Why the world wags...
Dec. 5th, 2008 04:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pyatI need to preface my post with a note!
I realize that school systems are highly imperfect and never will be perfect for everyone. My own experience was far from ideal. They have progressively gotten better in many ways, though they sometimes take large steps back. Children in Britain, for example, are no longer indoctrinated with “the White Man’s Burden,” and children in Canada no longer learn that Riel was a traitor. Things can always get better, and always require change.
My comment is more about the philosophy or ideal of school rather than the reality. I recognize school as an unpleasant social experience for many people, including myself.
I also hope that I don't offend the person whose journal this was drawn from, by re-posting my comment here.
I’m going to pick out two quotes, here:
But in an everyday sense of the matter, you don't really need to know the chemical composition of Mercury. You don't need to know algebraic equations. You don't need to know who the governor of Michigan was in 1930...
The jobs that I want? the life skills that I need? have NOTHING to do with those, either. Why should I - why should ANY - kid have to waste time to learn skills that they'll forget upon entering adulthood?
You seem to be expressing two almost contradictory thoughts in your post. First, that schools should be institutes of learning. Second, that schools shouldn’t teach things you don’t think you’re going to need as an adult. Possibly you mean that schools should only train people according to their preference, aptitude, and eventual station?
Certainly, there is a lot of "non-essential" information presented, at least in the sense that a plumber is unlikely to ever need to recite the Gettysburg Address or know when World War II started. But, it seems to me that teaching only essentials is a lot more likely to produce a “cog,” than a process, however flawed, that tries earnestly to cram Shakespeare and Calculus and French into every brain it can reach.
The sometimes dreary rote learning of elementary school is, in a very real sense, “good for you,” in nearly the same way that gym class is good for you, even if you hate it and never intend to climb a rope or play football ever again in your life. It is, in a way, “good” for your brain in almost the same way the tiresome games of gym class were good for your body.
Every piece of information - every fact and truth - is essential to the construction of a context that allows you to understand society and the physical world. Every bit of data, every date, every fact – about how glass is made, about Bunker Hill, about quadratic equations, about the primary imports and exports of Tonga – provides you with another tiny pixel of an overall picture of the world. Aggregate knowledge of almost any kind makes it easier for you to react to new situations and comprehend new things, in the context of what has come before, and serve as an educated and informed member of society. It also equips you for self-actualization, making you better able to be the person you want to be, and do the things you like to do.
Each fact is connected to another fact, and can fire you down a line of inquiry that ends up in a place you never expected. The purpose of humanity, insofar as we have one, may be said to be a constant exploration of what is, and a constant refinement in our ability to understand it. “The purpose of man is to serve as a witness to Creation,” said a great agnostic/stoic.
There are no trivial facts, merely trivial applications of fact.
Yes, Calculus is hard. Shakespeare is hard. Chemistry is hard. French is hard.
All these things are intellectually hard in the same way that climbing a rope is physically hard and dreary. All new things are hard. Eventually, they become easy. If you run and jump and jog enough, even if it is hard at first, one day you will suddenly realize that your physical capacity has increased to the point where marvelous things can be done. Suddenly, you realize that you can climb a mountain or run a race, or even just go for a brisk hike in the woods without getting asthmatic (this last example I can personally attest to). Similarly, the mere application of mental muscle to the effort of comprehension of something which, at first blush, is dry and difficult, can lead the realization that the topic, once mastered, is not dry at all. How many high school students hate Shakespeare, or poetry, Dickens, until familiarity with the archaic language or sudden recognition of the reality below the imagery fired their imagination?
My favorite passage from T.H. White is:
“The best thing for being sad is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder in your veins, you may miss your only love. You may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then - to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust and never dream of regretting.”
(There was more after this, but it was specific to the person, and not universal)
I realize that school systems are highly imperfect and never will be perfect for everyone. My own experience was far from ideal. They have progressively gotten better in many ways, though they sometimes take large steps back. Children in Britain, for example, are no longer indoctrinated with “the White Man’s Burden,” and children in Canada no longer learn that Riel was a traitor. Things can always get better, and always require change.
My comment is more about the philosophy or ideal of school rather than the reality. I recognize school as an unpleasant social experience for many people, including myself.
I also hope that I don't offend the person whose journal this was drawn from, by re-posting my comment here.
I’m going to pick out two quotes, here:
But in an everyday sense of the matter, you don't really need to know the chemical composition of Mercury. You don't need to know algebraic equations. You don't need to know who the governor of Michigan was in 1930...
