What is Education for?

[Spearthrower]

[quote="THWOTH";p="2798200"]What do students think about having to study the Monarchy as part of what sounds like a kind of compulsory state-authorised cultural indoctrination program? I seem to recall there being some student protests in the last couple of years over democratic reform? [/quote]

Like most things, I expect you'd get different answers from different people. Having come through years of indoctrination into the monarchical cult, many are fully-fledged members.

The protests are mostly concerned with lèse-majesté charges being used by the government to imprison political dissidents.

At least a couple of young students - i.e. around 14 - have been charged and even kept in detention for months on lèse-majesté charges - fucking insane.


[quote="THWOTH";p="2798200"]In terms of educational content around the broader issue though, the inclusive participation of younger people might be a simple matter of asking them what they would like to learn more about. Fire example, UK 15/16 year-olds have opportunities to select subjects to study at a higher level - with maths and English being compulsory if they stay on - but they have no say in what they are able to select from.[/quote]


All the talk of engagement in classes is one thing, and it's something as an educator I have a lot of interest in. In fact, it's something don't get me started and I considered setting up a thread to discuss last year.

However, the idea that students can just pick topics freely to learn about seems really difficult to parse, and it's the kind of implied outcome that's been at the heart of my skepticism about the ideas you're presenting.

Who's going to teach these classes? Do existing teachers need to prepare all these different ad hoc courses? I suffer from imposter syndrome even teaching classes that are firmly within my areas of expertise, and even classes I've given for years still take me many hours of preparation to update each year based on the new knowledge or minor curriculum changes. How would schools even begin to manage staff for this? Back during my high school years, my school had to drop the German language curriculum because the German teacher quit and they couldn't find another to fill the position. How are schools to source teachers when they aren't even able to define in advance what courses they're offering on the curriculum?

How will these classes actually work? A couple of students want to learn A, another 3 want to learn B, this group wants something else - how do you manage this in any practical fashion with a limited number of teachers, a limited number of classrooms, a limited amount of all the resources necessary to offer an education? It just seems unchained from the grim realities of already underfunded education.

[jamest]

In the distant past any education involved the passing-on of any acquired wisdom and skills required to survive and indeed flourish in one's particular environment. They didn't have schools back then, but they still taught their kids what they knew. Within that informal context, school/education has existed for muuuuuch longer than many people might imagine and indeed extends to far more species than humanity.

Formal education was an inevitability, given the complexity of acquired knowledge and roles/skills required for a community to survive, especially given that communities themselves were growing (into nations!). In the first instance, schools were a requirement to train intelligent people into becoming good religious and/or political leaders and [then] engineers and generals and whatever other expertise the society needed.

As societies become more complex and more knowledgeable people are required to sustain the status quo, so more educational systems are constructed for more people to attend.

Fast-forward to the 19th century and the Industrial Revolution and I am of the opinion that 'the powers that be', which were becoming much more secular by that time, finally decided that it was in the best interest of a flourishing society that a basic education was finally offered to all.

So, any overview of the educational system over the eons surely shows that the sole aim of ANY educational system is to ensure that the 'State' survives and flourishes, whether that be a mere family or a vast nation/country.

I could go into full-on rant mode into why this modus operandi has failed humanity from day-one, but this isn't the philosophy forum and that wasn't the question which was asked. However, for the question that was asked, my answer is:

To sustain the bollocks.

[THWOTH]

[quote="jamest";p="2798781"]In the distant past ...

To sustain the bollocks.[/quote]
Though I'd basically agree with your conclusion, I'm not sure your pocket history of formal education is particularly relevant here, or particularly accurate. The question is 'What is Education for?' not 'What has Education been for?', so I'm more interested in fresh ideas about transformation and reform of the Educational space and the role it might play in creating and re-creating societies that can justly sustain themselves as they develop.

[jamest]

[quote="THWOTH";p="2798809"][quote="jamest";p="2798781"]In the distant past ...

