What should the purpose of education be?
I’m not sure of this myself. I waver between different ideas. Is it to make good citizens of our children, is it to help them cope in a competitive world, is to make them fit in and maintain traditions, is it to make them fully rounded out human beings, healthy psychologically, physically and spiritually?
I’m interested to hear if views about this differ much.
I’m interested to hear if views about this differ much.
Comments (74)
You could say that early education was about opening doors to knowledge and modern education is about exploring the rooms these doors open to.
There are at least two different perspectives on this question. From the position of society at large, education serves to give everyone a somewhat solid base for their economic and social interaction. Making them "good citizens" in a way, but the "good" here only means "capable of participating in a complex society".
From an individual perspective, I'd say the goal is to provide as much knowledge (declarative and procedural) as the individual is disposed to learn in order to provide them with the ability to make informed choices as much as possible.
All of the above, but who, what, when, where, how, and why.
Parents have the first and most critical responsibility: psychological, physical and spiritual health. When parents fuck that up, their children are screwed--not invariably, but almost always. Stupid, fucked up people have difficulty delivering healthy children to kindergarten. (There are unfortunate social reasons why some parents are stupid and fucked up; nevertheless, it is a major handicap to the child to have stupid fucked up parents.)
Citizenship is, I supposed, either learned by 5th/6th grade, or you end up with garbage. Some schools do good work in citizenship development. Some schools should be dynamited. (of course, it isn't corrupted bricks and criminal concrete. Of course, it is corrupted, criminally incompetent administrators and teachers who cause the problem. Plus, you can't make marble New England Citizens out of the dirt who populate a degraded slum.
Parents and schools can launch a child into the competitive world, but once out, it is up to the individual to adapt, survive, and succeed without screwing everybody else. Good luck. The facts of life are hard.
Becoming a well-rounded, four-square, and fully human being is a lifelong task, It's not over until it's over.
Whether fitting in and maintaining traditions is a good idea, or not, depends on the traditions. Maybe one should not fit in.
True, true, true. That’s what I like about this forum.
I’m referring to education in schools. We’re defining what form that education should take, and first we have to define the objectives of this education. What is it for?
To me there are two needs that need to be balanced between which I waver: the practical demands of society: maths, english, etc, and then the whole critical thinking thing.
Yes, no matter what you introduce to them in school they go back to that environment. So should school/education be a way of escaping that? Is it more than teachers can do? Some kids go to school because they can get away from that environment for awhile, but they don’t necessarily engage.
Actually, I’m not sure by what you mean by ‘early education’, but early education, those years 5,6,7,9,10 would be about opening doors, and the following years about exploring those rooms.
* Acquiring general knowledge/familiarity with culture, in a very broad, varied regard
* Acquiring critical thinking skills
* Acquiring practical life skills
* Acquiring more specific skills useful for making a living
Should we hope for, or expect, every pupil to achieve all of this, or is it realistic to expect only a percentage to achieve it? If so what’s essential for the others? What do we accept them failing at?
I'm trying to give a historical perspective on the issue. Medieval education is about logic, arithmetic, geometry and music. The three first subjects mentioned are simply means of acquiring knowledge. Granted they're great subjects in themselves but their role as tools to study the natural world can't be over-emphasized.
Modern education consists of science and humanities in a very broad sense and these aren't tools/means of finding new knowledge. They are knowledge discovered through the application of logic, arithmetic and geometry. Of course we could say we are taught to take a scientific approach to all matters but we all know humanities can't be studied scientifically.
This is what I mean. Medieval education was aboit opening doors to knowledge by teaching students logic, arithmetic and geometry. Modern education is about exploring biology, physics, chemistry, arts, history - the rooms these doors lead to.
It seems that medieval education knew the method but lacked knowledge and modern education has knowledge but now lacks method.
I think so. And that's different than them all achieving it in the same exact way.
So much critical development takes place during the first several years of life -- before most children get to school -- that the child can arrive at first grade with significant deficiencies. If optimum language development hasn't happened by age 6, the child has a good medium-term chance of not succeeding in school.
Cultural factors and poverty play a critical role. There are significant differences among groups in how much language children are exposed to, and the rule is, the more the better, the more positive the better. Children who are short-changed by hearing significantly less positive and complex verbal discourse from parents and other care givers just miss the boat on language development.
It is very difficult to remediate missed development in children as they grow older. It might not be impossible, but it would be a very intensive and long project.
