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Just Mostly Useless

Entry 2323, on 2024-02-05 at 22:12:14 (Rating 3, Comments)

There's a pretty convincing argument (at least to me, but also to many others) that our education system is broken. How? Well, here are a few possible ways: truancy is extremely high, exam results are not as good as they were, education seems to be warped by extreme leftist narratives, and students are learning material which is of limited practical use.

Now, I am going to add a few provisos on what I have said. First, the current government seems to have made an effort to get back to (useful?) basics. Second, school should not be all about practical skills, because appreciation of the arts, and more abstract subjects are also important. Third, there might be reasons (such as the effects of COVID) for the high truancy rate, which the educators could not reasonably be blamed for.

But despite this, I think the education system is terrible. It is more about teaching students what to think rather than how to think, like it is claimed happened in the past. Despite me adding that word "claimed" here, I do think there is some truth in that. Education has been dominated by leftist ideology for many years, but is seems to be getting worse in recent years.

A meme I recently saw on Facebook suggested some alternative, more practical, skills which might be taught at school. They were: taxes, coding, cooking, insurance, basic home repair, self defense, survival skills, social etiquette, personal finance, public speaking, car maintenance, stress management, and maintenance management.

So these seem to fall into some groups, namely basic living skills (cooking, etc), financial skills (like tax and insurance), survival skills, social skills (etiquette, etc), and one vocational skill: coding (that is, programming).

I think this is a bit of a mixture of good and bad, depending on exactly what is intended for each of these. For example, by "survival skills" do they mean knowing how to survive in a zombie apocalypse, or similar? Is coding really necessary, when the vast majority of people really only need to know how to operate a computer? How much car maintenance is still possible, given the complexity of modern cars?

But while the details might be arguable, I still think the basic idea has some merit.

I know that when entering the workforce I had little idea about tax, finance, insurance, and similar matters, and I have noticed my son and daughter don't know any more or less than me, so it is getting no better.

Social skills are a difficult one, because they are very much a personal, cultural thing. What one person thinks is an essential element of etiquette another might find irrelevant and outdated. However there might be room for some extra guidance there.

On further reflection, the coding one might have some merit, because programming really does require logical, systematic, and careful thought. If those skills could be carried over into other areas of life, whether they were used for actual programming or not might not be that important.

But moving on from these suggestions I would like to offer an alternative model. Teach the basics, because everyone should know how to read and write at a useful level, how to do some basic maths, and know a bit about topics like history, geography, music, art, etc. But at the same time, teach basic living skills like how taxation and insurance work, how to check the oil and water in your car, and how to cook at a basic level.

But after that, teach what really matters: how to think. This would include how to be skeptical, how to evaluate political and scientific claims, and how to debate your views as well as evaluating those of other people.

There are far too many subjects - which admittedly I only know about through anecdotes, so I claim no definite knowledge in this are (there's a skepticism skill being utilised) - where a particular answer is required, but many others might be able to be justified through a sufficiently good argument. The last thing we need is people spouting the conventional talking points instead of thinking for themselves.

My education was revolutionised by one lecturer. It was in second or third year psychology at university (many years ago, so it's hard to remember exactly) who taught us paranormal psychology. He had a very skeptical approach and showed that alleged special abilities, like ESP and psychokinesis, were tricks, or had conventional explanations. I saw that things were rarely what they seem on the surface. That was probably the most valuable thing I have ever learned!

And everything I use in my job today, I taught myself. Of course, that did rely on the basics of reading, writing, and maths I got from school, so I'm not saying education is completely useless; just mostly useless!

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