On 27 Oct, 23:09, archytas <[email protected]> wrote:
> That's more or less what I feel on this Lon. I found school really
> easy - though hated most of it off the sports field. I'm broadly sick
> of how we reward people and what this encourages. I think most of us
> could grok most of what is important if education and propaganda
> didn't mystify it for the sake of grading us. I'm not out to make us
> all equal in the sense of the same or uniform but I am wondering about
> why we allow such massive differences. I suspect this IQ (EQ or Ei)
> stuff is a typical part of the excuses given to us about a tiny number
> hogging resources. I have to say I think most people like stuff I
> can't stand - soap operas, pop music, romantic and detective fiction
> and upper-class bullshit alternatives - and have destroyed a lot I did
> like (sport before commercialisation) and this makes me suspect they
> are not very intelligent or reasonable - but I suspect this is more
> cultural than genetic. If we are generally so dumb that burning the
> planet and Hollywood are what we really want well fair enough, let's
> just wait for the war. Otherwise, we might want to work out we have
> schools all wrong.
>
Of course we have schools all wrong. We encourage children to
compete against one another--to score better on tests than their
peers, to excel at sports over their their peers and teach them that
the only way THEY will do well is if they can continue to beat
everyone else 'out there' in the real world. So, when they grow up,
they beat each other, kill each other, etc. Is there anything really
surprising in that process? I don't think so. The 'fault' is that,
competition is great if your population is generally small, but
humanity isn't anymore. We need to cooperate and coordinate our
efforts. BUT, in order to do that, we must find out what each
individual can do that no one ELSE can. THAT is what makes us unique,
and schools don't really encourage students (at about age 7-8, when
they should start thinking about such things) to discover themselves.
Rather, we teach them rote materials which may or may not be
particularly helpful to them AS individuals.
The reason we are all different is because we all have something
unique to offer to the world, hence our existence. Education needs to
encourage, at the earliest point possible, students to discover their
strengths and weaknesses and, THEN, develop their individual strengths
(it would be handy to work on strengthening their weaknesses, but that
isn't as important as developing their strengths!!). At the same
time, they need to be involved in group tests rather than individual
'exams' that utilise the strengths of EACH of the students and
demonstrate to them empirically that their uniqueness is what makes
them valuable--and that has NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with
competition. At this point in human development, competition and
anything that encourages us towards that, will do nothing but keep us
as cavemen and/or reduce us back TO them.
In other words, it's time for an education paradigm shift that
realises that our differences ARE our strengths and that we need to
work together in order to get the best for all of us. Sound
reasonable?
> On 27 Oct, 21:19, Lonlaz <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>
>
> > I like to seek out the hard questions, and the one you bring to light
> > is that it may be true that some groups of people on average are not
> > intelligent enough in the 'right' way to succeed in modern society.
> > It is a hard thing to contemplate for those who have been
> > indoctronated from birth that each one of us has unlimited potential.
>
> > Of course, this depends entirely on your definition of success.
> > Should a 'burger-flipper' be less honored than a physicist. A good
> > burger had much more impact on my day than many of the scientific
> > discovories of the day. In the US, day care workers are near to the
> > bottom of the barrel, status-wise. These are people who we trust to
> > take care of our children. It may not need the same kind of mind that
> > can write computer software, but it's a pretty damned important job.- Hide
> > quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
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