What is education for?
Very often some wingnut on USMB posts an absurd opinion piece on education and how it is failing our students. The repetitive nature make me wonder why and from whom. The reasons for failure are usually teachers, government, Unions, or some vague liberal conspiracy. I use conspiracy loosely. I have given my reasons often, so I won't repeat them. The debate goes on for several pages as the OP is generally so ridiculous and vague users attempt to clarify their ideas on education. Since we were all educated, we are all experts. Life is just that way.
Long ago, like the blog author below, I started reading Harper's, it is in the top five of best magazines. I still read my son's copy monthly. So instead of the usual finger pointing in this OP Mark Slouka asks what is education for and why. Tough questions.
"....Slouka poses many questions that need to be asked more often, and perhaps loudly:
* What do we teach, and why?
* Is the job of education to help students get ahead?
* Do our students really need to take more and more math and science, get higher SAT scores, and gain acceptance into better colleges in order to compete with other students (and prospective workers!) around the world?
* Do schools have a critical role that they ignore in order to devote so much time and energy into competing in a global economy?
Slouka discusses, at length, the disequilibrium that exists. This is a Crisis in American Education that has little to do with the economy and everything to do with the kinds of citizens we are teaching and shaping (not producing). Mathandscience, he suggests, has become the all-purpose shorthand for intelligence.
Slouka ends the piece with a wonderful story about an English teacher named Marcus Eure, who doesnt spend all of his time preparing kids for tests. Instead, his students are immersed in questions, for example, that tackle what it means to be correct, to lie, and to be desensitized by what we see on tv and in movie theaters."
Above comment from: What Makes Us Human | Art21 Blog
Dehumanized: When math and science rule the school?By Mark Slouka (Harper's Magazine)
Very often some wingnut on USMB posts an absurd opinion piece on education and how it is failing our students. The repetitive nature make me wonder why and from whom. The reasons for failure are usually teachers, government, Unions, or some vague liberal conspiracy. I use conspiracy loosely. I have given my reasons often, so I won't repeat them. The debate goes on for several pages as the OP is generally so ridiculous and vague users attempt to clarify their ideas on education. Since we were all educated, we are all experts. Life is just that way.
Long ago, like the blog author below, I started reading Harper's, it is in the top five of best magazines. I still read my son's copy monthly. So instead of the usual finger pointing in this OP Mark Slouka asks what is education for and why. Tough questions.
"....Slouka poses many questions that need to be asked more often, and perhaps loudly:
* What do we teach, and why?
* Is the job of education to help students get ahead?
* Do our students really need to take more and more math and science, get higher SAT scores, and gain acceptance into better colleges in order to compete with other students (and prospective workers!) around the world?
* Do schools have a critical role that they ignore in order to devote so much time and energy into competing in a global economy?
Slouka discusses, at length, the disequilibrium that exists. This is a Crisis in American Education that has little to do with the economy and everything to do with the kinds of citizens we are teaching and shaping (not producing). Mathandscience, he suggests, has become the all-purpose shorthand for intelligence.
Slouka ends the piece with a wonderful story about an English teacher named Marcus Eure, who doesnt spend all of his time preparing kids for tests. Instead, his students are immersed in questions, for example, that tackle what it means to be correct, to lie, and to be desensitized by what we see on tv and in movie theaters."
Above comment from: What Makes Us Human | Art21 Blog
Dehumanized: When math and science rule the school?By Mark Slouka (Harper's Magazine)