Peers play a critical role in how well children do in school. IF most children in a given community like school, like reading, like learning, peer support will help. If the prevailing peer culture dismisses school as an unpleasant burden to be avoided, then peer support will go to avoiding learning.
So, that's one thing.
Another thing is cultural turmoil which leaves everyone uncertain about the nature and future of work, the future of our society (in terms of what anyone may need to know in the future), and the uncertainty of the natural environment and the economy.
We really don't know what exactly lays ahead, but it looks like children (and adults) could be running into unforeseen "cultural discontinuities" to use a vague term to cover over some very unpleasant possibilities in the years ahead that render obsolete and/or irrelevant whatever people have learned.
Just for example, to pick up on a trend that isn't getting enough attention... IF the declines in insect populations continues, the economic sustainability of agriculture will begin sinking (because insects pollinate). What kind of knowledge does one need to know if agriculture starts failing? Beats me. Maybe hand pollination of food crops will be a critical skill in the future.
It seems to me that education today is, or should be, preparing children to successfully cope with the near future, enough to at least cope with the beginning of this future before they then begin to get the hang of it. It seems to me that so far only successful business has been able to do this.
Which brings me to private schools. These parents know exactly what the purpose of education is; it’s to give their kids a head start over the others, to maintain their ideas of success, which is material, and to help those kids go on to build better life’s along those lines, and then stay in the top strata of society.
It’s worth remembering that this forum is international. Down here in Australia and New Zealand I don’t think the Prussian system ever played much of a part in education and it certainly doesn’t now.
https://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-the-prussian-education-system.htm#didyouknowout
Re the Prussian system, the article says, "At the same time, it also taught things like obedience, duty to country, and general ethics." That sure wasn't the case when I went to public school in the U.S. (I graduated high school in 1980)
So I feel we’re back at the start; what should the curriculum be and who should determine it?
The most reasoned argument for a curriculum approach I have come across is that offered by Stephen Pinker in his book "The Blank Slate". He suggests that given our brains are essentially those of hunter gatherers, but with runaway high cognitive ability as a sort of interloper bolted on, and the environment of a complex modern culture we have not evolved to deal with, then the most important things to teach are how to use our rationality to understand ourselves and society. This is something our brains find naturally difficult - as opposed to interpersonal social interactions say - and something that only effortful training can achieve. He suggests that an understanding of evolutionary psychology, scientific method and a feel for statistics, for example should have first call on the curriculum - apart from the major interlopers literacy and numeracy. Seems sound to me.
So the purpose of education is to create rational human beings. Because it does not come naturally, or because they do not live in a rational society?
The hope would be to produce happier, smarter individuals and a "better" society - where "better" includes more rational.
To clarify - thiough we have innate rational ability through cognitive process, we need to be trained how to apply it to our own situations and society because being rational does not come easy to us.
The main purpose of education these days should be to prepare students to fulfil their potential in a future we can only begin to imagine. If we focus on the competency or knowledge of a specific device, system, set of traditions, axioms or theories as if they were constant, then chances are we will fail in this fundamental task. It is essentially pointless to prepare our children for the world of knowledge in which we currently operate.
These days, educators are beginning to realise that students have greater and faster access to informational knowledge than ever before. The problem is that most of it is misinterpreted, heavily biased or just plain rubbish masquerading as fact. And a decent proportion of what we can currently accept may very well become irrelevant, outdated, disputed or discredited within their lifetime, if not already.
So a good deal of education should be less focused on content, and more on developing critical thinking, data interpretation and communication skills, as well as creativity, flexibility and a lifelong love of learning. But this includes providing a grounding in a variety of written, verbal and visual languages, conventions and discourses across literature, television, art, mathematics, science and technology: their uses, concepts, terminology and diverse interpretations (and misinterpretations), as well as the disputes and rate of change they can expect.
Education as a whole should also further develop resilience, emotional intelligence and physical and mental health awareness, as well as spiritual awareness and interconnection within an ever widening sense of community. But without sufficient grounding in this area (from parents and community in the first five years), students begin school life at a serious disadvantage, and teachers are not equipped with time or resources to bridge this gap within the year and the hours they have with each child (on top of all the other requirements of teaching). This area is one of the biggest handbrakes to fulfilling each child’s unique potential, and therefore to education. It should be a whole school approach, if not a whole community approach - because few parents today have enough knowledge or experience themselves to provide this grounding - so long have we dropped the ball in this area.
What I lacked at age 18 was maturity. Four years in college, two years in the domestic Peace Corps; a couple of years of graduate school helped enormously by giving me time to grow up some. My entry into the real world was delayed by 8 years. Finally, at age 26, i landed a responsible professional job, had an apartment and was living a more or less normal life.
