on education

There is no reason that a student should graduate high school as an illiterate. Multiple steps are taken to insure that this doesn't happen. There are laws that require children to attend some form of school for twelve of their first eighteen years. Parents can be -and are- jailed for their children being truant. Teachers and schools insist on test after test to “prove” that sufficient numbers of details or bits of knowledge have been retained by students. Schools push, prod, and occasionally pull students toward their graduation ceremonies. Somehow, after all of this, students still graduate without the ability to to read more than the simplest of children's books. Consider the following scenario:

The parents leave for work , reminding their progeny to make the bus on time and remember their lunches. The eldest smirks at this, having every intention of buying a hamburger instead. They catch the bus on time and arrive at school, where a teacher sits, waiting to to give them enough information to pass the test at the end of the week. The students take their seats and look at the clock. The teacher has a new sweater they notice, making him look a bit like a tomatoe the girl thinks, snickering. A bell rings and the students ready their pencils. The teacher begins speaking, occasionally pointing at the examples on the whiteboard. The bell rings and the students who had been watching the clock leave hurriedly, having packed away their materials minutes ago. The teacher watches as they file out, mentally preparing to repeat the lesson as the next class arrives.

This scene plays itself out hour after hour, day after day, week after week, month after month, and year after year. For those raised in the public school system, the story above will be cause for fond reminiscence, feelings of unease, or perhaps merely a sense of eerie familiarity. Many will want to cry out, “No, my school was much better than that,” but was it? Every person's mind, when that person read a story like this, assigns an age or grade that she associates the scene with, an association born of experiencing a similar circumstance. This story gives no time, date, or age, and yet it is a memory in most Americans' minds, regardless of what age they attended public school. This is the timeless and ageless dance of children and teachers to the tune of a bell, and it crosses generational divides: the symphonic cacophony of speaking and listening,whispering and shouting, running shoes and squeaking desks as the clock ticks counterpoint to the muted concert of the workplace. And workplace it is, this factory of memorisation, this assembly line of knowledge dispersal.

Montaigne says in “Of the Education of Children”, that education ”does not receive its proper use in mean and lowborn hands”. He means that education is wasted on those who will not or cannot use it. In his day the ”lowborn” very rarely traveled far from their village or town. They generally worked the land, a task that does not require the study of calculus or African history. A similar correlation can be made when analyzing modern society. The majority of Americans have little talent and no interest in many of the possible studies or pursuits, so why teach them? These people will rarely (if ever) find an application of these studies in their lives; they will be busy pursuing what they enjoy and have talents for. What purpose does giving a “well rounded education” to every person serve, considering that most of the so-called education will be dismissed or forgotten? The idea of educating everyone is possibly admirable but logistically impossible. There is no method for or assurance that everyone can or will learn everything that they are taught, when they are taught. Many of those who attend school can only be called students sarcastically; they have absolutely no interest in learning. Some students will nearly be savants in one particular subject and its corresponding spheres of knowledge while being mediocre students at best in other disciplines. This is the problem with this “one size fits all” educational system that students must grind their way through. This system cries out to be changed.

Since mankind began teaching there has been debate on methods of instruction and, curiously, the debate has barely changed in all of this time. Authors and educators like Montaigne, Emerson, Montessori, Dewey, and Freire all write of the problems and inadequacies of various educational models and theories. All of them have pointed out similar detriments to mass education. I think Emerson stated the general problem best in the essay On Education: “...the moment [education] is organised, difficulties begin”. There are precious few examples of successful public or mass educational systems because of the disparate abilities and interests of students. When children are jammed together according to age groupings, classes get larger and less attention is given to the successful or motivated students. As Emerson noted, “You have to work for large classes instead of individuals; you must lower your flag and reef your sails to wait for the dull sailors; you grow departmental, routinary, military almost with your discipline and [school] police”. This suppression of those who succeed or learn well can only diminish the overall health of society. It creates robots in the guise of mankind, automatons made for factory and labour work.

Changing the entire system is a daunting concept to consider, a task that -quite possibly- will never be undertaken. The concepts that should be applied, however, are relatively simple; age must not be a factor in progression as a student. An effective curriculum needs to be designed by those who have had a successful career in the field , a student's choices and inclinations must be a primary factor in her education, and trade schools are essential as an alternative to intellectual instruction. For change to be effective in its best fashion, it is essential that we create a new structure for schools in general. Currently, students follow the pattern in the story that I presented with one teacher per day until sometime around their fifth or sixth grade, when they graduate to five and six teachers per day. This is an obsolete and ineffective system that is crushing many students' willpower and desire for learning. Instead, a form of the Montessori Method needs to be applied.

