Mind's Eye Re: Education as we have it is no longer a solution

Nor is education alone a cure for what ails our world. The Conn.
killer was a bright boy, for instance. And note the recent gang rape
of a nursing student in New Dehli- known there as the rape capital of
India. No, Archy, repairs are needed across the whole spectrum of
society. Learning skills can be mastered by 8th grade and refined by
12th- beyond that, college used to be and probably still is a holding
tank for large children beyond the patience/endurance of parents, a
variation from the Middle Ages of climbing another rung in the socio-
economic ladder. Liberal arts will suffer unfortunately as art and
science intersect plus we need the scientists and engineers to have
some exposure to humanities and values- ex: Steve Jobs, whatever you
may think of him.

On Dec 19, 7:35 pm, archytas <nwte...@gmail.com> wrote:
> http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-12-19/sorry-poor-kids-road-rags-ri...
>
> One of the higher education colleges I taught at (now a university) is
> making lots of staff redundant - it can't attract enough students who
> will put themselves in £50k debt to get one of the certificates I used
> to 'sign'.  The article above at Zerohedge (via Reuters) explains what
> has been going on.  This is largely why I quit full time lecturing ten
> years ago.  My old college is now bidding to teach 14 - 19 year olds
> in technical subjects demanded by employers, no doubt seeing kids of
> this age as a captive market.  Stuff about skills in employer demand
> has usually been guff over the last 40 years.
>
> I see education as an aim in itself and want everyone to have access
> to university.  My ideal is a long way from the scandal of what has
> happened - something that involves the ludicrous claim that the ratio
> of graduate to other jobs can be 50:50 given the encouragement of a
> 50% participation rate at 18.  Universities have long been lying about
> the jobs their graduates actually end up in.  Stuff like 'The Wire' is
> nearer the truth on education in general than the plethora of league
> tables and statistics bandied about.
>
> It seems strange we can no longer recommend education as a 'good' -
> but I'm sure we have to come round to this.  In many aspects it's now
> a business as out of control as financial services, selling
> equivalents of ppi, swaps and the lie of reward without effort.  If I
> had kids of college age now I'd work to send them to a top university
> (less than 10% of those in the UK), probably abroad to learn another
> language and culture, for them to graduate without debt - but if they
> weren't smart enough I'd get them out of school at 16 and into
> apprenticeships or the armed services.
>
> The madness of this is clear in the promise you can get financial
> advantage for life by getting the same qualification as half of the
> rest of the population.  The actual academic costs of teaching/library
> provision outside science are about £3K not 27K and teaching content
> is really only part-time, not full-time.  Our universities, except a
> few, are not centres of excellence, but clapped-out factories that
> should be closing against on-line competition.  There is an
> alternative.

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