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Unread 25-11-2005, 02:27
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Re: Students, what is your fantasy education system?

This may end up raising more questions than it answers (not that that's necessarily a bad thing); there are clearly many factors that deserve attention here—too many to list, really. I think I'll tackle some of the more controversial ones first, simply because it's more fun to make trouble. (However, since Ken asked nicely, I'll try to leave directed rebuttals out of it....)

What do we do about the fundamentally flawed (but some might argue necessary) position that everyone should be evaluated to the same standards? It is rather popular to tie everything to the outcome of standardized testing; in universities and most high schools, this has been the norm for ages—more recently, elementary schools have begun to adopt this technique, whether on their own, or by way of governmental and societal pressure. In the U.S., the No Child Left Behind legislation ties funding to the results of mandatory, standard tests; this is hardly a practice which I would implement in my vision of an educational model. That policy, in a word, is brutal; every time a school fails, it has less resources available to repair the damage; how is that anything but making the problem worse? (If unmotivated or irresponsible educators were the primary cause of schools failing to meet standards, then I admit, a slap on the wrist might, under some circumstances, do some good. But that's hardly what's going on, in the majority of cases.) In fact, the cynic in me thinks that this policy is some ideologue's implementation of a free-market economy in the education system. At the risk of arguing from incredulity, I can hardly conceive of a situation in which that sort of system would be beneficial, because allowing market forces to control education, means, quite simply, that while there will be winners, more importantly there will also be losers. As a society, we have a responsibility to provide quality education, and simply letting the losing schools fail themselves out of existence guarantees that their students will be shortchanged. Now, there's a more basic question here, irrespective of the philosophical underpinnings of the laws which require standardization. Are the results of the standardized tests even meaningful? After all, modern educators and clinical psychologists tend to agree that there are several modes of learning and recall; yet written examinations only test a few of the possible permutations. What of the students who excel at kinesthetic tasks, but do not handle fact-based examinations well, and consequently can't cope with the principal mode of evaluation? Since society seems to have accepted the premise that failing high school is the first step on the road to personal oblivion, are they doomed to repair appliances for the rest of their lives, making $9.00 per hour? Can we contend, with a straight face, that an office functionary with a B.A. is worth three to four times as much to society? We have our vocational schools, but yet, they often seem to get the short end of the stick, because of the perception that poor results on standardized tests are a reflection of the value of the people in attendance. So the school with the students who all aspire to be engineers, doctors and sociologists will receive more funding, and adulation, because its students are better at writing the tests. The vocational school—where the students can disassemble and reassemble things with ease, but can't necessarily be counted upon to write an essay about Crime and Punishment—gets screwed, perpetually and systematically, because of the students' inability to express their utility to society in some arbitrary manner, chosen because it's easy to evaluate, rather than because it's methodologically valid. I would therefore contend that we can't rely on standardized testing as the sole arbiter of things like funding and success; unfortunately, it also means that we would need to figure out something that can measure achievement either independently of learning style, or alternatively, based explicitly on their particular learning style(s). The trouble is, that's not an easy task, for a multitude of reasons.

As a result of our responsibility to students (which I will assume a priori), we must similarly be wary of private enterprise exercising too much control of education. I'm primarily referring to the good business practice, but bad social practice, which involves doing the minimum work, for the maximum profit. Unless there is an incentive and opportunity to excel, the system may well stagnate. Love them or hate them, the government has an explicit responsibility to act in the best interests of the society it serves; until a private company can irrevocably and wholeheartedly commit to that ideal, I will be wary of its decisions, because I suspect that they will be made not on the strength of their educational benefit, but rather as business decisions. I realize fully well that private schools are capable of offering the same education as their public counterparts, but I don't think that they (in general) are sufficiently socially responsible to cater to the needs of every student; indeed, I don't think they try as hard as public schools do, to create an environment where all students can function. And I should note, there is an economy of scale involved here; since a public education system attempts to provide opportunities for all, it can often designate one school a technical school, another an artistic school, etc., and allow the students a choice, without spreading its resources too thinly. Private schools aren't compelled, morally or legally, to cater to everyone, and therefore achieve their objectives by focusing on a much narrower segment of the populace, and leaving those without the means, or with other needs, to fend for themselves in the public system. They skim off what they desire, and leave the remainder to the public system, all the while profiting from the endeavour, while the government is forced to deal with the difficult cases; that's my other fundamental objection to that sort of a business model.