Before describing this new system any further, there should first be some understanding of the basic principles and ideas. Education is based on previous knowledge and experience. One could easily be shown the “order of operation” for basic mathematics; however, if one is not sure the meaning of the numbers in parentheses, the order itself is bereft of meaning. This is true for adults as well as children; when a person is lacking the experience to create a logical connection to existing knowledge, that person needs to receive assistance from someone with similar experience or background. The commonality between the two will more easily bridge the gap of understanding that the student encountered. As John Dewey says in “Thinking in Education,” the teacher needs to have “...taken a sympathetic attitude toward the activities of the learner by entering into a common or conjoint experience...”. Some may counter that society would stagnate if people only taught those similar to them, and then taught only subjects that were held in common. This is indeed true, while also being ludicrous. The very idea would be a poor attempt to insinuate that people are limited and predictable. If twins growing up with nearly every circumstance and experience being similar have varied interests, how much more variation does a society have? The key is to allow disparate interests to have validity in education. Every person's sphere of interest will overlap someone else's sphere of interest. When one considers just how many interests and corresponding overlaps each person will have, one sees that, just as twins will not be perfectly identical, so are people in a society not so very different.

For education to be effective there must be a recognition that there are two forms of learning or knowledge: acquired knowledge and inspired knowledge. Acquired knowledge is simply that which others may teach a person. Reading, writing, history, and math are acquired: one person who possesses the information passes it on -teaches it- to a person without the information or knowledge. Inspired knowledge is the mansion built upon the sturdy and solid foundation of basic, acquired knowledge. It is easy to assume that most learning can belong to the acquired knowledge concept, and indeed, the current system tries to force all knowledge to be acquired; yet an examination of the notion shows that acquired knowledge will weather away, or be covered completely by detritus, without a proper structure built of inspired knowledge above it.

One of the key problems with the current school system is that students are not taught to learn important information but rather to pass tests. This has the effect of students retaining or using very little from their ”schooling”; these students are swamped in dry dates and pointless facts. That Napoleon conquered Europe is a fact relatively well known, and yet, the majority of a graduating a high school class will either not know or will have forgotten that Napoleon sold America almost a quarter of our country. This simple bit of information is often given with the only emphasis being on the date. Whether a student has lived in, or has family in, the former Louisiana purchase, or whether Napoleon's hope that it would help America rival Britain's navy, or how this applies to international politics and the radical difference of what America would be like are ignored. Without a personal connection the acquired knowledge will never lead to inspired investigation, thought, or knowledge.

In order to remove ”teaching to the test” from schools, we must remove the concept of graduating from one grade to another. To assume that because all of the students in a class are the same age, they are equal, is just as ridiculous as claiming that all people with blonde hair are stupid or that all teachers are incapable of functioning in the “real world.” Age has nearly no function in the process of a child's education other then inhibiting it. A far better process would be allowing students to progress according to their nature and ability.

For there to be effective progressions, a change in the overall concept of most schools is needed. Will having those “students” that care only for socialization or sports, be able to intimidate and harass these that enjoy mathematics help either person? Many people might argue that this motivates the “nerds” to achieve or can help focus the athletes anger or stress away from the more”important” aspects of his life. This position is utterly without merit. For every one nerd inspired there are ten who quit or carry scars on their souls. For every athlete that may gain notoriety or success after high school there are ten that allowed their ability to harm others to become their only skill. Separate the overall groups of interest that attract students and allow joint or shared enjoyment to be the impetus for learning. Let those that have talent and interest in science pursue science, and those that are physically dominating to carry the schools physical honours on the various playing fields. A complete separation or segregation wouldn't be needed, simply create study courses that allow a future construction contractor to learn the necessary mathematics and physical skills while not being forced to attend the art classes that a future architect may find useful. They both attend the math class together yet other classes would be shared with people whose spheres of talent intersect their own. The architect enjoys music and aspires to design concert halls. In her orchestra class she meets a simple flutist with few skills or interests that do not involve her flute, and yet they both find that they have another class with a boy that is on a general medical track. This method allows plenty of socialisation with fellow students following a variety of career studies, yet each class will contain students with an interest in the material of that class.