The next 40 years were a bumpy ride -- there were some peak periods and several long ditches.
Could school (at any time from K to 17) have taught me what I apparently had not learned very well on my own? Such as...
how to conduct a satisfactory sex life?
how to work constructively in very volatile political settings?
how to understand the nature of (my own) mental health and mental illness?
how to effectively pursue life plans...
I've been around long enough to know these are common problems. Many people have chaotic sex and family lives because they don't know the basics of relationships (among other things). Community groups often come together to address important issues, and find their efforts disrupted by intense conflict over ends and means. People experience intense anger, loneliness, fear, alienation, confusion, etc. -- even actual depression -- without having enough self-knowledge to see that their functioning is failing. Millions (billions?) of people can not maintain long term plans (like... 5 to 10 years) to achieve desirable and practical goals.
Having these good features adds up to being effective persons. Let's say that 60% to 70% of the population consists of at least effective people, including many who are highly effective. Still, that's 30% to 40% of the population that flounders about ineffectively. COULD SOMETHING HAVE BEEN DONE TO IMPROVE THEIR PERFORMANCE?
Maybe not. Skills are at least somewhat normally distributed. The largest group of people are going to be reasonably effective; smaller groups are going to be very effective, and some are going to be ineffective to very ineffective. The distribution is probably skewed in favor of "ineffective".
Can we suppose that everybody can be a big success? No, we can not. There are too many variables in intelligence, background (race, class, sex, physical health / physical handicap, wealth / poverty, etc.) birth order, # of siblings, family health or disorganization, quality of communities and schools, genetics, disinvestments, and so forth. If children reach K or 1st grade with significant deficits, it is almost a certainty that the child will either overcome them himself, or will suffer negative outcomes. Children can not be started over under better circumstances.
IF in the United States, 30% to 40% of the 56.6 million children in school (K-12) have significant life-skill deficits, those 16.8 million to 22.4 million children are too numerous to provide provide remediation--assuming we knew what effective remediation looked like.
I think a certain level of individual failure in life is inevitable--more inevitable now than in the past when the technical demands of work, play, learning, etc. contained more -- and simpler -- options.
History and Philosophy/Psychology would help a lot because as long as they are taught in a critical way and kids are not asked just to memorize stuff. Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it and the human mind is not efficient at looking for the truth.
I’ve been wondering about the period of education. Are those years in high school enough for students to be educated in all of those aspects, plus the subject matter itself? This seems more than a teacher can impart whose job it is to teach English, maths, etc. This also includes a lot of specialists. So should education be compulsory on into university. Should students be leaving school at the age they do? Should they be leaving at all if they are not educated?
I’m not sure that simply keeping students in school longer is going to make them more educated. There are already many who are there only because they have to be - they have no plans to get a job - just to sit at home and play computer games. Unfortunately, you can’t make learning compulsory, only attendance at best. No education system is going to be beneficial for every child.
Having said that, every interaction is an opportunity to learn, and everything we say and do with a child present is an opportunity to teach. This needs to be a whole community approach to education: to take responsibility for what impressionable minds are learning from their interactions with us, and to be open to lifelong learning ourselves. If we wait until first grade to start ‘teaching’ resilience or emotional intelligence, we’ve already missed a crucial period of brain development. And if it’s left up to high school teachers (even a ‘specialist’) who would have each student for an hour per day at best, then we’re already way behind.
These aspects of a child’s education are more effectively acquired through all their experiences and relationships, starting from birth. The stronger the relationship, the more they will learn - even if what they’re learning is damaging. Ensuring that a child has opportunities to develop strong relationships with quality teachers will go a long way towards enhancing their overall education in these areas.
All i experienced was an authoritarian power structure consisting of a hierarchy of line managers going all the way up to the vice-chancellor, few if any who were continuing to publish as first authors due to skills obsoletion and the fact they weren't rewarded for being academics, and none of whom seemed remotely interested in real academia that had long since surpassed their academic knowledge.
Outside of a few well-funded and prestigious universities, many universities provide education services only in the spirit of it being a 'necessary evil' delivered reluctantly in the most efficient manner possible (via copy-pasta) in order to receive student fees. Truth is whatever information retains the fee paying students who don't know any better.
If a hard Brexit precipitated a national collapse of the UK university system, I'd take a Thatcherite view that the industry shouldn't be bailed out and needed to go any way, and let the market sort it out.
