I Think Education Is Important

But I support progressive education not the traditional school model which i think is only squashing young students individuality natural creativity and curiosity for learning. Traditional school is depriving students from customizing their own learning and giving them control over what and how topics are learned. I feel traditional school (k-12) is just almost like a prison that prepares students to be told what to do all their lives by training them to be an obedient little worker. I mean kids don't decide when they eat they have to ask permission in order to use the bathroom. Very limited options in what they study they have to take gym and electives, it's testing memorization and recitation study main core subjects, and I believe it's basically an indoctrination center to make dissenting freethinkers fit a certain mold. What life is that to only sit at a desk all day and only be around people of same age instead of learning education and knowledge through real world application and studying subjects that interest the individual student, cultivating their talents and passions, and also can be used again in real world. Also I think it's an environment that encourages social exclusion and potential bullying if any child or young adult is different from their peers or doesn't conform in some way. I think progressive schools such as Montessori, not sure about Waldorf schools democratic schools are much better. I support magnet schools, vocational schools, homeschooling, online school where students can learn at self pace, hybrid programs with unschooling there are resource centers and programs for this. I think youth should get apprenticeships, travel groups and shadow work experience and have freedom, autonomy, and independence in how they learn. I believe in real learning not the traditional model that is meant to put worker wage slave mentality and authoritarian control over kids. And something else when children are little there should be no politics or mature ideologies being taught to them allow them to be innocent children not put shove indoctrination. I would not ever recommend a kid going to normal public school or religious private school. My opinion hasn't been formed on charter schools yet.

Abstraction · 61-69, M

From my study of education at a post-grad level I would venture that traditional 'banking' education, where students are seen as passive recipients of 'knowledge', typified by memorising facts for exams (poor form of learning) = this tends to create passive adults, suited to turn to wheels of commerce and not ask too many questions.

The idea that the old form of education was superior is incorrect. Most people dropped out of school early, few made it to university. The fact that more make it through to uni means that includes those with lower literacy capabilities who would have been in the factory.

This started to change in the 1950s with Dewey. But today we need information literacy, problem solving skills and a range of skills to fit the modern world. Facts are easy to find. Thinking and social skills require development.

My education inspiration is Paulo Freire - Pedagogy of the Oppressed, who taught how the teaching of literacy in an empowered environment can transform societies, humanising the poor, and in the process, humanising those who dominate them.

hippyjoe1955 · 61-69, M

From my experience the traditional education model is vastly superior and the graduates from it are far more likely to be creative, disciplined and knowledgeable. My first year of university was an eye opener. One of my classmates was a little slow. He just didn't seem to understand what the rest of the class was discussing and studying. Then came the time for the final exam. The slowest student was the top of the class. It seems that he went to a residential school that had very strict discipline and while there Mr Slowpoke learned to study while the rest of us were playing around in high school.