Ideally, but one has to be cautious about what is accepted as education. States have been known to use it purely to shape the minds of the young so they fit the party line.
I studied Education as part of my A-Level Sociology course (ages 16-18 usually) and at Uni too. Part of that was discussing the 'Hidden Curriculum' which was essentially things kids were being taught without seeming to be so - at least not formally. These were things like showing up every day at the right time, moving between classes at the sound of the bell (VERY Pavlovian of course!), deference to authority (teachers etc) and much else besides. Most of this sort of thing is from the 19th century when the main function of school was to teach the working class enough to function in factories. Plus a good part of it is about socialising essentially feral children into useful citizens - which is not an inherently bad thing!
Of course it's technically *possible* to produce unthinking automatons through the school system its both very difficult and very obvious (also VERY inefficient as workers who can't think for themselves at least a bit are a NIGHTMARE to manage). I think that the history of the West so far shows that such a thing has either never been tried (or never with enough effort) or that its just not possible outside an absolute dictatorship - and even then it never fully takes (the collapse of the Soviet Union springs to mind here...).
What education should be about - and mostly is in my experience - is to give kids some basic knowledge of the world they were born into as well as the tools to think about things in order to make sense of the world and, hopefully, progress in it. Unfortunately I don't think we (as a culture) take Education seriously enough and therefore its often chronically under-resourced (except at the top end naturally) and therefore far less effective than it could be. There should also be enough 'flex' in the system to move aware from the more inefficient 'mass' education and towards a more tailored system looking at individual needs, aspirations and capabilities - again what you get in top-end schools because stuff like that is expensive and time consuming.
2 comments:
Ideally, but one has to be cautious about what is accepted as education. States have been known to use it purely to shape the minds of the young so they fit the party line.
I studied Education as part of my A-Level Sociology course (ages 16-18 usually) and at Uni too. Part of that was discussing the 'Hidden Curriculum' which was essentially things kids were being taught without seeming to be so - at least not formally. These were things like showing up every day at the right time, moving between classes at the sound of the bell (VERY Pavlovian of course!), deference to authority (teachers etc) and much else besides. Most of this sort of thing is from the 19th century when the main function of school was to teach the working class enough to function in factories. Plus a good part of it is about socialising essentially feral children into useful citizens - which is not an inherently bad thing!
Of course it's technically *possible* to produce unthinking automatons through the school system its both very difficult and very obvious (also VERY inefficient as workers who can't think for themselves at least a bit are a NIGHTMARE to manage). I think that the history of the West so far shows that such a thing has either never been tried (or never with enough effort) or that its just not possible outside an absolute dictatorship - and even then it never fully takes (the collapse of the Soviet Union springs to mind here...).
What education should be about - and mostly is in my experience - is to give kids some basic knowledge of the world they were born into as well as the tools to think about things in order to make sense of the world and, hopefully, progress in it. Unfortunately I don't think we (as a culture) take Education seriously enough and therefore its often chronically under-resourced (except at the top end naturally) and therefore far less effective than it could be. There should also be enough 'flex' in the system to move aware from the more inefficient 'mass' education and towards a more tailored system looking at individual needs, aspirations and capabilities - again what you get in top-end schools because stuff like that is expensive and time consuming.
Post a Comment