If we continue to see education only in terms of ROI or turning out whatever it means to be a ‘good citizen’ or a ‘full functioning, rational member of society’, then I think the education system will continue to fall short of whatever benchmarks we set.
Education doesn’t just happen when you put a knowledgeable person in the room with an ignorant one. But in my experience, it does occur naturally when you put a passionate teacher together with a willing student. Ideally, this is where the focus of education needs to be: to create environments for passionate teachers to interact with willing students. Everything else should simply support and facilitate this interaction, and if the system environment is preventing this interaction from occurring, then frankly it isn’t fair to blame the teachers or the students.
We struggle to attract and retain passionate teachers when the environment prioritises administrative hoop-jumping and data entry over facilitating quality interaction with students. We struggle to attract and retain willing students when the environment prioritises bums on seats or fees paid over facilitating quality interaction with teachers.
Yet we publicly applaud students on their numerical ranking and natural ability - disregarding effort, enthusiasm and willingness to learn, let alone acknowledging the relationship with their teachers. And we publicly applaud teachers on...nothing, really. The public assessment of education’s value doesn’t even understand what education is.
Quality education is not purely about numbers or results - it’s about balancing the numbers in order to maximise the quality of relationships between teacher and student. Because that’s where teaching and learning happens, and where education is most effective and most valuable.
That means there’s no one-size-fits-all answer, and the best balance will be different from one year to the next, from one school to the next, one classroom or teacher to the next and even from one student to the next. Diversity of offerings and flexibility, balanced with quality controls and accountability that prioritise the web of student-teacher relationships, are the mark of a quality education system. Everything else reflects the pressure society puts on itself.
As children, we too ride the conveyor belt. The education system is part assembly line, part produce sorter.
We get tested and then directed toward various slots in the big machine. It is like the ASVAB in the military. Is this recruit suitable for nuclear engineering or is he best used as machine gun fodder? Is this kid capable of working in medicine or is he best sent to the warehouses to heft sacks of vegetables onto pallets? Other kinds of testing determine such things as willingness to follow orders.
I noticed while going to school that the main thing I was constantly being tested on was my ability and willingness to follow instructions. I was consistently found lacking. And attempts were often made to increase my compliance.
It was seemingly less about what I knew or understood or about my growth as a person than it was about how readily I could be programmed by superiors to perform tasks.
School is at least partly about normalizing and standardizing us and making us behave in a way that serves economic growth. Behavior not consistent with such ends is systematically shamed and punished. Lots of smileys and stars go to those who do as they are told.
Should this system be serving other ends?
I read a lot about these sort of experiences, the idea of normalising and standardisation and making us behave in particular ways that serve one objective, economic growth. But it seems to me that everyone who writes about this suggests, by their comments, that they have escaped the planned control and are able to express themselves quite well. Unless they regard themselves as psychological cripples, unable to act reasonably and reach out for what they want, then the education system they went through was either okay, or failed to impose its normalisation on them.
Well that’s a change from being a victim of the Capitalist system.
The education system can certainly set us on a path, but it’s not the only influence on our lives. We can turn out okay despite the system, which may be why we contribute to these discussion about changing the system...
And what was it that enabled you to do that?
I think @petrichor’s criticism of the education system is a narrow view of the effect of the system, but it only goes to show how that effect can indeed psychologically cripple, preventing people from seeing their own unlimited potential.
I don’t agree that the aim of schools is to normalise or standardise to serve economic growth. I think there is pressure on schools to turn out whatever society sees as a ‘full functioning, rational member of society’ at the time - which leads to curriculum and management systems designed to normalise and standardise results.
I agree with you that actual education is highly effective in enabling us to express ourselves and to act reasonably - but this process is frequently crippled by the curriculum and management systems that should be supporting and facilitiating that education.
I had an excellent education, but it was the passion for learning that my parents instilled in me from an early age that enabled me to unlearn and eventually move beyond harmful, limiting doctrine and submissive, ignorant habits that the school system taught alongside the curriculum. I now work within the system (in my own small way) to change the way we support and facilitate education.
To inspire and guide to knowledge. Then to assist us in converting the knowledge into wisdom.
(By knowledge I mean pertinent information for appropriate use and wisdom refers to the qualities that we imprint in ourselves as values for, and connections to, all of life (or existence/reality) and which we channel through understanding.)
If learning never ends, then education is the tool that never wears away.
I never claimed any of it is planned. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. Perhaps this is just a pattern of organization that tends to evolve simply because of selection pressures. It works and contributes to the strength, size, and competitive advantage of a society. Whatever the case, to at least some extent, that is how most education systems function for the larger society.