To sustain the bollocks.[/quote]
Though I'd basically agree with your conclusion, I'm not sure your pocket history of formal education is particularly relevant here, or particularly accurate. The question is 'What is Education for?' not 'What has Education been for?
[/quote]
Without justification your response here seems to imply that the present purpose of education is vastly different to that of the past. I mean, if the purpose of education in its present form is not to promote and sustain current ideas of what/how society should be, then it has no purpose. And if it has no purpose, then why should anyone become educated?

', so I'm more interested in fresh ideas about transformation and reform of the Educational space and the role it might play in creating and re-creating societies that can justly sustain themselves as they develop.

You seem to be contradicting yourself, here, as again you imply that the purpose of education is to promote ideas about what society should be like and to promote that vision en masse.

1. Who gets to decide what society should be like?
2. Who gets to decide that they are right?
3. Who gets to decide that we should all be educated thus?

Neither of us are particularly interested in the 'who' question here, but however you pitch it, it's all bollocks from 1 to 3.

That is, to repeat, education is to sustain the bollocks.

[THWOTH]

I'd invite you to read the posts to get a broader view than could be encapsulated in the thread title alone.

[jamest]

[quote="THWOTH";p="2798855"]I'd invite you to read the posts to get a broader view than could be encapsulated in the thread title alone.[/quote]
Are you trying to tell me that you're looking for shallow responses here?

If so, no problem. I'll get my coat.

[Spearthrower]

[quote="jamest";p="2798856"][quote="THWOTH";p="2798855"]I'd invite you to read the posts to get a broader view than could be encapsulated in the thread title alone.[/quote]

Are you trying to tell me that you're looking for shallow responses here?

If so, no problem. I'll get my coat.[/quote]


broad =/= shallow

[Spearthrower]

I could go into full-on rant mode into why this modus operandi has failed humanity from day-one,...

Would invite speculation as to how humanity is still here if it's such an exaggerated failure.

I would say that it has failed us in some ways, but not in all ways, else there'd be no one around to educate.

Never put a knife in a toaster, as even cavemen learned.

[THWOTH]

[quote="THWOTH";p="2798855"]I'd invite you to read the posts to get a broader view than could be encapsulated in the thread title alone.

Are you trying to tell me that you're looking for shallow responses here?[/quote]
Absolutely not. I'm saying that the thread title is only intended to open the door onto what I'm talking about.

To address an aspect of it in your eloquent terms: if the purpose of Education is to 'sustain the bollocks' then what are the kinds of bollocks that can|will sustain society, to what ends, and how does|could Education positively contribute to that project?

I'd love to get your thoughts on (and challenges to) some of my ideas, but as I said, it's probably worth you catching up with what's been said thus far, because the thread title is just that - a title.

[THWOTH]

[quote="Spearthrower";p="2798208"]...

[quote="THWOTH";p="2798200"]In terms of educational content around the broader issue though, the inclusive participation of younger people might be a simple matter of asking them what they would like to learn more about. Fire example, UK 15/16 year-olds have opportunities to select subjects to study at a higher level - with maths and English being compulsory if they stay on - but they have no say in what they are able to select from.[/quote]

All the talk of engagement in classes is one thing, and it's something as an educator I have a lot of interest in. In fact, it's something don't get me started and I considered setting up a thread to discuss last year.

However, the idea that students can just pick topics freely to learn about seems really difficult to parse, and it's the kind of implied outcome that's been at the heart of my skepticism about the ideas you're presenting.

Who's going to teach these classes? Do existing teachers need to prepare all these different ad hoc courses? I suffer from imposter syndrome even teaching classes that are firmly within my areas of expertise, and even classes I've given for years still take me many hours of preparation to update each year based on the new knowledge or minor curriculum changes. How would schools even begin to manage staff for this? Back during my high school years, my school had to drop the German language curriculum because the German teacher quit and they couldn't find another to fill the position. How are schools to source teachers when they aren't even able to define in advance what courses they're offering on the curriculum?

