I'm questioning my education...

sponger

My sentiments echo that of climberInOz. You can lead a horse to water... I don't think our education system should be teaching anything beyond what it already is teaching. Everyone has a basic obligation to learn math, language, history, some of the arts, and maybe a couple of sports activities. Hopefully the history lessons will be unbiased.

Teaching people how to think borders on thought police, IMO. There is no one way to think. The most we can hope is that parents are doing their best to instill in their children values, tolerance, and a deep-seated disdain for any religion of any kind. The last thing I would want is for a school teacher to be telling my kid how to think.

angelica

sponger wrote:

My sentiments echo that of climberInOz. You can lead a horse to water... I don't think our education system should be teaching anything beyond what it already is teaching. Everyone has a basic obligation to learn math, language, history, some of the arts, and maybe a couple of sports activities. Hopefully the history lessons will be unbiased.

Teaching people how to think borders on thought police, IMO. There is no one way to think. The most we can hope is that parents are doing their best to instill in their children values, tolerance, and a deep-seated disdain for any religion of any kind. The last thing I would want is for a school teacher to be telling my kid how to think.

First of all, our kids are being taught "how" to think in schools. I'm personally taking issue with that they are being taught how to accept completely what they are told, as though it's the god-spoken truth, and that they are taught to focus on memorisation rather than understanding. From birth, our brains quadruple in size until adulthood. Our natural genetic blueprints become molded and sculped in the brain in real life. Our children are taught 'how' to think in a manner that is about listening to and accepting what they are told. This is conducive to them growing up and being accepting of what they are given by authority figures. They are not as much taught how to discern information for themselves. Not only that, but if they are 'outside the box' thinkers, which my two kids (ages 24 and 17) are, they can find themselves being outcasted rather than directed with their own unique style. Granted, there has been much improvement here in Canada since I was a child and yet, I've had to very, very closely advocate for my kids within the system. I did not have the personal resources to do so effectively when my daughter was in school. And now with my son, it's been a challenge keeping him interested and connected given what is out there. Also there has been a lot of fallout that both of my kids have had to accept for thinking open-mindedly, and with a sense of questioning established thinking. At this point in time, doing so is just not widely accepted. In this system, we are not encouraging/molding leadership abilities. We are not teaching our children to be all they can be--we are teaching them to find a place within the existing system, as dictated by others.

That aside, the other problem I see is that as always, little children are taught to go against their nature and sit still at desks for hours and hours each day. They are taught predominantly to strengthen and expand the left brain, rather than learn to think in an integrated left/right brain fashion. It's just very common that we call for 'reading, writing and arithemetic', prioritising left-brain thought, at the expense of balanced, integrated understanding. Of course, this is not as much reflection of the school system as a reflection of where we are as humans at this time. Things are definitely slowly but surely progressing in a more integrated learning direction, at least where I live. And yet it's a painstakingly slow process. At the same time, given the downside of the system, I've met many, many competent, engaged, and wonderful teachers--as the norm. And I've run across exceptional ones, and other resource teachers, too. We're just at a point where what we call for and accept reflects where we are at this time and the vast majority of people, in terms of personality type, are not visionary, and prefer to follow authority, or social norms, rather than being inner-directed and open to unfolding to the dreams planted in their breast. It's a viscious cycle--with our general lack of vision, we continue the cycles by teaching the same to our most precious resource--our kids.