Re-Defining the Role of Education
As an educator / psychologist for over 20 years,
I have become acutely aware of how poorly state, government, religious- schools, colleges & universities are in terms of providing their students with a "relevant " education that will help them fit & grow into society.
Most of what is taught is irrelevant to the current needs of our children & youth.
Educators will readily admit that most " real " learning occurs outside of institutional education enviroments, as in the family, peer to peer, internet, etc.
In many ways, our schools & universities actually discourage real learning, merely substituting rote for reality.
Certainly there are exceptions, but the main body of learning is about whoever is best at absorbing facts & regurgitating them parrot fashion..But that is a very narrow definition of what it means to be an educated & fully functioning human being.
The concept of Universites & publicly centralised eduction are both relatively new phenomena.
So would it be a sad day to close them all down.?
Think of all the money we would save ?
There are no laws that say we must maintain these institutions in their " current form."
So, is it time we reconsidered the role & function of these educational institutions.?
And besides which, what do we really mean by " Education " and " learning " ?
\
I have become acutely aware of how poorly state, government, religious- schools, colleges & universities are in terms of providing their students with a "relevant " education that will help them fit & grow into society.
Most of what is taught is irrelevant to the current needs of our children & youth.
Educators will readily admit that most " real " learning occurs outside of institutional education enviroments, as in the family, peer to peer, internet, etc.
In many ways, our schools & universities actually discourage real learning, merely substituting rote for reality.
Certainly there are exceptions, but the main body of learning is about whoever is best at absorbing facts & regurgitating them parrot fashion..But that is a very narrow definition of what it means to be an educated & fully functioning human being.
The concept of Universites & publicly centralised eduction are both relatively new phenomena.
So would it be a sad day to close them all down.?
Think of all the money we would save ?
There are no laws that say we must maintain these institutions in their " current form."
So, is it time we reconsidered the role & function of these educational institutions.?
And besides which, what do we really mean by " Education " and " learning " ?
\
Comments
Originally posted by Scott
Well? One problem I see at the college level is that these days parents and students want to see a return on their investment in terms of increased income coming out of school. Kind of pushes "well rounded" to the side.
\\
Scott,
yes this is a serious problem.
Parents are heavily burdened by college fees etc, so they invariably put pressure on their children to attain, as well as putting pressure on Colleges to deliver a monetary based educational outcome.
Eg : How many lawyers does America really need ?
Even in areas not directly related to income as in science subjects, more & more "research" has become dependent on outside commercial funding eg..using Pharmecutical & Petro-Chemical funds etc to support ongoing research programs.
Unfortunately this type of " funded research " invariably focusses on an immediate to medium range return for the companies in the form of patents, commercially viable products etc.
There is nothing intrinsically wrong with except that it means that "pure research " into more esoteric fields
starve, unless they conform to the economic / profit model of learning.
( in a kind of strange parallel, we see Movie making companies taking less & less risks with investors money..therefore they tend to go for "safe ' bets that their accountants know will return a profit )
This has its parallel in medical research where more " popular diseases " get much more funding than researchers in rarer diseases. Ie those diseases that are deemed to make more money....
Nothing to do with the greater good or greater learning.
No
we should not 'privatize' them either (there are plenty of private Us out there.
I think that your take is not clear: are you saying that higher education needs to develope character in a more profound sense (ie: history, critical thinking, contextualizing, literature towards subtlety of thought)?
o are you saying that an education needs to target what it imparts towards a more direct fit within a 'position' in the work world?
these are two extrememly different perspectives, probably I simply did not read it closely enough . . .
anyway, a major function of higher education is expanding the undestanding of context: situating an individual within the history of civilizations and traditions of thought. In other words of 'Civilizing' a person to become a citizen of the world.
What we have now instead is selling a product, like a plug-in for a graphics program . . . a product that is merely supposed to help the student get all the shiny new things that they want . . .
Even intelligent students at the hoity-toity private U that I currently teach at approach their learning in this fashion: very rarely do they attain to the level of self-reflection and critical insight that might put into question the whole hamster-wheel of shiny new toys and 'job skills' and 'grades-upgrades' that they think they paid for . . . and I teach in a dept that is supposed to be all about self reflection
anyway, its something structural with the manner that people are now raised, its cultural, probably having to do with the eclipse of humanistic values by commodity valuation and the ever present onslought of commercial media . . .
