Why the world wags...

[pyat]

I 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)

Comments

[kisekileia.livejournal.com]

"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."

I really, really like that. A lot. It's the best explanation for why all of school is valuable that I've seen, I think.

[pwned-kisa.livejournal.com]

OH MY GOD! I'M SO OFFENDED! HOW COULD YOU REPOST YOUR OWN WORDS IN YOUR OWN JOURNAL?!?! Pfft.

Let's just say that I disagree and leave it at that. I said my piece, you said yours, and it's all done.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

That's fair! Squeak. :)

[oakthorne.livejournal.com]

As a counterpoint to nothing in particular...

- I dropped out of high school. It was atrociously dull, filled with abusive people and apathetic administrators and used a system of education wholly at odds with the way I learned. I received an education in spite of my schooling.

- Our jobs sound suspiciously similar in perks. :D

- I attended a year and a half of university, after getting my GED. I found it filled with academic requirements that I should never have to have taken (especially in classes where I was, as a precise example, teaching my classmates how to identify passive voice after a literal week of our instructor failing to do so), surrounded by people with more of an interest in getting drunk and laid (in whichever order that might happen) far more than anything in a book or on a computer screen, and designed under the assumption that one is a student with a parent or set of parents who are paying for one to attend, with all one's cost of living and such tended to either by those parental money vaults or massive loans that someone with my socio-economic background could never get, rather than actually working to do things like buy my books and pay tuition as well as pay for the roof over my head and the food in my pantry. It did not, as one might surmise, go well.

[redeem147.livejournal.com]

ore likely, I’d be living in an apartment, working at a grocery store, and trying to escape from reality as much as possible.

Well, I'm not working in a grocery store. I do have my BA.

Then again, working part-time doesn't allow for the best opportunities.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

What do they say about anecdata?

For the most part, the more education you have, the more money you're going to earn and the more opportunities for advancement will be accessible to you. Since that is an average rather than absolute, there are exceptions to it, people who do well, even extremely well, without much in the way of formal education. But they're far rarer than the people who do really well WITH a formal education. The stats are skewed at the other end, too - the number of people with a good formal education who live below the poverty line is dramatically lower than the number of people without high school diplomas who live below the poverty line.

You know all of this, of course. My point is that the main thrust of Piet's post still stands.

[amarafox.livejournal.com]

I like living in an apartment :D

[oakthorne.livejournal.com]

It definitely does at that.

But as you point out, one can rarely apply the broad generalizations that are true in the widest perspective to individuals lives.

Of course, whether you live above or below the poverty line - and whether you finish schooling or not - often has far more to do with whether or not your parents did; it's more often than not an issue of class, rather than education. Certainly, there are cases where people break free to rise above those boundaries, just as there are those who plummet below such expectations, but they are - as you mention - anecdotal.

[hillarygayle.livejournal.com]

I agree with this too, as does my husband (high school algebra/calculus teacher). And I would also add that when someone is in high school, we CANNOT KNOW what pieces of information might be useful later on in life. There is plain and simple no way to know that. When I was young & thought I was going to do something in communication all my life, which I then went on to get a degree in, I saw no need whatsoever for algebra. And then I got into the ambitious, high speed world of mass comm and realized...oh. I hated it. Damn. So I am now going back to school to be an RN, and guess what? Dosage calculations? They're algebra. Trying to say that one type of fact is going to be useful and another isn't, across the board for everyone? Not possible.

[zenten.livejournal.com]

I like what you said, but it doesn't seem to really address the complaints that you quoted. Not that I know the full context of those complaints.

Still, saying that the current education system is largely harmful doesn't mean that in theory education can't be a very good thing. It also *really* depends on the person. I liked the structure that school provided, and I've been kind of flailing without it. For other people it is stifling.