How will these classes actually work? A couple of students want to learn A, another 3 want to learn B, this group wants something else - how do you manage this in any practical fashion with a limited number of teachers, a limited number of classrooms, a limited amount of all the resources necessary to offer an education? It just seems unchained from the grim realities of already underfunded education.[/quote]

This is the problem of reform isn't it(?) Even when things aren't working well it's difficult to imagine how things can be changed, and what those changes might look like. I thought this was one interesting approach..

Stanford Social Innovations Review
Kania & Kramer, 2011

Collective Impact

The scale and complexity of the US public education system has thwarted attempted reforms for decades. [...] The heroic efforts of countless teachers, administrators, and nonprofits, together with billions of dollars in charitable contributions, may have led to important improvements in individual schools and classrooms, yet system-wide progress has seemed virtually unobtainable.

Against these daunting odds, a remarkable exception seems to be emerging in Cincinnati. Strive, a nonprofit subsidiary of KnowledgeWorks, has brought together local leaders to tackle the student achievement crisis and improve education throughout greater Cincinnati and northern Kentucky. In the four years since the group was launched, Strive partners have improved student success in dozens of key areas across three large public school districts. Despite the recession and budget cuts, 34 of the 53 success indicators that Strive tracks have shown positive trends, including high school graduation rates, fourth-grade reading and math scores, and the number of preschool children prepared for kindergarten.

Why has Strive made progress when so many other efforts have failed? It is because a core group of community leaders decided to abandon their individual agendas in favor of a collective approach to improving student achievement. More than 300 leaders of local organizations agreed to participate, including the heads of influential private and corporate foundations, city government officials, school district representatives, the presidents of eight universities and community colleges, and the executive directors of hundreds of education-related nonprofit and advocacy groups.

These leaders realized that fixing one point on the educational continuum—such as better after-school programs—wouldn’t make much difference unless all parts of the continuum improved at the same time. No single organization, however innovative or powerful, could accomplish this alone. Instead, their ambitious mission became to coordinate improvements at every stage of a young person’s life, from “cradle to career.” Strive didn’t try to create a new educational program or attempt to convince donors to spend more money. Instead, through a carefully structured process, Strive focused the entire educational community on a single set of goals, measured in the same way. Participating organizations are grouped into 15 different Student Success Networks (SSNs) by type of activity, such as early childhood education or tutoring. Each SSN has been meeting with coaches and facilitators for two hours every two weeks for the past three years, developing shared performance indicators, discussing their progress, and most important, learning from each other and aligning their efforts to support each other...

https://ssir.org/articles/entry/collective_impact

Someone once said that reforming an Education system is like trying to change a flat tyre while continuing to drive down the motorway at 70mph. I'm aware that the principles I've been touting present somewhat of a creative challenge to everyone working in Education - not just philosophically, but practically too.

[quote="Spearthrower";p="2798208"]... The idea that students can just pick topics freely to learn about seems really difficult to parse, and it's the kind of implied outcome that's been at the heart of my skepticism about the ideas you're presenting.[/quote]

Again, you assume that I'm advocating giving young learners unencumbered, free and open choices about their education ("just pick topics freely"), an assumption which confirms your previous concerns that this will simply lead to some young people choosing to take part in education only when they feel like it - or even to not take part at all. I've gone to some lengths to assure you that I'm not interested in 'handing over the keys' of Education to young people but in elevating their status from that of the passive recipients of education to that of actively engaged participants and collaborators.

Nonetheless, let's agree, for the purposes of argument, that everyone would like all pupils and students to attain good language and numeracy skills, because that means society will have an abundance of those those useful things under its collective belt. There's similar arguments to be made about scientific understanding, critical thinking skills, group learning and social participation, because these are the kinds of things that society relies on to take functional decisions about itself.

