs existed and becoming visible now. He also likes the history channel and I'll try to make him think...like last night there was a show he turned on and I watched with him about Hitler's rise to power and I kept asking him Why? Why were the German people discontent after 1918? Why were the Jews scapegoated? Why was Hitler's speaking style appealing? What can we learn from that? He'd heard of the blonde hair/blue eyes uberman (the concept but not that term) and we talked about whether that was a legitimate goal and how to prevent further genetic ultimatums. To me, that is education.
In talking out the Chinese land grab vs. general decline of Western Society thread, I was reminded of this thread and realized that what something was missing in the critical thinking vs. test taking sort of debate. At the risk of being provocative, a critical thinker starved of facts is good at winning arguments but not much else. We need to teach people how to think, but to really solve problems, you have to have a good command of the facts. And, generally speaking, you need discipline. Not in the "spare the rod, spoil the child" sense, but in the self-control sense. Knowing facts requires discipline and self control. Learning facts teaches it. This is especially difficult for bright, active minds who are used to not having to work hard at unpleasant or boring tasks. At worst, we become a nation of bullshitters. Of course, we don't want to go to the other extreme either. I've met a whole mess of, for example, Chinese and Indian programmers who, I'm sure, are very book smart, but who couldn't think their way out of a paper bag.
I'd argue that the need to master facts is less today than ever before, because facts can be acquired more quickly/cheaply. barfo
Sometimes yes and sometimes no. Looking something up on Wikipedia is great, but it's not the same as having the sort of deep, often theoretical knowledge you need to really do a lot of things. Ikea instructions can replace carpentry skills for putting together a desk, but not everything. And another thing... what's wrong with being a carpenter? In the other thread, I mentioned everything can be a bubble. Certainly there's a bubble in various higher education fields that lead to being a member of the snooty class, and a paucity of folks who know how or want to engineer, understand, and experiment with things.
There's nothing wrong with being a carpenter. However, not everyone can or should be a master carpenter. Having the ability to understand when you need to hire a master carpenter, and when you can do it yourself with a little studying, is key. Specialists are good, but generalists are good too. And it is arguably better to be a generalist than a specialist - at least when things go bad. barfo