Now, to switch controversies, I've got a pet hate: stupidity. I try to avoid it myself, and would prefer that others do the same. However, I can't help but be disappointed by some of the things that go on in its name, in our public and private schools alike. One of the most egregious examples is, of course, the encroachment of religion into the domain of science. I noticed earlier that someone commented on the fact that reality is perceived differently by different people; this I can't help but grant. But that doesn't mean that there are no things upon which we, as pragmatic, informed individuals, can agree. Indeed, the schools have a responsibility to teach the facts insofar as they can be established, and to engage in informed, rational speculation, when the facts are unclear. Anything else is, in the strongest sense, intellectually bankrupt, and morally repugnant. Everyone has the right to hold their own opinions, whatever they are, and irrespective of any other entity's appraisal of those opinions. However the mere fact that you have an opinion is not lease to spread it around as if it were undeniable; for society to function effectively, we must strive to promulgate truth and rational conjecture above fiction and delusion. That means, using evidence and scientific reasoning, rather than the sophistry of apologetics, in order to justify our beliefs. That also means eliminating the stupidity of catering to every religious, pseudoscientific and deranged idea that crosses the mind of some parent who feels an entitlement to educate their children in the manner that they see fit. They have no such right. They have a higher responsibility; to make their children understand the world as it is, and not merely as they would have it be. Their morals are utterly irrelevant, when it comes to questions of fact; when it comes to questions of opinion, only then can they come into play. (Of course, I'm assuming that the world is largely as we perceive it; without this assumption, the only logical course of action is solipsism, which, while irrefutable, is not really a practical theory upon which to base the principles of a social institution. But let's avoid the deeper implications of epistemological philosophy for a while....) So, returning to the question of religion in schools, I feel strongly that religion should be relegated to being studied (impartially) in anthropology and philosophy classes, and never taught in the sciences, maths and other technical subjects. How absurd would it be for a robotics team to design things based on the teachings of a god or other supernatural creature? (Shall we make burnt offerings to the Victors, lest they make burnt offerings of themselves?) And yet, there is a concerted argument to allow biology students apply religious nonsense to their field of study? This is stupidity. This sort of thing is the antithesis of education, because it asks students—many of whom are not half as cynical, and well more than twice as impressionable as I—to make their own decisions based on inadequate knowledge, inadequate understanding, and inadequate explanation; in real science classes, ideally, at least, one is expected to be given the opportunity to understand the mechanisms at every step of the way; there is no significant "take it on faith", no referring to a single, unverifiable source, and most importantly, no blatant falsification and misrepresentation of evidence through dishonest and disingenuous means. By contrast, intelligent design creationism, and many other laughable beliefs, demand exactly all of these things, in varying measure. Keep them far, far, away from the education system, because there's enough stupidity in the world; we don't need to establish stupidity immersion programs for our children.

And, since I think that that was a destructive sort of paragraph, let me offer something constructive here. Teach more; way more. Start earlier, perhaps at the age of three or so (though I'm the first to admit age is not necessarily a good way to determine a child's readiness for an education—more on this later, perhaps). And teach everything—actually, this is what happened to me in a Montessori-style preschool. You might be surprised (given that Johnny still can't read in 2nd grade) what kids can learn, if given half a chance, both at home and in a proper educational system. Yes, many kids are reading, writing and multiplying at 3 or 4, or earlier, if their parents were so kind as to send them to school, read with them, and actually play a role in their upbringing. (I am well aware that sometimes a family's circumstances dictate other courses of action; but I point out that this is an excuse for a single instance of mediocrity or worse, and not a justification for the status quo.) The cost of something like this is irrelevant, compared to the enormity of the potential benefits.

I hate to put such a fine point on this, and at the great risk of coming off as an especially pompous flavour of elitist, there are a lot of high school and elementary school students who are not ready for the subject matter that is being taught. And to top that, I'm going to relate an anecdote that will probably cement that impression in your minds—but despite this, I assure you that that's not my intent or motivation. When I was a primary school student, in kindergarten, and grades 1 through 3, I was often surprised at the things that many of the other students were doing. I, though smart, was not very worldly at the time, and was somewhat amazed that many of them couldn't read and write very well in both English and French. (Like I said, don't get the wrong impression. This is the unique brand of childhood naïveté of a rather atypical student.) Since I could do it, why couldn't most of them? Why were they in the "easy reader" section of the library, while I prowled the young adult and non-fiction sections, picking out and books designed primarily for intermediate or even high school students? Was it because I was inherently smarter than them, or because I had more opportunities in my extreme youth? I'll be an immodest bastard, and suggest that maybe it was a bit of both. But even so, I would very much have liked the opportunity to know for sure; I would much rather have been nondescript among a bunch of equally-intelligent students, simply because I can't imagine a better thing than more knowledge for all. So, what am I saying, amidst this reminiscence? That we ought to give more education a chance, in the hopes that we'll wean our children of the childrens' books when they're younger, and get them ready for the real world sooner. I must also note, that this sort of childhood didn't (in large measure) prevent me from enjoying the normal things that children enjoy (e.g. chocolate, snowball fights, and cartoons*); this is not about creating asocial and maladjusted young people. This is about getting Johnny learning as soon as possible, because it's going to benefit him eternally.

