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UselessSchool

Pretext: some facts I asserted on PainfulTalk could be misinterpreted. – NicolasMontessuit

As some things I said should be unfold to avoid misinterpretations, I try to make thing clear concerning schools, education, and professors.

Our schools are the way education is performed in our kind of societies. This is a way of educating very similar to mass production, as in factories. It is said that we educate children in order for them to have great capabilities, so they find a good job. It is also said that schools (mass education) has something to do with a very noble quest of giving or sharing knowledge.

It is also stated that school has the mission to render all of us very clever, but everybody sadly notice that it fails in this mission, and every year there are billions of rejected students on the side of the road… Maybe we don't pay the teachers enough ? Maybe we don't make the courses interesting enough ? Should we put computers ? Wikis ? Speak plain talk ??

But in fact, the schooling institution has nothing to do with neither the former nor the latter. And the fact that it "fails" in its "mission" has nothing to do with any "politic measure".

Indeed, school is not here to give people useful knowledge for their lives, because at age 12 every human already knows the essential of what he will need in his professional life. At college, you learn how to extract square roots and what a logarithm is, and how to cut a frog in slides, and how to comment Tennyson's verses, and what is the length of the Andes, and in which year Caesar was assassinated… wow… all things that are clearly useful in your future everyday life, when all you will be asked will be to sell phones or to move boxes ?

People should not be bothered with such insane mental garbage.

This does not mean, at any rate, that people should be stupid ignorant morons, slaves, exploited proletarians. Indeed, they will learn much things, but by themselves. In any generation, there is 0.1% who enjoys chemistry, 0.1% who enjoys medieval poetry, 0.1% who enjoys origami, 0.1% who enjoys oenology, 0.1% who enjoys high algebra, etc. (with sum = 100%) If people are set free to study whatever they enjoy, we will still have experts in all domains – with no more schools.

I'm confident that all people (not only privileged ones, but each one) will raise a very high potential if they were let to themselves. A much higher potential than by forcing people to study matters they don't like, in order to get high scores, in order to have a well paid job that they don't really like.

So, if some contributors here (in this wiki) think that the problem is with professorittis or painful style or the like, okay. I rather think that this is completely peripheral, and that the true problem is with the structure of this society, and particularly the school system, which is its skeleton.

I do not want to get rid of professorittis, I just want "professor" to become an obsolete concept.(*) – NicolasMontessuit

Comments

You're very right – there's a lot more to our society than the formal ways people communicate. This is something the LitTheory? people have learned pretty well: formalism can only get you so far. There are structural problems too. Moving away from that though, I do have a few questions. Please realize I agree with you mostly, but I'd like some clarifications:
  • You seem to be implying that people should only have to study what they want. "A much higher potential than by forcing people to study matters they don't like, in order to get high scores, in order to have a well paid job that they don't really like." Is there value in forcing people to diversify their knowledge? To learn a wide variety of things, even if some of those things aren't interesting at first? I know, for myself, I never liked math very much until I got to calculus. Had I not been forced, I'd probably have stopped pretty early on, but now I'm glad I went on to learn some advanced math. Hell, early on I hated to read, and now that's pretty much what I do.
  • You also seem to be implying that college (University) is focused on very specific knowledge and skills. However, there is a concept called the Liberal Arts, which uses specific knowledge to teach critical thinking. This tends to be the justification for an Undergraduate degree in any of the humanities and many of the social sciences. Do you simply not believe that critical thinking can be taught, or do you know of a better way?

For me, teaching critical thinking (and critical reading) should be the focus of any education. Without critical thinking, the democratic process is virtually impossible. I think we're seeing that now, by and large. After critical thinking, I think learning to express one's self clearly is crucial. If we can't make ourselves understood, we're not going to get very far. After all this, one can focus on facts, because then one can (1) interpret them and (2) articulate his/her interpretation. I'd be interested to hear other's thoughts on critical thinking though: What it means, how does one learn to do it, etc.

1. What do you use calculus for ? Let's assume it is for computing hydrodynamics. Then the point is that you enjoy hydronymanics, so you would have come to learn calculus sooner or later. As for myself, I knew calculus before knowing more simple theories like combinatorics or set theory (**), so you see there is no need of "linear development" of knowledge.

2. Critical thinking is essential to democracy at least in its idealised model (which never exists anywhere). Anyway, let's tend towards critical thinking : but why should it be taught by professors ? In critical thinking as much as in all things essential to life, everybody is the professor of everybody. – NicolasMontessuit

(*) Some interesting references on the subject, and more to come.

