We have a dysfunctional educational system because people still believe that the educational system is there to "educate" students and that the students are there to "be educated." If we sent babies to school to learn to talk and walk, we'd all still be crawling and squawking.
The first thing educational researchers learned is that students actively learn, they don't get taught. So how did the system respond to this? By rebranding students as "learners." Yep, same old cookie cutter but a new name for the product. What people need for learning is time freed from busyness and motivation that comes from social valuing of culture. Leisure is the basis of culture, Josef Pieper wrote some 60 odd years ago. He was a conservative Catholic and I take it as a measure of the universality of his thought that I agree 100%. Don't think for a second that new methods in education are not explored. They are a dime a dozen. It is just that the old testing and grading model drives the funding and administration of schools -- no matter what. Why is that? Because it functions as a metaphor for double entry book-keeping. Students... er, excuse me... learners are equated with a business enterprise whose success can be measured by a surplus of income (test scores, grades, course credits... CREDITS!) over expenses (age, teacher salaries, building construction and maintenance, textbook purchases, vandalism, etc.) On Tue, Oct 4, 2011 at 10:48 PM, Keith Hudson <[email protected]>wrote: > (HP) Labor needs wages to survive. Why can't he get wages? This is the > basic question that must be answered if we are to advance economic > understanding. > > (KH) The principal reason these days why labour can't get wages in the > advanced countries is that he is not educated sufficiently to keep up with > advancing technologies. Overall, we have a dysfunctional education system > due to the state takeover of mass education from the 1870s and, > subsequently, immense resistance to exploring new methods and more relevant > curricula for modern times. > -- Sandwichman
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