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
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.
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
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 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.
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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