[easyalchemy.livejournal.com]

I was lucky in life - while I attended a truly terrible elementary school, there was one teacher there - Lyndon Kelsey - whose love of learning and reading and history and the earth broke through the dull itinerary set by this horrible school and pushed my love of reading in new directions. What would I be without him? I can't tell you. What would I be without the horrible awfulness of the rest of school as a counterpoint? I can't tell that, either.

In highschool I was once again very lucky, and had Mr. Alan Thorne, who taught me many things, but most of all taught my talk-backing, rebellious, debating 15-year-old self that school isn't there to teach you information; school is there to teach you how to learn. That's all. It doesn't matter if you don't remember a single 'fact,' as long as you remember how to learn when you need to.

He also taught me that right-wingers are thinking people too, mostly, and that one should honour the achievements of even a person whom you deeply dislike. He had a picture of Kim Campbell in his classroom (along with lots of other people), and when I questioned it, saying that she sucked (essentially), he said that however I felt about her, she was still Canada (and North America's) first female leader, and deserved her place in history.

School is difficult, but most things worth doing are, and what one gains is not necessarily grades or money or things, but experience.

[commanderteddog.livejournal.com]

More likely, I’d be living in an apartment

I live in a very nice apartment that's awesome and cute and full of MST3K but lacks a couch. BE GONE, YOU APARTMENT HATER, YOU! :O

[pwned-kisa.livejournal.com]

For a limited time, I'll leave this open, for those of you who are interested in the post that sparked this, so you have some reference. http://pwnedkitten.livejournal.com/297269.html (which, in turn, was sparked by a post from velvetpage)

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

But class and education level are inextricably linked. Those who make up the working poor for several generations have two ways out of poverty: a relationship strong enough to break their ties with their family so they can leave, and education. Those two aren't separable, either; generally the relationship is a necessary precursor to getting the education. Rising out of generational poverty is almost never done without a route that leads through formal education and out the other side - usually into a bureaucratic or professional type job, because the more unstable your background, the more likely you are to seek a stable career, and bureaucracy and professions like teaching tend to provide that.

A middle-class person who doesn't get that education might be able to keep their middle-class status with a job that doesn't require it, often in conjunction with a partner who has it and keeps the family middle-class. But two generations of that, without at least one partner who has a higher education and values it, almost always lead to the family falling into poverty.

[bodhifox.livejournal.com]

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."
- Robert A. Heinlein

A well rounded and useful education is crucial. However, it does not depend necessarily on schooling. I know plenty of people who have attained multiple degrees that couldn't find their way out of a paper bag. I don't have a degree. Maybe I'd be making more money if I had proven I can go through an entire degree program. But I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be any happier, or capable, or more intelligent. Of course,YMMV. As you said, you're addressing an ideal.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I should have prefaced that with "crappy."

I liked living in a nice apartment, though I also like having a garden. :)

[pyat.livejournal.com]

I've actually removed that section as it was specific to a particular person.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

*nods* The last bit was specific to the person in question, and I've removed it. You are very different from her.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

You live in a nice apartment in Toronto! I should have said "lousy apartment in the North End".

Also...

How can you watch MST3K without a couch? :)

[pyat.livejournal.com]

As you said, you're addressing an ideal.

Yeah, the bit about that was specific to one person - I've removed it from the essay, and should have left it out of the public post entirely, as my FL is full of exceptional people. :)

[amarafox.livejournal.com]

I like not being on the foot for bills if my plumbing breaks :D

I've been a homeowner, I prefer renting >.>

[pyat.livejournal.com]

I hear that. If I were single, I'd most likely be a renter - apartment or house, I'm not sure.

I liked not having to shovel. I didn't like, though, how long it took to go outside.

[pwned-kisa.livejournal.com]

Oh.. just sos yaknow... I make $16.75/hour, at a job that's fairly cushy, myself. Not exactly a callcenter job.

[pwned-kisa.livejournal.com]

I've been a homeowner, I prefer renting

Yes, to this.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

Understood. *nods*