I am in no way saying that there should be a caste system or that some people should be denied education. School should be a place to learn and explore information and ideas, not a place of confinement and forced attention. Children should not have knowledge withheld from them, just as children should not have their self worth tied to how well they remember subjectively irrelevant nonsense or how well they pass tests. In the current system, if a student does well they are praised or rewarded with advancement, and if they do poorly they are punished by being held back or forced to attend extra schools. Montessori equates the physical and mental domination of students by many schools using this method with slavery, saying that “to apply such a form of education would be to draw the new generation back to a lower level, not to lead them into their true heritage of progress”. This is what schools need to concentrate on, the leading forward of students. For too long the educational system has done the reverse.

When young, children are great receptacles of information; they absorb vast amounts of ideas, knowledge, and information with ease. This is when it is best to teach them the basic acquired knowledge that will provide a base for future inspired knowledge. Emerson recognized the need for both ”genius and drill” and admonished us that ”when one has learned the use of tools, it is easy to work at a new craft “. This concept is a simple idea and yet many people don't connect the idea to the fundamentals of teaching. This period of life is the best time to begin exploring and, when possible blurring, the distinction between acquired and inspired knowledge. It can often be read or heard that teachers are trying to find new ways to”inspire” students to desire more eduction, and yet they missed the time period in which this would have been most easily accomplished.

Instead of forcing young children to sit at a desk reciting fractions, let them make cake mix or calculate fallen leaves. Let them cut paper to demonstrate portions or have races to expose relative speed equations. This is the first of Dewey's stages, he calls it experience,”...presenting what is new( and hence uncertain or problematic) and yet sufficiently connected with existing habits to call out an effective response”. Every able child holds impromptu races and by making the connection to mathematics the teacher will allow the child to view math as something that is present in daily life; this can then lead to the child gaining an interest in math and allowing acquired knowledge to flower into inspired knowledge. The current problem is described well by Dewey: “the fallacy consists in supposing that we can begin with ready-made subject matter... irrespective of some direct personal experience of a situation”. Every subject can be dealt with in the same manner. If history is the topic then let them set up a battlefield to see it unfold, or plot Columbus' course on a map the size of the rooms floor that they themselves drew. If English is the topic then let them have paraphrasing contests or have them produce a weekly. If science happens to be the subject then the teacher has it easiest of all. What is often considered the most boring or disconnected subject is in fact, the easiest to produce excitement. What causes dye to bond to cloth? Why do fires leave only charcoal behind? What once existed where we now stand? All of these can be relevant to the student when shown rather than lectured.

Of the changes that I propose, the next is by far the easiest and most effective to implement. Trade schools once held a prominent place in American education, taking many young people that left school early or preferred manual jobs and giving them skills that would translate into jobs. Mechanics, construction workers, and others were able to have productive employment and happy lives without the pressures and rigmarole that public education is so well known for. If at any point, a trade school graduate felt that more schooling should be undertaken, they would not only have the ability to pay for college, but the life experience to assist them in being competent students. Many young people don't understand the concept of trade schools, or feel that they would be a punitive assignment for “bad” students but this couldn't be farther from the truth. Trade schools would allow construction workers or mechanics to begin their apprenticeships or labour careers with many of the skills and much of the knowledge that would take years learning “on the job”.

The second transformation involves actual, real change: ending the current system of mandatory education in favour of a much briefer period of general education. A child's interests and talents begin showing themselves at age ten; this then is the perfect time to allow the student to follow these talents. Having enough acquired knowledge to support advancement, the child can choose an exploratory period wherein a variety of disciplines are studied, or if there is a strong inclination the student can enter a particular study path. Another of my proposed differences that I briefly touched on earlier can be found here, in the curriculum of study paths. Rather than this corrupt and asinine system of bureaucrats determining whether something is appropriate for study by running a cost/benefits analysis on potential lawsuits, the subjects of study and depth needed for those studies need to be developed by professionals in the particular fields. Therefore a doctor of thirty years will have input into the general discussions among a group of doctors as to what skills she uses in her practice. There is no need for a doctor to know Keats. The time that a focused young lady spends studying English literature or Chinese philosophy could be far better applied to her intended career. This will allow students to graduate much quicker and yet have a more firm base of necessary and inspired knowledge to put to use. There is no reason to prevent a student from taking the extra time that a nonessential course would require, a doctor who can discuss Keats is might find themselves in demand for her conversational “bedside manner”.

These concepts, if applied, will radically change public education for the better. They will allow the gifted or driven students to succeed, while allowing the slower students time to progress on a path that will be fulfilling to them.