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miriam_eIf you have two water tanks before you, one full and the other empty, you don't pump water into the full one. If you have a well lit room and a dimly lit one, you don't add lights to the well lit one and leave the dim one alone.
So why do we concentrate on educating the rich, who can afford books, travel, and private tutors, and leave the poor substantially without it? Why is it acceptable for poor kids to miss out on university, or to drop out of high school? It doesn't make sense to provide public assistance to the rich for their education -- it amounts to the poor paying for the rich to be educated. It is not a case of getting the education you can afford, it is simply a matter of effective use of limited resources. We should all have access to as much knowledge and skills as possible -- rich, poor, all of us. To limit a child's potential because of the lack of wealth of their parents is unjust, counterproductive, and a recipe for disaster.
Also, school exams are designed to exclude people rather than provide any real assessment of potential. As far as I can see, exams perform very little realistic function at all. All of us are different. We all intuitively know this. So why do we insist on forcing young minds into uniform little boxes? We need to pour more money and resources into schools, as they are where our future lies. All children are good at something. It is just how human brains are. If we focussed more on finding that in each child and promoting it in more personally oriented schooling then how much more successful would our society become? Some children learn really well through their eyes, but find it extremely difficult to retain information through their ears. Some children have long attention spans and can connect things together linearly in time, while others operate more in a gestalt mode, apprehending complex patterns at once. Some have terrific mechanical understanding, and others can intuit others' emotional states. When we talk of a child failing, we should be talking of our educational system failing to find that kid's potential.
How do we find each child's special ability? We, each of us, have an inbuilt guide to these capabilities. It is called fun. It is an emotion whose main purpose is to get us to learn. It directs us to the things that our brains find most stimulating -- that is, it finds the best way to grow and learn. (We need to be careful though, because it can be easily perverted by fast, bright, noisy things, and by peer pressure.) I remember one teacher telling our class that we weren't here to have fun, we were here to learn. At the time I was struck by what a stupid statement that was, and I've never forgotten it. I was a very bad learner at school because I get lost in thought all the time and I don't learn auditorily. I was a consistent A-grade student only because my obsessive reading brought me into contact with all our school work long before it ever came up in class. I was lucky that my parents could afford lots of books -- I come from a moderately rich background. I had many poorer friends who were not so lucky. School stunted them -- confined, bored, and taught that learning was not fun. How twisted is that?! School taught them not to learn!
We need a more flexible schooling system that cultivates all children to maximise their capability, so that our society can use its fruit.
What is the most precious thing in the world? Money? Gold? Oil? No.
Human minds.
How stupid and wasteful are we if we throw away most of the human minds we produce?
So why do we concentrate on educating the rich, who can afford books, travel, and private tutors, and leave the poor substantially without it? Why is it acceptable for poor kids to miss out on university, or to drop out of high school? It doesn't make sense to provide public assistance to the rich for their education -- it amounts to the poor paying for the rich to be educated. It is not a case of getting the education you can afford, it is simply a matter of effective use of limited resources. We should all have access to as much knowledge and skills as possible -- rich, poor, all of us. To limit a child's potential because of the lack of wealth of their parents is unjust, counterproductive, and a recipe for disaster.
Also, school exams are designed to exclude people rather than provide any real assessment of potential. As far as I can see, exams perform very little realistic function at all. All of us are different. We all intuitively know this. So why do we insist on forcing young minds into uniform little boxes? We need to pour more money and resources into schools, as they are where our future lies. All children are good at something. It is just how human brains are. If we focussed more on finding that in each child and promoting it in more personally oriented schooling then how much more successful would our society become? Some children learn really well through their eyes, but find it extremely difficult to retain information through their ears. Some children have long attention spans and can connect things together linearly in time, while others operate more in a gestalt mode, apprehending complex patterns at once. Some have terrific mechanical understanding, and others can intuit others' emotional states. When we talk of a child failing, we should be talking of our educational system failing to find that kid's potential.
How do we find each child's special ability? We, each of us, have an inbuilt guide to these capabilities. It is called fun. It is an emotion whose main purpose is to get us to learn. It directs us to the things that our brains find most stimulating -- that is, it finds the best way to grow and learn. (We need to be careful though, because it can be easily perverted by fast, bright, noisy things, and by peer pressure.) I remember one teacher telling our class that we weren't here to have fun, we were here to learn. At the time I was struck by what a stupid statement that was, and I've never forgotten it. I was a very bad learner at school because I get lost in thought all the time and I don't learn auditorily. I was a consistent A-grade student only because my obsessive reading brought me into contact with all our school work long before it ever came up in class. I was lucky that my parents could afford lots of books -- I come from a moderately rich background. I had many poorer friends who were not so lucky. School stunted them -- confined, bored, and taught that learning was not fun. How twisted is that?! School taught them not to learn!
We need a more flexible schooling system that cultivates all children to maximise their capability, so that our society can use its fruit.
What is the most precious thing in the world? Money? Gold? Oil? No.
Human minds.
How stupid and wasteful are we if we throw away most of the human minds we produce?
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no subject
Date: 2007-05-14 01:07 am (UTC)As I mentioned above, "We should all have access to as much knowledge and skills as possible -- rich, poor, all of us." To give the rich a boost at the expense of the poor is a terrible waste of resources. In Australia, and I'll bet in most countries, wealthy, private schools receive federal assistance funded by taxes largely from the poor.
The fictional character, Lazarus Long was really the mouthpiece of writer Robert Heinlein. Heinlein felt, in typical classist fashion, that the rich were a special people who deserved their special privileges more than the poor. It has been shown time and time again that human potential isn't restricted to any particular social class. What makes the big difference is how we foster or stunt that potential.