I don’t know where to start with this, the subject that surely supersedes all others. It — life, necessity and peace — begins and ends with education. With a good education the world is your oyster. Without education… God, it’s so tricky to put into words, but I’ll try.
The expanse of your knowledge, your wisdom, your skills and ‘working set of data’ is only limited by your ability to learn, to educate yourself; or to be educated. But it’s a feedback loop: you can’t emerge from a dark cave at the age of 40 and suddenly be wise. Knowledge must be accumulated, wisdom and skills are cumulative — they must be continually renewed and refreshed or it becomes the stuff of stale housewife tale. Because it’s a feedback loop, the longer you stay out of the loop the worse it gets. Even worse, the further out of the loop you are, the less chance you have of realising it…
The world is moving fast. Really, really fast. Every day we uncover new data about the world we exist within, and new rules and relationships that elucidate and underline the lives we live. Every day the goalposts move back a little bit. In the past it might’ve taken a century for a significant change in world view to occur, but now it happens quickly – not so rapidly that we can’t keep up, but fast enough that things can change in the blink of an eye.
And therein lies the problem. We can’t keep up. We’re not trained by school, state or society to keep up. Sure, there are a few individuals that sit on the ever-expanding cusp of new knowledge, but not enough. More problematic is the fact that these great thinkers don’t have anyone to share their knowledge and thoughts with.
This problem is so endemic that it’s almost impossible to think with. How do you think outside the box when you’re in the damn box? You’ve probably all had run-ins with ignorant people — or maybe you’re ignorant yourself. Ever met someone that’s not exactly dumb, but totally unreceptive to information they don’t already know?
There are people out there, 40, 50, 60 year-olds that are still parroting stuff they learnt at school, or hand-me-down ‘wisdom’ from ma and pa. Not for a moment do they think that their knowledge is stale, out-dated or simply wrong — that’s their world view and they’re sticking to it. But they’re not dumb people! I might have just described your mother or grandfather, I might even have described you. But it’s not your fault; it’s endemic to society. It’s inescapable; you enter the infinite loop simply by being born.
It’s all because we lack critical thinking. We don’t question what we learn. We don’t interrogate our surroundings, nor do we question the credibility of arbitrary authority — just because someone says it is so does not make it so. The world didn’t turn out to be flat, nor does the Sun orbit Earth — but would you like to take a guess at how long it took for those two beliefs to leave the body of common knowledge?
We’ve long known the danger of false information. We know that sometimes it is distributed with propagandistic intent, and sometimes it’s just a half-truth or something that we can’t yet measure. But for some reason these things stick. For some reason we find it very easy to ignore new data that doesn’t align with what we already know to be ‘true’. There are some that believe the science of 2,000 years ago still supersedes that of today.
That’s insane! It’s utterly insane. After almost four millennia of modern civilization we’re still uncomfortable at throwing out old knowledge so that it can be replaced with the new.
Most of the world is currently operating on stale knowledge. Our mothers and fathers and teachers, and even our military generals and world leaders are trying to use incorrect data. The implications of this fact are numerous; all of them are scary. Most importantly, it perpetuates, from mother to child, from teacher to young person, and ultimately from society to adult.
It’s a loop that’s almost impossible to break without a complete overhaul of how we think, and thus how we educate. Currently we’re taught what we need to know. What we need to be taught is how to think.
The method we use now — teaching what we think children need to know — could work in theory, with a syllabus that is updated very regularly. In fact, that’s probably how this method came to be in the first place: discovery of knowledge and new facts was once so slow that a syllabus made sense. ‘These are the facts. We have known them for centuries. Go learn them.’ If you could somehow devise a list of ‘everything that you need to know’, a contemporary list that kept pace with modern technology, then this method might work. But lumbering under the bureaucratic umbrella, such a system would never get off the ground. The syllabus would be outdated by the time it made it through the first two committees — who knows what it would look like after the fifth or sixth…
That leaves the other method — teaching kids how to think. Don’t misconstrue this — I don’t mean instilling ideologies of thought. I simply mean that school, at the moment, doesn’t require a lot of actual thinking. You read what you’re told to read, you write what you’re told to write — there isn’t a lot of thought actually going on. In school we study for the singular purpose of passing exams and, through the rewards of university, a job and affluence, such behaviour is actually enforced. If you try to go your own way and actually learn something pertinent, God help you — you’re on your own. Critical thinking, thinking outside the box, is simply a waste of time — why bother jumping in the deep end when it’s not necessary? Don’t you have an ‘exam-writing technique’ class to go to anyway?
Because this situation is both omnipresent and self-perpetuating, it’s incredibly hard to fix. You need new teachers first — teachers with parents that have instilled them with free thought. And then you need those teachers to pass it on to children. You only have to do it once, for one generation, because it too would be self-perpetuating. In 50 years you could have a world where everyone has the potential to be the next Einstein or Edison.
* * *
This expands on the basic framework for Education in my Empire’s Manifesto.
chiefy
Feb 1, 2010
Yeah, this is actually something that has come up a lot in my Spanish Literature classes.
One of the instructors on the first day of class was like “Do not listen to anybody who tells you that studying literature is a waste of time, and that you don’t learn anything, because you are learning to think critically, and this is the most unrecognized and most useful skill you will ever learn.”