I would personally argue that it's important for pupils and students to also attain a high level of (for want of a better term) creative literacy too, because creativity not only feeds into what we traditionally consider to be overtly reflective and expressive personal endeavours like the arts--things that reflect our responses and relationships to the world around us, and though self-expression bolster and benefit our personal and general well-being--but because creativity is the basis of innovation, including progressive social innovation, even when such creativity is underpinned by more objective and/or empirical features such as in the areas of science, engineering and technology etc. In my view, the social dichotomy we often perceive between facts and feelings, between objective and subjective, between the arts and the sciences for example, is entirely misplaced. For all their rigour and logic people like Newton, Darwin, or Einstein were deeply creative individuals. Well, that's my case for creativity, but moving on...

So how to we bolt these 'goods' onto curricula that are already chock-a-block with subjects and objectives wedged into the system by policy-makers over the course of decades? Well, the answer is found in the framing of the question: we probably can't bolt them on to the system as it stands at present, so we have to be creative about re-creating the system.

Yes, we have a limited number of teachers, classrooms, and the resources needed to support younger learners, but those things are not the writ of god - they're the result of social, political and economic priorities and choices. And yet, even if we take those limitations as fixed-givens, the teachers, classrooms and resources we do have could be used in more creative ways towards more creative and pro-social ends. What I'm really talking here then is not about re-focusing priorities or tinkering with the things Education is already doing - reviewing administrative practices, prioritising resources allocation, optimising curriculum etc, all of which should be part of the normal reflective practice of the system anyway - but a wholesale revision of our societies' approaches to Education and a resetting the entire project away teaching knowledge and towards enhancing learning, that is: to de-emphasise current educational objectives that challenge and monitor pupils and students ability to memorise and regurgitate facts, and to emphasise the personal, interpersonal, pro-social, and yes technical/practical skills which facilitate and sustain learning practices across a whole lifetime - and through which btw knowledge is actually expanded and understanding is actually integrated in context.

OK, so that addresses the grounds a bit, but it doesn't answer your question, does it: How will these classes actually work?

Well, my first impulse is to say that you don't have to wait for others to tell you how it can work or what you have to do. How do you think it could be made to work even within the constraints you've highlighted around teacher numbers and resources etc, and in what ways could the voices of young learners feed into that? I feel that you still haven't grasped my nettle, that you're still of the mindset that adults are the ones who are naturally equipped to decide how the participation of young learners should be integrated into educational practice - where I'm of the view that there is no good (practical|moral) reason that the young learner themselves cannot make a significant and meaningful contribution to re-imagining the Education landscape if given the opportunity to participate. As I said, these ideas are a creative challenge to those working in Education and, unfortunately, I'm still waffling so...

I've already addressed the question, but to be blunt about it: How will these classes actually work? By changing our mindsets and priorities and focusing our efforts on creating equitable, flexible approaches to the structure of Education, to resourcing, to teaching practice and curricula, and to our traditional notions of educational achievement so they rooted in a truly pupil- and student-inclusive ethos. As stated, I cannot see it working within contexts grounded in the traditional top-down approaches to education we're probably familiar with from our own schooling.

[THWOTH]

As adults in society, do we have obligations to the young?

Parents clearly have obligations to their children, but more broadly does adult society have collective obligations to society's children and young people?

[sean_w]

Can we get a practical example to work with?

[THWOTH]

Sure. Does society, as managed by adults, have an obligation to ensure that no child goes hungry?

[The_Metatron]

[quote="THWOTH";p="2805251"]Sure. Does society, as managed by adults, have an obligation to ensure that no child goes hungry?[/quote]
I have difficulty imagining when a child should go hungry. I also think there are a lot of people who have no business propagating.

Bringing my thoughts back to the value of education, I enjoyed a two hour episode of Nova on PBS yesterday about a chemist Percy L. Julian. I didn’t know his name. His accomplishments are legend, especially since he was a black man growing up in the first part of the 20th century. Legend, I tell you. He valued education immensely, to astonishing results.