I feel that when children are well aware of the world around them, they'll inherently begin to make critical thinking a part of their lifestyle. Though I can't provide proof for this assertion, I would hypothesize that in general, people who were exposed to a simplistic and limited worldview as children, will grow up to be more credulous and gullible, and less rational, than those who were given every opportunity to learn. It must be the responsibility of the schools to promote this, because how can we trust the parents to do it? Recall that the parents may suffer from the same traits which we wish to avoid in the next generation; will they be capable of exceeding their existing predispositions? Doubtful. Once again, it is evident that given enough rope, people will hang themselves, and more pertinently, their children as well. In fact, though it may reek of authoritarianism, I once again suggest that parents are, in general, not qualified to have a large say in their childrens' educations. While this sort of thing always begets the question "well, then; who is qualified?", I will dodge it (artfully), and point out that nearly anything is better than allowing (or worse, encouraging) some idiot, who just happened to procreate, to damage the life of an innocent child, by imbuing their child's mind with all manner of falsehoods and other nonsense. It really comes down to the idea that we aren't educated enough, aren't responsible enough, as a society, to advance our society at the most expeditious rate possible, through the effective education of our offspring. In my hypothetical system, we would allocate this crucial responsibility to an education system. I can only fervently hope that it works in practice.

Switching gears again, to a more psychological question: what is it that determines when a child is ready to advance to the next level of education, whatever it may be? (And also, why are the levels organized as they are?) This is a big and difficult question. It's not a matter of fact, it's a matter of opinion, and in that respect, I can't be nearly as sure of the answer. I was leafing through a book in the University's library one recent evening, which dealt with this question. (Actually, I was surprised to come upon it in our engineering-heavy library.) Though I wasn't sure that I liked or agreed with all of the authors' reasoning and conclusions, I was captivated by their treatment of the question. They suggested that it would be advantageous to use the concept of mental age, rather than chronological age, to determine placement. If a student is intellectually and emotionally ready for grade four, put him in grade four, they suggested. But while that's nice for a student who is both intellectually ready, and emotionally ready, what if he's one, but not the other? Shall we have a class for each permutation? No, I think not, because that's a logistical nightmare. Can we prioritize? It seems to me that some sort of prioritization based on intellectual and emotional development might at least be better than our arbitrary system of age-based categorization (which is, at best a weak approximation, and at worst bereft of causative links); I'm just at a loss to describe how we could go about something like this. Taking myself as an example, if I could read and write at a 10th grade level in 2nd grade (again, it's immodest, and I apologize once more for that, but it's pretty much true), but was surely not ready for anything more than 4th grade from an emotional standpoint, what would we do? Send me to grade 4? What about the extra two years? Do I really want to graduate high school at 16? (I have one friend who did; he's a former FIRST student, and now at MIT—but I never really asked him how he felt on this issue.) I know that I vastly enjoyed the majority of high school (that's an unpopular sentiment for some reason), and I'm not sure, in hindsight, that I would have enjoyed it nearly so much, if I were dealing with the emotional burden that can potentially exist in such a situation. I guess that we've come full circle, with this question, because every method (that I can think of) for ascertaining a student's readiness for promotion will lead to some aspect of their life being twisted out of conjunction with that of their peers. There's to be no artful dodging this time: I don't know the optimal solution, if one exists.

Another pet question of mine deals with the issues surrounding motivation. Why do we treat the unmotivated and unintelligent in the same fashion? Assuming that they are sufficiently interested in becoming productive members of society, doesn't it seem strange that we conflate these two radically different situations, and treat them both with remediation? I'm not convinced that one size fits all here. Indeed, I sometimes consider myself a little unmotivated—but I don't want to be remediated for my troubles. Simply put, it's often useless to me, and is manifestly ignorant of my needs. I think that this would be rather easy to implement, if only we could divest people of the notion that every academic blemish is treatable, simplistically, with more study. There's more to school than simply the collection of marks, and in the absence of good marks, there must necessarily be more to school than simply more work.