Ok maybe I paraphrased a bit because he went on for like twenty minutes, but hey, it made me feel pretty good about myself. Or something. It validated my choice to study literature? Yeah. That’s it.
You’re right though. I get the importance of learning theories created by other people so we can try and avoid making the same mistakes they did, but when do they teach us to come up with our own ideas?
Sara Strand
Feb 1, 2010
Well living in America the uneducated are the ones who are actually better off. Because if you are uneducated AND have as many kids as you can early on–financially you are set. AND if you are smart enough to have kids by different guys well you have then hit the money.
But yes- people aren’t able to think critically. And I think a lot of teachers fresh out of school want to go in and help kids think critically and question what’s around them, what’s being taught. But it’s frowned on so a lot of those people give up teaching or change how they teach. I had an English teacher who did a unit on poetry. She never told us who the poet was, we just came up with names. Her reasoning? She didn’t want our brains to get full of useless knowledge, the names of poets, but instead wanted us to remember why certain poems were key. She was FANTASTIC.
sebastian
Feb 1, 2010
Hehe, yeah… there are a few people out there — teachers, lecturers, important people — that break out of the mould. But there aren’t many. I think most people can recall one awesome lecturer from university… maybe two.
(But university is a little different from school, because university is meant to be optional, self-driven education… though that’s not really the case any more. Still, a few old-school lecturers remain…!)
I just want to know why we’re soooo stuck in this syllabus/exam-driven system. I think it might be due to bureaucracy/politics and nothing more. It’s not like the idea of critical thinking is NEW. It’s ancient. It’s just impossible to measure with exams…
Emma
Feb 1, 2010
In my ideal world I wouldn’t put my future children through the education system, largely for the kind of reasons you describe. Sadly, giving up work to teach them at home probably won’t be financially viable, but I hope that I’m still able to instill into them both the love of learning and the ability to think critically about what they’ve learnt.
sebastian
Feb 1, 2010
I’ve definitely thought about home schooling my kids, when they come — it would definitely be ‘safer’ than throwing them into the system and hoping that they score some special teachers and lecturers
But as you say, most people can’t afford it time- or money-wise… so something intrinsic the entire system has to be changed!
Sebastian's mother
Feb 1, 2010
Well at least YOU had a good education, son!
Selene
Feb 1, 2010
Oh, I love this post! Really well stated.
One of the thing I see a lot in my peers is how they not only don’t know how to think, but they don’t bother to find out. They cram for tests, only regurgitating, but never really processing the knowledge; I think that it isn’t just enough to know something, but you have to understand.
Maybe if, somehow, teachers could transmit the pursuit of knowledge and the enthusiasm to learn, then the thinking part would do itself
SillyJaime
Feb 2, 2010
AMEN!
This reminds me of The Dead Poets Society. I love that movie, and if I’d ever had a teacher like the one Robin Williams portrayed I’d probably have looked at learning a lot differently as a student.
ural aka [Karga]
Feb 3, 2010
People mostly underestimate what they learned in their education period. They do not realize how much they learned from their school until they measure themselves by comparing themselves to a non-educated person.
i am not stating that this information you have posted is false in any way. But how can you teach a person, who does not know basic maths, basic physics, and the rest. As example for defining the word “cumulative” you have to know the principles of calculating, don’t you. I mean every information we know (does not matter what) helps us for learn more. The more we know, the better we comprehend the additional information from what we see, we hear, we learn.
In my opinion, to learn “HOW TO LEARN” you first have to learn the principles of any branch. Thereafter you can think about critical thinking. Well, by the way. Critical thinking is not suitable for everyone. To think that way you have to have the sense of asking the question “why” or “what for”. Most people do not have that. And those who don’t have that, should be educated anyway. At least to go with the flow. Not stand against it.
( i hope i am clear with what i meant. sorry for the bad grammar. )
sebastian
Feb 3, 2010
Hehe, teaching the principles is a noble thing, Karga. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that — and it’s actually how most education is still done outside of Europe/US.
Principles and the ideas _behind_ something is an eastern thing. Westerners teach the way to recreate an effect — Easterners teach the effect… and then let you decide how to go about creating it.
A lot of education (at least here in the West) is ‘just because’. 2 + 2 = 4. Why? It just is.
If we taught the basic principles of things, instead of ‘lies to children’ (for example, we tell children all sorts of lies about atoms and chemical reactions), the world would definitely better
Jaime — never did see the Dead Poets Society. I keep meaning to. Will add it to THE LIST.
Selene — having enthusiastic teachers is definitely a large part of the solution. I know in the UK (and probably elsewhere), it’s a struggle to find enough ‘good’ teachers. A good teacher HAS to be enthusiastic about what they teach!
Irregular Expressions » Bricks in the wall
Feb 3, 2010
[...] in the wall Posted in family 02/02/10 Yesterday Mr. Seb wrote a post about education which has been on my mind all day. One of his main points is that putting children through the [...]
Selene
Feb 3, 2010
That’s a good point Seb. Did you have enthusiastic teachers?
sebastian
Feb 3, 2010
Hmmm…
I got lucky I think. Don’t think ‘enthusiastic’ is quite right, but ‘heart in the right place’ perhaps.
And anyway, in some cases, the kid will always rise above adversity anyway — it just sometimes helps to have the framework in place to make the rise to awesomeness a little easier.