"What is the purpose of school?"
In America, I want to say that the purpose of school is to better prepare you with information so that you can do well in your future. But, that's probably not it since some teachers teach you where Greenland is, a place where you probably will never go. And a wonderful thing called the internet is invented and you could search everything you will need their so ...
I then think that the purpose of school is to prepare you for tests that is going to seal your future by placing you in colleges and choosing your major. This applies heavily in China since every educational books they sell their is to "improve" your grades on tests. Even drawing books I found there had this written on it (translated), "guaranteed to get you into the art college you choose." But this is expected since education in Asia is heavily emphasized. However, in America, they teach you things that you will never use in your life and will never find on a test so that kinds of make me want to believe that....
the purpose of school is to
- fill more job spaces
- kids to go somewhere when parents are at work
- kill creativity (http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html)
- drag the smart, and "help" the needy
Sometimes, I wonder if school serve any useful purpose at all.
Of course, there are these lazy people that are incapable of learning by themselves and require constant supervision and help, but that is different since I assume that most kids are able.
So, what is the purpose of school?
8 comments:
We will prove that school is not about learning.
We break our proof into two cases: a motivated student and an unmotivated student.
Suppose we have a motivated student. He will learn no matter what, so long as he has access to good materials. So the main purpose of school is to provide good materials. 190 days of school is not required for this.
Suppose we have an unmotivated student. He will not learn if he remains unmotivated. Worksheets are unmotivating. Contradiction! Q.E.D.
But seriously, the two things school offers that aren't available outside of school (for the most part) are credentials and teachers. What role should credentials play? How can teachers be the most helpful? These are the questions to ask.
So, it all leads back to the original question: what can teachers do?
I try a short proof myself:
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school = teachers
boring + teachers = unmotivated
boring = dull assignments
teachers - dull assignments = ???
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I think this is pretty true. In fifth grade I was required to write 1 trough 1000, 1000 numbers. If anything, that made my numbers look worse due to careless scrawling.
In the lower grades, school is not meaningful. In college, school is very meaningful. In the lower grades, you do not select what subjects you study. In college, you do. Correlation?
About the value of teachers, please do refer to the first two comments on your "Die in Style" post. I think I clearly explain my views about teacher/student interaction there.
I think college is a much more effective learning tool than lower grades because of the choice of what to study. Choosing to focus on what matters to you shaves away effort spent on something that doesn't interest you (and hence something that you won't use in life) and allows you to hone the skills you will use in your career.
This is reasonable, but you might argue that there is a certain basic set of skills everyone must have to be educated. Surely I must know what this "USA" is, even if I do not like history class! I agree, but I think that this basic fact set is a lot bigger now that it needs to be. I think that students should be given a choice between a "basics" and an "advanced" version of every class with the stipulation that every student take at least one "advanced" class: the "basics" level being directed to students uninterested in the topic, and the "advanced" level involving an in depth development of the subject designed to challenge the most motivated students. If a student can make nearly all his classes "advanced", then the "advanced" classes aren't challenging enough. Of course, this would require redistributing resources based on how many students choose "advanced" and how many choose "basic", but this would result in much better learning.
Yes, I get what you are saying: Everybody should know the basics, then the advanced are for more motivated and prepared students.
But what are you trying to explicitly say? that elementary school is useless? that things too easy are not worth learning? that a student "must" be intelligent at some level to be accepted into the next generation?
The crux of my idea is this. First, we need to reevaluate what set of facts everyone needs to know to be educated. After having stripped the curriculum of trivia, we design classes targeted toward people who are not interested and people who are interested. All I am saying is that such increased personalization of classes would benefit the student very much.
I do not think that elementary school is useless, but I do think that it could be a lot more useful. I do not think that easy things should not be learned; rather, they should be learned quickly and painlessly. And finally, yes, I do think that there is some set of facts that everyone should know. You need to know what the USA is, you need to know basic arithmetic, you need to know how to write, etc. That's not too bad, is it?
It's okay. I believe that elementary school is useless, except that it brings some basic social structure out of you. If we didn't have elementary school, we would have more social outcasts and pariahs. Elementary school also brings the ethics and responsibility up. So to wrap it up in one word, elementary school is not a necessity, and is not the best planned, and is definitely not an important factor for education, but it is an important factor for motivation and fundamental life skills.
I think our society is morphing into such a way that being not the brightest kid is a good thing. It's not cool, per se to be the smartest kid.
A ideal idea is that parents should be able to teach the kids the "basic" information and come to a more difficult, curriculum based school with the kids ready.
The reason there is peer pressure not to achieve is that there is a prevalent feeling of antagonism toward school, especially in elementary school. And this feeling exists because many students disagree with the purpose of school. So getting good grades implies that you strive to get good grades, which means that you strive to conform to the system, that you are working and agreeing with the bad guys. The students that get bad grades are sacrificing their future to take a stand against the system. Do you agree with this interpretation?
And, yes, I agree that if education is working, most parents should be competent teachers. But remember that new developments happen all the time, and new things are often discovered that affect our understanding of even those things that everyone should know. But of course, people in general should learn about these groundbreaking developments as well.
Finally, I completely agree about your initial comments about social development in school. I think that the social part of school is the part from which I have derived the most benefit. If I was home schooled, I would be a very different person, and not necessarily for the better. So in these discussions about school, I concur that it's important to remember that we are suggesting ways to make the education side of school better, keeping in mind that the social side of school is as (probably more) important.
I agree. Well school itself is not designed to be extremely likable, and that may be a problem to some students. Oh well, the bad jobs must be attended by "somebody."
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