You know, there's a vast irony here, which isn't lost on me. I'm an engineering student. Mechanical engineering, in fact, in what is likely the best engineering school in Canada (top two, for sure). And yet, I'm writing this post like some kind of arts student (like my brother, in fact), about something which I can virtually guarantee will never even be touched upon in any of my courses. It's fantastically interesting, and cathartic to boot, and yet, according to the accepted wisdom, this skill is next-to-useless to an engineering graduate. It is one of my greatest concerns with the education system, as it exists now, that someone with the varied interests and skills that I possess, fits nowhere. If you'd seen my transcript coming out of high school, you might well have guessed that I'd be enrolled in science, or something like it, with a minor in computer science or sociology. If you looked at my extracurriculars, engineering was a definite possibility, with a computer science major equally probable. And if you looked at my interests, well, without FIRST, I don't have a clue what I would have ultimately chosen as a discipline for postsecondary study. But has all of that served me well? I'm not sure. It's a particularly vicious fact that polymathy isn't a degree program, and therefore, I'm forced to choose something, and put up with it, and hope that I can find sufficient enjoyment in it. In fact, there's another problem right there. I look first for enjoyment in learning; in self-directed learning, this is effortless; in structured learning, this can be brutally difficult, especially in mechanical engineering, which in many respects, epitomizes the "old school". I'm forced to choose between a career (such as engineering), and intellectual stimulation, which, frankly, is lacking in my faculty, but presumably present elsewhere. I don't know how I'd accomplish it, but it's my sincere hope that in an education system of my design, it would be possible to balance the liberal arts with the technical ones, without damaging, or indeed sacrificing outright, the possibilities for a future career.

It is of substantial importance, to me at least, that an education can satiate the desire to learn that drives so much of what I do. High school, for the most part did just that, allowing me to take my time over five years (this was standard for university-bound students in Ontario, at the time), choosing courses which I enjoyed, always at the highest level, doing many things which I enjoyed in my spare time, and generally enriching myself. I can't help but be bitter that so much stock is put into the notion that high school is simply preparation for university, when, upon gaining admission, I found that in reality, it is not half the education that I demand. Make no mistake, I love certain aspects of engineering; designing things, building things, troubleshooting, problem solving; they're all great, and I'd like to think that I'm rather good at them. But I hate classes where a student can simply sit at home, doing assigned questions well into the night, and pass his final exam without so much as single written word. Is it really so perverse of me to wish for essay questions? I was leafing through my brother's physics textbook recently, and remarked how it would have been fantastic if we had only been given the background information from that book in our first-year physics courses; it would have made the examinations so much more palatable, to have had, instead of one of the calculation questions, an essay question to demonstrate an understanding of the facts, rather than just the math. This is directly related to the notion of testing all skill sets, when making an evaluation; it should be abundantly clear why I favour this sort of approach.

I alluded earlier to the need for variety; but there's another kind of experience that's worth a mention. The hands-on, practical kind. It's what FIRST is greatest for, in my mind, but also, it what the engineering curriculum lacks. I find it asinine that we have a miniature design project in 1st year, another in 3rd, and then only in 4th year do we actually get to see something both designed and built, as part of the required studies. Sure, extracurricular activities allow for this sort of thing, but what sort of message does that send to society about our engineers? To me, it reeks of a mindset wherein the objective is to teach the theory, and hope (desperately) that the real world will fill in the gaps in the engineers' knowledge. It may be cheap, it may be easy, and it may well cater to the majority of the students in my faculty; however, for the few like me, it seems wrongheaded in the extreme. If I were to re-work this educational system, I would have to find a way to work the practical skills into the curriculum, rather than relying on co-op jobs, and jobs after graduation to round the student off into the consummate engineer.

So, where does all this leave us? I've advocated a public, secular and challenging curriculum, with plenty of opportunities for all. I have no illusion that such things come cheaply, and even so, I don't particularly care. Though I paint myself a socialist shade of red with this one, I, as a reasonably well-off citizen, want to pay for this in taxes. I want everyone to take part in what is quite possibly the single most important thing in a civilized society; the dissemination of a truly great education, to all those who wish to partake of it. Speaking broadly, knowledge unlocks the mysteries of our universe; it is in the interests of humanity, as a supposedly-enlightened race, to, as soon as it is practicable, go beyond simple subsistence lifestyles (be it paycheque to paycheque, or meal to meal) and create something which has the potential to advance the human condition. Education, because it begets knowledge, is the thing that epitomizes this goal.

To all, I'm not going to be offended if you didn't feel it necessary to read all of that. Like I pointed out, as catharsis, it's as much for me as for you. And Ken, if this kills your thread, I'm sorry, especially because I obviously thought the topic was a good one....

*All of which, I might add, I managed to indulge in this evening....
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