The worst educational ideas I’ve seen are teaching to the test while abandoning education on non-tested topics, abandoning cursive education, and the censorship of books and the teaching the true and more unsavory and racist aspects of our history.
The worst educational ideas I’ve seen are teaching to the test while abandoning education on non-tested topics, abandoning cursive education, and the censorship of books and the teaching the true and more unsavory and racist aspects of our history.
I view deliberately teaching lies to kids a criminal, at least for matters that matter. There were things about human behavior that we didn't detail with our daughter till she seemed "ready", but we also tried to not misrepresent. I believe "fortune favors the prepared mind".
I see standardized testing as an administrative convenience. It produces a number for qualities that in reality can be hard to articulately define, so it seem like it gives us a handle to hang on them, but I think that in some ways the number becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy, like measuring yardsticks with yardsticks to give congruent results becomes less useful capturing the power of a symphony. As Einstein remarked, “It would be possible to describe everything scientifically, but it would make no sense; it would be without meaning, as if you described a Beethoven symphony as a variation of wave pressure.” We can quantify that wave pressure, but what does the number alone leave out?
We treat biodiversity and desperate interests as a bug in our system, when it arguably key to our resilience as a species and our human ability to know and do so, so many things. Yes, we need a common language and a kit of practical skills, but we want to industrialize education when it seems to me that it is best addressed as process of discovery for the pupil and everyone involved, a conversation, not a lecture. Yes, a guided process of discovery, and yes, with the aid of practiced mentors, but I think that if curricula spent as much time encouraging questions as dispensing answers, we would not see nearly as much unhelpful (and sometimes deadly) misinformation circulating in our society.
The worst educational ideas I’ve seen are teaching to the test while abandoning education on non-tested topics, abandoning cursive education, and the censorship of books and the teaching the true and more unsavory and racist aspects of our history.
I view deliberately teaching lies to kids a criminal, at least for matters that matter. There were things about human behavior that we didn't detail with our daughter till she seemed "ready", but we also tried to not misrepresent. I believe "fortune favors the prepared mind".
I see standardized testing as an administrative convenience. It produces a number for qualities that in reality can be hard to articulately define, so it seem like it gives us a handle to hang on them, but I think that in some ways the number becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy, like measuring yardsticks with yardsticks to give congruent results becomes less useful capturing the power of a symphony. As Einstein remarked, “It would be possible to describe everything scientifically, but it would make no sense; it would be without meaning, as if you described a Beethoven symphony as a variation of wave pressure.” We can quantify that wave pressure, but what does the number alone leave out?
We treat biodiversity and desperate interests as a bug in our system, when it arguably key to our resilience as a species and our human ability to know and do so, so many things. Yes, we need a common language and a kit of practical skills, but we want to industrialize education when it seems to me that it is best addressed as process of discovery for the pupil and everyone involved, a conversation, not a lecture. Yes, a guided process of discovery, and yes, with the aid of practiced mentors, but I think that if curricula spent as much time encouraging questions as dispensing answers, we would not see nearly as much unhelpful (and sometimes deadly) misinformation circulating in our society.
I think you are correct.