I am emphatically not for some kind of 'privatization' however . . . public Us and colleges provide an important cultural function that would not be taken up if this level of education were left to profit mongers with spread sheets as standards.
I think many problems came from here. Parents pay taxes or give funds in order that institutions give education to their childrens. Some parents use to think that because they paid, education is not anymore their job.
In the past, when a son said to their parents that he was punish in school he received an another punition, now parents are angry against the teacher who punish their kids.
If the parents do not respect teachers, can you expect the kids to respect more the teachers ?
Originally posted by Powerdoc
Aquafire, speaking of education, do you think that the institutions may replace deficient's parents ?
I think many problems came from here. Parents pay taxes or give funds in order that institutions give education to their childrens. Some parents use to think that because they paid, education is not anymore their job.
In the past, when a son said to their parents that he was punish in school he received an another punition, now parents are angry against the teacher who punish their kids.
If the parents do not respect teachers, can you expect the kids to respect more the teachers ?
A lot of education occurs outside of school enviroments.
It is informal in its setting, like in the family home.
"Children & adults learn best by modelling behaviours.
So if they have bad parents then they often "model" those bad behaviours..."( Bandura et al ).
Parents play a far more important role than they often realise...blaming teachers or showing disrespect to teachers adds to the problem.
Nor is it helped by a lot of social-engineering based political correctness & feminisation.
In most western countries, the feminisation of teaching has meant that upwards of 70 % of teachers are women. As good as these teachers are, they cannot act as male role models for children.
Increasingly, evidence is showing that both boys & girls need to have a male role model in their lives.
So when you consider how many children come from one parent backgrounds ( ussually a mother ), it is little wonder there are more social problems.
In keeping with this observation, the increasing disrespect being shown to teachers is related to "power ". Most parents wouldn't question a male teacher's authority, but they do question women teachers & find it easier to take a shot at them..
Sadly..it is mothers who are most likely to be abusive towards female teachers....
Originally posted by aquafire
A lot of education occurs outside of school enviroments.
This point is true. The rest of our post is sexist at it's worst.
Originally posted by aquafire
This whole 'increasingly evident' problem of women role models is not just a little suspect... its very suspect:
You say that there is an increase in the 'feminization' of teaching and role models that are leading to social problems: do you mean the social problems like WW1, WW2, the Civil War, Slavery, The Houlocaust, Vietnam, Koreo, The Crimean War, The 30 Years war, the Pograms, the Crusades, Colonialism, the Mongol Hordes, The Communist Purges, Fuedalist oppresion, Talibanic Oppression, etc etc etc . . . the vast history of misery that has pretty much all happened with men in charge? do you mean those problems?
seems to me men were the models in all of those cases
or are you talking about some phantom that has wafted out of your barely vieled castration fear?
Originally posted by pfflam
This whole 'increasingly evident' problem of women role models is not just a little suspect... its very suspect:
You say that there is an increase in the 'feminization' of teaching and role models that are leading to social problems: do you mean the social problems like WW1, WW2, the Civil War, Slavery, The Houlocaust, Vietnam, Koreo, The Crimean War, The 30 Years war, the Pograms, the Crusades, Colonialism, the Mongol Hordes, The Communist Purges, Fuedalist oppresion, Talibanic Oppression, etc etc etc . . . the vast history of misery that has pretty much all happened with men in charge? do you mean those problems?
seems to me men were the models in all of those cases
or are you talking about some phantom that has wafted out of your barely vieled castration fear?
Along with Abraham, Budhha, Jesus Christ, Mahommet, Moses, Abraham Lincoln, Lenin, Marx, Darwin, Einstein, Ghandi, Newton, Disreali, Zeno, Thoreau, Wiitgenstein, Joyce, etc etc etc etc....
Yawn....
If you bothered to fully read before ranting..you might have appreciated that I was talking about political feminisation ( not all feminists), in regards to the effective ellimination of positive male role for both Girls & for Boys...
& You might perhaps enlighten me on how women teachers are meant to provide a positive male role for their charges?