(**) you can achieve this if you adopt a Leibnizian viewpoint

Critical thinking. Maybe there are theories, I do not know about these. But I wondered when and how did I learn "critical thinking"? When I entered school, that was in 1965 in Berlin-Neukölln, a left-wing workes quarter of Berlin, I was only five years old, pretty early, and I was kind of the youngest in my class all through my time in school. By that time teachers were very strict, authoritarian and pointed on the blackboard with long bamboo sticks propperly "teaching". I did not like school at all. In the end of the sixties young teachers fresh from university carried a new spirit into my school, The "times they were a-changing", know? Teachers tried out antiauthoritarian ways, were playing guitar and singing to us, while the class was just allowed to do what it wants - and you bet we were pretty loaded, we did what we wanted. I remember we even burned the shirt of the poor singing-hippie-teacher-guy by throughing petards left over from the newyears fireworks on him. He had said, that we can do what we want.
There was a young biology teacher. I might have been eight or nine years old, I liked him. He was definetly not the guy to though petards on but he was cool. "Why are berries red?" he asked the class one day. He did not teach us like "Berries are red, because …", he insisted that we should tell him. So the class went: "Maybe animals are afraid of red things, and berries are red so that animals will not eat them". "Or maybe animals can not see red things?" Al kind of these nonsense answers. "No, no" the teacher said, "it's not that. Tell me, why are berries red?" And on went the speculations the class got pretty mad. Until it came to little Mattis' mind - who had been listening, which was an exception these days: … "Maybe, they are red to be seen and to be eaten by animals?". Bingo! Seeds in the berries get carried miles away in the animals digestion systems and get planted in a wonderful fertilzing sourrouding, so the berry-species can spread. What a Bingo! Thinking exactly the opposite of that what all the others thoght was the thing to be done. I made it that day. If the teacher, he was young then and he should be still alive today should accidentially read this: Thanks man! This was very very cool! It was one of the best moments of my childhood. It was a hell of a triumph for little Mattis who else wasn't really a triumphator. Whenever all the others think one thing, the exact opposite might be right. That's what I and also the others had learned this day. Critical thinking. Essential to democracy, I agree.
So, why are berries read?

I'd also like to add that one of the uses oc college (some say the main one) is to allow a lot of intelligent people interested roughtly in the same things to interact.

Before internet times, how would the 0.1% interested in molecular biology meet ? Or would they all have to discover everything alone ?

(So yes, this also tends to make professors seem useless)

Now of course we have the net, som the times they are a-changing again.

Before Internet, people could meet in college, or at work, or in clubs, or in demonstrations, or at church, and so on…

Before mass education, scientists already communicated at great distances, as did Leibniz and Newton and Descartes and rationalists in the Aufklärung, or as did Anselm of Canterbury and Gaunilon and scholastics throughout medieval Europe, or as did Parmenides and Heraclitus and Anaxagoras and ancient philosophers… Mail and repute…

You do not have to discover things alone with no schools and no Internet, you just have to move around till you find what you like (and this needs time, but, look! since you don't go to school… you have time !).

Now we have the Internet, things are even better – for sure ! – NicolasMontessuit

I completely agree with the basic ideas on this page. I'll comment tomorrow, when I'm more awake.

I believe public school is on it's way out, and the School of the Internet is emerging now. I see this as part of the HiveMind organizing.

Yeah, I agree with the top of this page. I think school would be great, if it were voluntary. I think school as it is now is a waste of people's time and money (the taxpayers' and teachers', but especially the kids').

I don't think it's on its way out, though, at least in America. The primary function of school in modern American life is babysitting. The current American economy doesn't allow for many parents to be with their kids during the day (if they want to make enough to provide for those kids comfortably). And leaving the kids alone during the day isn't feasible, even the older ones, as too many of them get into bad stuff.

Both of these tendencies (lack of time by parents, and the necessity of someone watching kids) is increasing, not decreasing. Therefore, school is becoming ever more entrenched in this society.

As for college, I think it would work as is if people were allowed to take it later in life, if ever they felt interested in learning that stuff, instead of being forced to do it right after high school (the only time their parents will foot the bill, at least in America). Another issue, though, is that college seems to be foisted upon people by some weird side-effect of capitalism whereby, if there's enough people applying for the job, you may as well take someone with a college education over someone without it, even if it's not relevant for the job; therefore it's in everyone's interest to go to college. What I don't understand is, why doesn't the employer just cut the salary when they are attracting so many people? Perhaps it's some dynamic where going to college is an indirect predictor of other desirable traits in employees, such as coming from a family with some money, or ambition, or something.

I think there's a better way, but I don't think we'll see it happen here anytime soon.

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