Deschooling Society - Education needs fixing

I have just done reading Ivan Illich's book "deschooling society", it's about how schools aren't about education, They are about engineering the working lower classes to follow procedure, routine and instructions and to confuse process with substance; as in, we confuse the efficiency of the police with safety, We mistake a hospital's ability to meet targets with health care and, fundamentally, we mistake exam grades with a students ability to understand the subject.

I'm not suggesting it is a conspiricy, I believe it is a product of the way we live these days.

You can get the gist of the book from the first paragraph.

So how would you fix the failing education system?

 

Good thread. Schools have the right goal but they teach the wrong things. I have forgot half the things i learned in school and i don't think I'll really have any use for them.

Then again you can't really ask kids what career they want to pursue and provide specialized education because some of us change our minds about our careers a hundred times. The book "Rich dad Poor dad" bemoans the fact that children aren't being made financially literate at schools and says that traditional schooling isn't the way to riches and that the mindset of complete your studies and get a job needs to be changed.

Here might be some things that may be considered for teaching at schools.

1] Ethics and morals and basic human values.
2] How to boost and maintain self-confidence and self-esteem.
3] Dealing with other people.
4] Learning about the self and basic human psychology and physiology. Like how to know what you want, what your goals are, the basics of how brains and minds work and so on.
5] How to use common gadgets and technology.

Basically the things that prove useful to every man throughout [or through most of his] life no matter what he does. Leave out the things that a man will have no use for unless he is going into a specialized career.

 

I would bring in finnish people and let them do it. Seriously. They have a superb education system.

The problem with most education systems is that they rely on grades to grade your knowledge. And you need to have good grades to advance, so ,in a way, what they're actually teaching you is to get big grades. I don't know how the education system works in your countries but here in Romania another crappy part about it is that it relies waaaaaay too much on memorising stuff that you will forget in a couple of months anyway. Another problem is the overcrowded curriculum with crap like religion for example (yes, religion is taught in all public schools as an "optional" class.) or highly advanced math, chemistry, physics, etc

 

In the west, the issue more than not, is central planning when it comes to education.

Students should have access to variety in education, variety only the free market can provide.

LewRockwell.com regularly features articles by educators, and Lew himself has written numerous pieces on education. This is one of the best IMO.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/public-schools-abolished.html

Excerpt

After all, is it really necessary that each child, learn all of the same things, from the same book, at the same time? That doesn't seem to be very creative or reflective of cultural, geographical, economic, artistic etc differences between students.

 

The answer is a big No. Each child should learn what he likes or will have use for.

 

Does every child (I mean, 6 years old) know what s/he will have use for?

 

No.But [most] adults do know what [most] children will have need of later on. So we will teach the child the basic things that most adults will [really] have use for.

 

That's the problem. Many adults (I'm not really sure most, are you?) do know it, but many others don't really. I agree many parents are educated and conscious enough to know what's good for their children and will be able to pick the right program/course offer but many others aren't, so they need to trust a school program that will cover the essentials.
I'm not so sure if they should trust a school program that is market driven though.

 

I trust parents to make decisions for their own children, before these guys.









Personally, I resent the notion that the government should raise children instead of parents.

Not to sound confrontational, but whether they should or shouldn't, should probably be their choice to make, not yours. When we tell others what they can and cannot choose or do, we are obstructing their free choice.

Market driven = customer centric. The market wants to make a profit, so it has an incentive to beat competitors at price and quality. The state has no such incentive, which is why socialism always creates waste and stagnation, and the free market consistently creates innovation and meets demand.