Quoting Brett
You seem to suggest here that the only way of becoming something other than a psychological cripple is to be educated in such a system. Not so.
I probably got more out of my public school education than I realize (and even if I did, this doesn't conflict with my essential point), but for the most part, I don't feel that I learned by way of it much of what it purported to teach. I was always an autonomous learner. Curiosity was and is probably my primary trait. I spent countless hours in libraries, in nature, and later on the Internet learning about the things that interested me. I still do that. It might well be the thing I do most! And of course, I learned much just by experiencing life and by observation. I learned a great deal in school, but most of what I learned there wasn't part of the intended curriculum. Being subjected to such an institution and exposed to that sort of social environment taught me much about the world.
I can clearly remember my first day at school. We were each given a xeroxed sheet of paper with an outline of a completely uninteresting tree, something very much like this:
We were also given boxes of crayons, with which we were instructed to color the tree. I colored the tree as I saw fit and got bored and set my paper aside to go play with some blocks I saw, which seemed more interesting. I'll never forget my shock when the teacher yelled at me for both stopping coloring before exactly filling the outline with an even, flat patch of unbroken, green color, and for coloring some outside the lines. At home, coloring was something I sometimes did for fun. And my coloring books had much more interesting outlines to fill, such things as this:
This place was different. It was menacing. "Get in line!" seemed to be its directive. Already, on day one, my self-direction, creativity, and curiosity were being punished. This event was emblematic of the rest of my public school experience.
I remember a time in high school when I wrote a paper for a class on government and was docked something like 30 percentage points for not adhering to explicit instructions about how the cover page was to be written. Among other things, my spacing wasn't exactly right. Most egregious though, apparently, was that I put the first name of my teacher before his last name rather than "Mr.". The content of the paper, which I like to think was of rather high quality, was hardly considered.
To put it in Dostoevsky's terms, I am not a piano key. I always bristled at being treated like one. And my tendency to resist authority and follow my own lights has cost me greatly in my adult life. I have never been "well-adjusted" and probably never will be. People like me can succeed (whatever that means) in this world, but it is much safer to get in line and do as one is told or as one does. But to me, such has always seemed a kind of sleep-walking.
And some of the greatest educational experiences for me have been the occasions where I broke through the lies I was told. Santa Claus comes to mind as an early experience of this sort. I think it was a good experience to be taught that he exists and then to realize for myself that it was a lie. Life is full of such lies, from beginning to end. Some, especially the values inexplicitly given by the society, or even those given by our biological instincts, are very difficult to come to see through.
Those who do as the education system tries to get them to do hardly question authority. Their understanding of the world is therefore rather impoverished. But they generally do okay. They get enough to eat. They stay warm. They get retirement benefits. They see their grandchildren grow up. But their lives are hardly their own.
Those who think education is for escaping "the system" will only succeed in replacing one system with another.
But what is continuous thorough all education is the public display of prowess. From preschool through PhD.
Quoting petrichor
Well actually that’s exactly what you claim. But you’re right it’s very planned, but not for the reasons you assume..
Of course the years at school are very planned. 1) because of time, 2) because the curriculum changes from age to age, 3) because children have different learning skills that need to be addressed, 4) because exams are required so teachers can assess whether their pedagogy is effective.
Public schooling is basically a mass education program. It may not be ideal, but it’s an attempt to give every child in the country an opportunity to learn. At the least a child will come away with a rudimentary education. Unless they resist and then it’s more than likely that child will come away with nothing. The system is not really built for all that personal time, which is why there is the standardisation. Of course it would be ideal if it was better, like the private education system, but it’s not and it was never meant to be.
The corporations are somehow held responsible for the standard of education that is developed only for their purposes, but it’s the corporations who have commented on the poor levels of literacy they observe in the people they employ, or refuse to employ, and the problems they have with it.
You probably take for granted what you learned at school, you may even be unaware of how much you did learn. You probably didn’t teach yourself to write, or spell, or recognise words, or add up numbers. You were probably unaware of how you learned to work with other individuals, how to give and take, how to share and compromise. You probably didn’t understand what you learned about people who knew so much more than you about the world and what can be learned from watching and listening.
You probably wouldn’t be half the person you are without that education.
What I was saying was (and you know this because you can read) that you obviously got a good enough education to take part in this forum and that this is because a) the education system worked for you, and b) it did not destroy your spirit through ‘normalisation’. And I emphasised this by saying you would have to be a failure if you could not do this, which you aren’t.
