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Our current educational system is a joke. OK, this is not true of all schools; but there is no question that, as a whole, US students are falling behind the rest of the industrialized world. No Child Left Behind has resulted in dumbed-down courses so that anybody can pass \u2013 but this stymies kids of higher intelligence. When I was in high school and studying Latin, I felt hobbled when I was the only one who understood the ablative absolute; only after a lot of pleading and schmoozing was I allowed to advance on my own and then finally into the next grade up.<\/p>\n
As if that isn\u2019t bad enough, religious extremists are sneaking phony science into classrooms, hiding behind the very First Amendment they in fact despise. Creationism has tiptoed into schools wearing the sheep\u2019s clothing of \u201cintelligent design.\u201d Children are taught that millennia of careful scientific observation and investigation are unreliable. Rejecting science for mythology hampers our understanding of how the world really works, and warps the minds of children so they are ill prepared to become real scientists, or even understand real science. This is one reason why the anti-vaxx and Flat Earth movements have attracted so many followers, and why anti-mask bugnuts are so numerous during the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n
Critical thinking is a vital skill that most Americans lack. We should teach it in schools, we should inculcate careful thinking in children from a young age. People capable of critical thinking are far less likely to fall for con games, or be swayed by the silvery tongue of some demagogue. They gather as many facts as they can, they investigate candidates before casting votes, and they request the sources of alleged facts and figures. Neither organized religion nor the other Powers That Be can allow that!<\/p>\n
We send our kids to college to cram their crania with knowledge, but a lot of it amounts to memorizing facts and figures rather than actually processing them. In addition, courses of study do not always prepare kids for the real world. Time and again you hear of A students who end up scrubbing floors while C students earn six-figure incomes. Finally, hundreds of thousands of people who have college degrees are unemployed or under-employed. Many institutions of higher education, and many courses of study, are simply useless.<\/p>\n
Everywhere you look, you see advertising for colleges and universities that promises better jobs and better income as a result. People sign up and attend class, either on-line or in person, with visions of more gainful employment attending their degrees or certificates. However, they cannot always live up to their promises. Thousands of people find themselves deeply in hock and unable to pay back their student loans.<\/p>\n
What gets the most attention at many, and perhaps most, universities? The athletes. The local football or basketball team is the pride of the town, not its outstanding students. One map of the U.S. shows that the highest paid public employee in 40 states is an athletic coach. Academics suffer in the name of sports. The typical American university would probably rather turn out one winner of the Heisman trophy than a half dozen Nobel laureates. The legendary athletes and coaches are remembered; while the scientists, artists, statespeople, and others who have truly contributed to society often get short shrift.<\/p>\n
Here is an idea that I put together from more than one source: Bring back the apprentice\/journeyman system. You wanna be a computer programmer? Apprentice to a highly skilled programmer who will show you the ropes. After proving you know said ropes, you move up to Journeyman level. (Journeyperson? Can\u2019t leave out the ladies these days!) This could work for a wide variety of professions, from auto mechanics to lawyers to engineers to even doctors. Instead of sitting in a sterile classroom, see what goes on in the real world. My best computer education has taken place on the fly, when I used computers in a business setting as opposed to an academic one.<\/p>\n
I have heard of schools that do without grades, either the report card or the level kind. Only about 20% of a student\u2019s education takes place in a structured classroom, while the rest is entirely freestyle. These schools have the advantage that children don\u2019t feel they must be grade-grubbers who kick a*s on tests. Their education is on their own, at their own rate, so they can discover where their real talents lie. Some people are even trying \u201cun-schools\u201d where the kids set the agenda: a visit to a museum one day, a walk through a park the next. Maybe that is the real solution to our education troubles, to make education far less structured and more adaptable to the individual needs and abilities of each student. As Plutarch stated, a mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Our current educational system is a joke. OK, this is not true of all schools; but there is no question that, as a whole, US students are falling behind the rest of the industrialized world. No Child Left Behind has resulted in dumbed-down courses so that anybody can pass \u2013 but this stymies kids of […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45671"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45671\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}