Quote:
Originally Posted by beyeas
For me it is a dysfunctional system that does nothing but produce robots that are unable to do anything but regurgitate "facts". It is a spectacular fundamental failure of the education system North America-wide that students are never taught to observe, question their observations, and draw their own conclusions. Instead students are taught to blindly accept what they are told, and regurgitate it back.
Doing so doesn't create "citizens", it creates lemmings who follow off the cliff whomever is yelling the loudest. There are times when I cannot understand why people have accepted a "fact" that is so clearly illogical and false, and then I think about our education system and realize why that is.
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I believe this is a gross generalisation. I think even amoungst the most educated people, there is a strong tendency to 'pick a side' as though it were a sports context -- and argue that side to death until you
have to change your position. I've seen people argue what they know is wrong simply because their ego prevents them from admitting what
everyone should immediately admit:
I may be wrong at anytime.
Though I can't accurately speak of our public education system now, having been out of it for so long, I am not
that old, and clearly recall how rigorous my teachers were.
Granted, some of my teachers were absolutely horrible. And granted, I may...at times...have been a stubborn kid. I do need to acknowledge, though, how skilled
most of my teachers were at aggressively and confidently presenting quantified 'facts' to the class, while being humble enough to encourage the class to question these conclusions.
And I remember being given ample choices. We could pick our science topics, within a given range of course. We could pick the English variant in which we submit our work (British, Canadian, American, etc.). We had sexual education beginning in grade 4.
Our public education system has obviously degraded since then. The government defunding is clearly a reason; too much union control in terms of protecting poor-quality teachers is another.
We need a modernised, reformed school system, which is more versatile considering the increasing number of middle-aged kids immigrating to our canuck schools lacking many language basics (but ironically kicking our kids' asses in math and science).
If I could make only five changes to the subjects to which our kids are exposed, I would mandate: (1) Political Science, to allow kids a duration of many years in which they may look forward to voting (and concurrently make better use of the CBC via lesson plans); (2) English AND French until graduation of high school; (3) Psychology, to allow kids a better understanding of what everyone must go through and to have more control over their own stress as they mature; (4) Religion, to allow kids to associate all the things religions share in common, as well as the broad evolution of religions which connects them all (i.e.: Christianity based on Judeo and Egyptian mythology, as well as other pagan beliefs); and (5) Food Health -- because the kids growing up now are so incredibly
unhealthy compared to the last several generations.