And this is patently untrue.
How do you think these demands make failure in life more inevitable today over the past?
Economic success is another issue. The distribution of those who succeed economically (are prosperous) and those who fail (are not prosperous on to flat broke) seems to be skewing strongly toward failure. This may not be the fault of individuals -- we may be caught in a massive defrauding scheme.
It seems I must not have explained myself clearly. With regard to the question of planning, I wasn't alluding to the sort of planning you seem to have in mind. Obviously, the education system is full of planning of the sort you describe! When I denied claiming it was planned, I was talking about whether or not there was some kind of group of people in a room somewhere that decided to create the education system for the purpose of sorting us into slots in the economic machine or some such, some "evil plan" by the elites to enslave us or something. You made several comments such as these:
Quoting Brett
Quoting Brett
You seemed to me to be perceiving posts like mine as indicating some kind of anti-capitalist conspiracy theory involving some powerful people setting all this up to control us. Maybe I misread what was behind those comments. Regardless, I was denying that I made any such suggestion. I never claimed that this was conscious on anyone's part. I was saying that regardless of whether or not this was planned, that's how it functions, at least in part. Obviously, that's not all that it is.
Quoting Brett
That's not what I am saying either. Education system as sorting machine occurs in pretty much every kind of modern society, be it capitalist, communist, socialist, or whatever. It serves the economic machine. Even communist societies have economies. I was never expressing any anti-capitalist sentiment as you seem to have suspected. I am not motivated here by some kind of politico-tribal identity thing.
A mass education system like ours prepares and sorts the mass of newly available human resources in such a way as to serve the economy. All of this is simply how it ends up working, regardless of whether any human in any power position ever intended for it to work this way. And it isn't a left/right battle here. This happens both in left and right leaning systems. Not every comment amounts to shots fired in the culture war.
This all may have nothing to do with any kind of aim. It isn't necessarily the aim of any government leaders or CEOs. And it certainly isn't the aim of the system itself. The system isn't conscious. It has no conscious aims. This sort of situation probably simply self-organizes because of various selection pressures, as I pointed out earlier.
Quoting Brett
I'll grant you that. Yes. I probably learned more than I remember learning. It's irrelevant to my point. Perhaps it even supports my point, depending on how you look at it.
Whatever the case, the education system functions as a sorting, standardizing, normalizing, and so on, machine for the economic machine, regardless of what else it might do, beneficial or not. It simply does sort people by aptitudes and other attributes. And it's probably a good thing that it does! Imagine if we had no such sorting machine and that people running nuclear reactors were selected completely at random, regardless of aptitude, never having been tested in any way! Imagine if our smartest and physically least fit were set to do the manual labor and our least intelligent and strongest were set to govern and control the missiles and so on! The economy works best if the people best suited to do the various jobs somehow are actually placed in those positions. A sorting machine of some sort is needed to make that happen. If we have no way of determining what each person new to the job world is likely to perform well at, the economy will seriously suffer.
Further, the economic machine works best, since it involves people performing various tasks, if those people have been trained to effectively follow instructions with a minimum of resistance.
Consider the military. To perform well, it needs chain-of-command to work quickly and nearly flawlessly. It is like a body. The brain needs all the nerve cells downstream to take orders without hesitation and to not think for themselves. The generals need to be able to direct the forces as they see fit in order to apply various strategies. Imagine if every soldier were to be encouraged to do at any time whatever they like! Imagine if every nerve cell in your body were to question whether or not it should follow your orders! What if I don't want to fire? It would be like having some horrible disease of the nervous system! Your body would fail to function and you'd probably die. The whole system would collapse. Selection pressures will generally remove such systems from existence, favoring those with more effective forms of organization, usually including power hierarchies.
That's just how it is. There may be no need for anyone to consciously design it this way. Selection perhaps is enough to shape things this way. Societies with no such structures would never have gotten this large in the first place and would almost certainly have been conquered or absorbed by societies featuring them.
I think most people would agree, (an assumption on my part) that something has happened in the relationship between people and their jobs. Possibly the biggest issue is their desposability and consequently their permanent insecurity. That, it seems to me, is a bigger issue than the idea of success you which I assume we mean financial success. In the past many people had low paying jobs but they felt secure that the job was theirs. Not always, I know, hence the actions of unions. So in some ways, then, I begin to wonder if things really are any more difficult now than then.