The jobs that I want? the life skills that I need? have NOTHING to do with those, either. Why should I - why should ANY - kid have to waste time to learn skills that they'll forget upon entering adulthood?
You seem to be expressing two almost contradictory thoughts in your post. First, that schools should be institutes of learning. Second, that schools shouldn’t teach things you don’t think you’re going to need as an adult. Possibly you mean that schools should only train people according to their preference, aptitude, and eventual station?
Certainly, there is a lot of "non-essential" information presented, at least in the sense that a plumber is unlikely to ever need to recite the Gettysburg Address or know when World War II started. But, it seems to me that teaching only essentials is a lot more likely to produce a “cog,” than a process, however flawed, that tries earnestly to cram Shakespeare and Calculus and French into every brain it can reach.
The sometimes dreary rote learning of elementary school is, in a very real sense, “good for you,” in nearly the same way that gym class is good for you, even if you hate it and never intend to climb a rope or play football ever again in your life. It is, in a way, “good” for your brain in almost the same way the tiresome games of gym class were good for your body.
Every piece of information - every fact and truth - is essential to the construction of a context that allows you to understand society and the physical world. Every bit of data, every date, every fact – about how glass is made, about Bunker Hill, about quadratic equations, about the primary imports and exports of Tonga – provides you with another tiny pixel of an overall picture of the world. Aggregate knowledge of almost any kind makes it easier for you to react to new situations and comprehend new things, in the context of what has come before, and serve as an educated and informed member of society. It also equips you for self-actualization, making you better able to be the person you want to be, and do the things you like to do.
Each fact is connected to another fact, and can fire you down a line of inquiry that ends up in a place you never expected. The purpose of humanity, insofar as we have one, may be said to be a constant exploration of what is, and a constant refinement in our ability to understand it. “The purpose of man is to serve as a witness to Creation,” said a great agnostic/stoic.
There are no trivial facts, merely trivial applications of fact.
Yes, Calculus is hard. Shakespeare is hard. Chemistry is hard. French is hard.
All these things are intellectually hard in the same way that climbing a rope is physically hard and dreary. All new things are hard. Eventually, they become easy. If you run and jump and jog enough, even if it is hard at first, one day you will suddenly realize that your physical capacity has increased to the point where marvelous things can be done. Suddenly, you realize that you can climb a mountain or run a race, or even just go for a brisk hike in the woods without getting asthmatic (this last example I can personally attest to). Similarly, the mere application of mental muscle to the effort of comprehension of something which, at first blush, is dry and difficult, can lead the realization that the topic, once mastered, is not dry at all. How many high school students hate Shakespeare, or poetry, Dickens, until familiarity with the archaic language or sudden recognition of the reality below the imagery fired their imagination?
My favorite passage from T.H. White is:
“The best thing for being sad is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder in your veins, you may miss your only love. You may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then - to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust and never dream of regretting.”
(There was more after this, but it was specific to the person, and not universal)
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no subject
Date: 2008-12-06 03:17 am (UTC)While I think elsewhere in your post we are more or less in complete agreement, I have deep, strong and abiding objections to point b) based on my experience in the Air Force. The USAF provides its own learning aides, and they are near-universally of terrible quality. I think the same can be said of most self-published corporate-level training.
I have no problems at all with textbooks being published by someone else; let the best book win, and all that. I do have serious problems with the best book running in excess of $140 in the US market and not quite a third as much elsewhere; that's just ridiculous. If it's cost control you're aiming to achieve with that, this particular means would sacrifice a great deal of quality as well.
no subject
Date: 2008-12-06 05:03 am (UTC)This is part of the free-as-in-freedom I mentioned, too; why shouldn't any engineering student in any school (or just at home self-teaching) not be able to download and learn from an excellent MIT-developed textbook or even a whole curriculum?
I hadn't really thought about it this way until writing this comment, but this is an important point. Now, teachers are necessary and useful, and other than in video lectures they can't be duplicated. (Well, some can, but that's because a lot of teachers make themselves intentionally scarce.) Same with hands-on labs.
The rest though? The curricula, the textbooks, the worksheets, the outlines, the exams, the prerequistes and the tracks? Those are things that want to be free. It's not that it doesn't take money and effort to make those things, but professors are paid more than reasonable sums to do just that. Besides, if the goal is knowledge and wisdom, instead of Education, there's no reason these things should be bottled up in buildings and dead trees. I'd learn the shit out of myself if I had those things available to me; I already spend a good portion of any quiet day at work reading obscure Wikipedia articles on any topic I can imagine.