Or are you going to fall back on the old
nature vs Nurture argument ?
But them again you might be a misandrist for all I know..
Camille Paglia...
Originally posted by bunge
This point is true. The rest of our post is sexist at it's worst.
It's sexist to say children need men and women in their lives?
Nick
Originally posted by trumptman
It's sexist to say children need men and women in their lives?
Nick
Ooh ooh your right..How naughty of me..
I meant to say that they need "gender differed" groupings with multiple life experiences based of flexible socio-economic & culturallly sensitive backgrounds.. 8) tut tut...
Originally posted by aquafire
Ooh ooh your right..How naughty of me..
I meant to say that they need "gender differed" groupings with multiple life experiences based of flexible socio-economic & culturallly sensitive backgrounds.. 8) tut tut...
I wasn't accusing you of anything?!? I was asking Bunge a question.
Nick
Originally posted by aquafire
A lot of education occurs outside of school enviroments.
It is informal in its setting, like in the family home.
"Children & adults learn best by modelling behaviours.
So if they have bad parents then they often "model" those bad behaviours..."( Bandura et al ).
Parents play a far more important role than they often realise...blaming teachers or showing disrespect to teachers adds to the problem.
Nor is it helped by a lot of social-engineering based political correctness & feminisation.
In most western countries, the feminisation of teaching has meant that upwards of 70 % of teachers are women. As good as these teachers are, they cannot act as male role models for children.
Increasingly, evidence is showing that both boys & girls need to have a male role model in their lives.
So when you consider how many children come from one parent backgrounds ( ussually a mother ), it is little wonder there are more social problems.
In keeping with this observation, the increasing disrespect being shown to teachers is related to "power ". Most parents wouldn't question a male teacher's authority, but they do question women teachers & find it easier to take a shot at them..
Sadly..it is mothers who are most likely to be abusive towards female teachers....
I'll agree that boths sexes are needed for education, and not only males or females, but unlike you i fear, that even with a balanced ration in the gender of teachers, the problem will not vanish suddenly.
Teachers have problems to show authoritary, and when they show some, the society condemn them. I am not for physical violence, but teachers should be respected more.
For questionning more the authority of a female teacher rather than a male one, i think you are wrong. If you want respect produce Swartzy teachers clones.
Males have a bigger voice than females, but it will be simplistic to resume the problems of education by a simple sexe gender ratio.
For your last point, with abusive women, it think that it come simply from the fact, that most of the time it's the women in the family who is in charge of the education.
what I am responding to is the feeling that without them in schools schools and students will necessarily be screwed up.
and, besides that I like the notion of having the ratio of genders balanced in schools
however, you phrased it such that it sounded like you were blaming current social and political problems on a lack of male teachers in schools, whereas there have always been major social and political problems and most or all of them have been under the leadership of men and in environments where men had positions as role models
and by the way Wittgenstein was fired from his post as a grade school teacher because he was violent with his students . . . and back then and in Austria that musta meant really too much, he was wild tempered and generally considered a complete whacko . . . he also really liked the young-men . . . if that matters to you as far as 'role models' go.
and Joyce, he ws a heavy drinker, always in debt dragging his family all over Europe with hardly any money . . . but he was a good man and father though . . .
Marx: neglected his wife and kids, left them in squalor while he spent all his time in the London library
Einstein . . . I guess he was pretty smart from what I hear and a nice guy too . . . but he was a slob and did poorly in school as he was dyslexic (he's the poster boy for us dyslexics)
Lenin?! I wouldn't recommend him: that travesty of Communism owes its sordid history to him as much as it does to Stalin
All the others . . well . . . let me refer to my first post
By the way, I really like Camille Paglia I like her and she would be a great teacher and role model . . .
Originally posted by pfflam
[B
By the way, I really like Camille Paglia I like her and she would be a great teacher and role model . . . [/B]
Yippee.......
Anyone who likes Camille Paglia has my Vote.
I deeply respect her opinions even if I don't fully agree with everything she says....But no one else has rattled the WASP - feminists like she has: Pfflam please don't read this as All Feministas )
She adores Art & literature, real learning, real disciplines...& wants to involve more cultures than just the one WASPish one that dominates most Universities
Go Camille.....8)