But this is all in relation to education, right?. My feeling is that people are quite possibly better educated than they’ve ever been. They certainly have more choices in what they can study going through the early years up to and including university; these are subjects not necessarily driven by job opportunities. This might differ from country to country. But on top of that they gave more opportunities to extend their education and they have the internet to serve them in their endeavours.
Technology gives and takes away, some win, some lose. That seems to me the common thread throughout history. We thought we could change that, but all we did was create another version of it. Social Welfare was one way of mitigating the inevitability if this.
Petrichor beleives that the education system is a natural extension of society in that it has no choice but to serve society. But if I look at the education system today I see a system that allows people to chose their own future. Obviously some take the easiest route to some sort of security, but people still have the choice over what they will be.
I know others will point out the circumstances of the poor or those who gave few opportunities. Those are the ones who have always been there and always will. Apart from helping them out economically what else can be done?
That's the question. First, we haven't done all that much to help them out economically. We could do better at that task.
Still, there will always be people on the bottom, however the bottom is defined. (Just like there will always be a team that has the lowest possible ranking.) One of the questions with which we need to be concerned is, "how big is the group on th bottom?" and what do the other layers look like.
It seems to me that "the poor" form too large a group to justify complacency, plus there are quite a few layers above the bottom which are not very secure, not very successful. A large share of Americans have zero resources saved for retirement; a large share have virtually no savings for emergencies (like, $500). There is a fair percentage of working class people who do have retirement resources in addition to Social Security, and many of them also have funds for emergencies. But these people aren't wealthy by any stretch. $100,000 invested in retirement funds, and $2500 in cash for emergencies is not a thick shield against adversity.
The stats on income across the board looked better when less wealth was concentrated in so few hands.
I am not sure that education provides a way up for very many people. A few years ago I took a course in literacy, and one of the things that the professor emphasized was that literacy doesn't help that much. Literacy is a minimal expectation of employers, and gaining literacy doesn't give one much leverage. Similarly, having a high school diploma (and having good high school level skills) is a minimal expectation. It's definitely better to have it than not. Having a BA degree in a liberal arts field (history, language, literature, a science) is likewise a minimum expectation for many jobs. It's worth having, but lots of other people have the same thing.
Education is an inherently good thing; it lays the foundation for a better understanding of self and the world (but the payoff isn't instant). Education often gives one actual skills one can sell on the labor market, and that too is a good thing.
But education should be broadly affordable and it was once affordable. When states were willing to subsidize education with tax money so that tuition was within the reach of most young people, there was a good economic payoff for the individual and the state both. There was also an intellectual and cultural payoff for the individual and the state.
I still think a major like English Literature is a good thing (provided it isn't larded with POMO claptrap). Ditto for History, Sociology, German, Philosophy, etc. All study helps. A 4 year degree allows for 4 more years of maturation before one starts on one's career path. Time in a residential college setting is a broadening experience.
BUT, there is no guarantee it will solve economic problems for individuals. Some uneducated people manage to do quite well economically. Some don't. Same for educated people.
So, what concerns me most is that there are too many people in the lower third, or lower half of the economic distribution who have also been short-changed culturally and intellectually. The LEAST we could have done for those many millions of people is give them a first rate secondary education. We didn't do that.
Doing poorly in school is an individual failing sometimes. You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink. But school failure is more often a collective failure (often a bottom up one). Do I have a fix for that? No. Unfortunately.
The difficulty of this is how to achieve freedom of choice within an educational structure. The balance of resources between the individual and group needs.
Perhaps it would make more sense to divide education into two parts. One being about universal tools/skills for careers (literacy, basic arithmetic, and the scientific method) and the other being more about exploring and sharing interests and passions.
Many people say that logic should be taught at an early age. Generally speaking this hasn‘t worked in the attempts they’ve tried. Likely because abstract logic is seriously counter intuitive.
This conversation has reached an interesting point, that education may not be the answer for everyone. And if it’s not then what a waste of resources. But who would admit such a thing?
I think it’s true that education may not solve economic problems for all individuals.
So if it’s the economic problems for individual we’re addressing, and education doesn’t necessarily do it, then what does? And I do think that economic well-being comes before ideas about self awareness, growth and meaningfulness.
It works on the collective scale. Good education (along with good governance etc.) of a society or a nation makes it succeed in World that we have today. Lousy or nonexistent education causes severe social problems on the macro scale, while individuals can make it fine even with having participated in a lousy education system.
Education gives us better abilities to be part of the society we live in.
And you don't have science without good education.
And what if ideas about self awareness, growth and meaningfulness would ultimately provide the solution to economic well-being?
Just a thought.
I have a feeling that if everyone were highly developed along those lines, the economy would be a lot smaller.
That's not quite what I've said. But, I suppose I wouldn't entirely disagree in the following sense. The education system is like an organ in the body, and a big and important one at that. It co-evolved with the rest of the structures in society. They are inseparable. The fact is, it simply does perform a certain set of functions for the larger social body. If it didn't, neither would be here in their present form. The rest of the system as it is and the education system are mutually interdependent. A society like ours without one like it would be like a body without a liver or something. Such an education system without that society would be like a liver without a body. To say it has no choice but to serve society is like saying a liver has no choice but to serve a body, as if the liver has somehow been compelled to serve, or as though it has some kind of agency. I wouldn't quite put it like that. And I wouldn't call it an "extension" of society. It is much closer to the core than that.
And you can't just take an education system that you like the sound of off the shelf and plug it into a society. It doesn't work like that. The two have been deeply interwoven going back to their most primitive origins and they evolved together slowly into their present form. They really aren't properly seen as separate things, one serving the other.
Not such a bad thing, if you ask me.
Quoting Possibility
This is an example of reading lines out of context. But it’s possible I hadn’t been very clear about what I meant.
What I meant was that economic well-being is essential and possibly a right. Even if an individual fails to learn the skills required to get by they should still have some sort of financial security which they’re unable to achieve through their own efforts. I’m not suggesting that money comes before self awareness.
Quoting Possibility
Then that would be everything we could hope for.
My reference was to those who for some reason cannot keep up, or gain the life skills required to be part of the economy, to accept that this is a reality and the fault no one in particular.
I think we’re both in agreement here.
Things like “self-awareness,” “growth,” and “meaningfulness” only have existence if the human being has enough resources to sustain their lives - no food means none of the above.
Economic well-being is essential. Don’t forget that “economy” isn’t just about money, it is a much broader term and the exchange of money is only a small part of economics. I think this is slowly becoming more apparent to more people as creativity and information becomes a more prominent resource we need to pay attention to in terms of distribution and efficiency.
Economic well-being - no fear of the wolf at the door.
Yes, I agree. We are using it a bit loosely.
“Economics is a study of man in the ordinary business of life. It enquires how he gets his income and how he uses it. Thus, it is on the one side, the study of wealth and on the other and more important side, a part of the study of man.”
Alfred Marshall, Principles of Economics
Plainer English would be more useful than an analogy. How about saying the minimum requirements for sustaining a life without excess stress and strain?
To highlight and clarify. If not they serve only to cloud the meaning. You did the later btw :)
If you need me to point this out further ... could’ve meant “be content,” “have plenty,” “have minimal requirements,” or numberous other possible interpretations. To say “keep the wolf away from the door is vague enough to be interpretated in various ways so it would’ve made sense to clarify further - this is a philosophy forum after all.
Either way I agree with the principle that basic physical sustenance is a valid prerequisite to fortify, and/or build toward, a better sense of “self-awareness” and personal growth. Being alive and healthy are obvious requirements of living a “good” life. What we mean by “health” is also a more nuanced issue as the old dichotomy of “psychological” and “physiological” no longer holds the dated distinctions they once did.
Regarding my use of analogy - your comment is fair enough. What are we after but clarity?
My post regarding the meaning of economic was to indicate agreement with you about using the term too loosely.
What I meant by ‘keeping the wolf from the door’ was the idea that everyone is entitled to food, shelter and clothing (possibly there are some other essentials that don’t come to mind), the minimum a person or family needs.
My point about that was that some people don’t have the skills to survive out in the economic world; they can’t compete with others. We all know the reasons why: their environment, their abilities, their upbringing, etc. Though its true some do overcome their circumstances. An education doesn’t seem to happen for them, even though they may attend school. They won’t get jobs; they may get some sort of work, or find ways to get money, but they won’t develop skills, improve their situation or develop friendships that enhance their lives. Is there any point in keeping them in school when all it amounts to is some sort of daycare to keep them off the street?
Which brings me to the first essential requirement of education; they have to be able to function in the world on an economic level. Without that there’s no opportunity for self awareness, growing confidence, self esteem and so on. Whether they’re victims of the system, or fodder for capitalism is irrelevant, because if they can’t take part in the economy then they sink to the bottom very quickly. To ignore that fact is to condemn them to a life of constant struggle with little hope of developing as a person. And isn’t that what so many here have said; education is about developing the potential in us.