Mind's Eye Re: The Minority Report

This is a tough one Neil. I watch schools struggle with the business of providing education in the realities of teacher unions and growing classrooms. I also spent a summer at National Louis University with my son who was thoroughly tested for learning ability after he began to doubt himself in second grade. It would be wonderful if each student was assessed for learning ability and taught to access and process information according to their own abilities.  What we learned about Cody was that he had some genius level abilities (180 in mazes and spatial relations) and some deficit areas that got in the way of the traditional teaching methods (short term memory and auditory processing.) We set to work at ingraining alternate learning methods (he is a quick visual processor). We also had to work with the school to access materials and testing procedures that fit him better.  In the end, he graduated from university cum laud but more importantly, his self esteem and self concept in tact. Half the challenge seemed to be keeping up his motivation and confidence. It was a long haul and he didn't begin to get good grades until he was in the university.  I suspected that was because the presentation of the information was left more up to him, and he accessed it in ways that he best processed it. Not sure he would have made it without a handful of teachers in grade school and high school that believed in him like I did and helped him navigate the system.

What I see is that the business model isn't working, and either is the education model. But what it would take to adapt education to individual ability I cannot say.  I know it has been discussed for decades, but the old models remain. 

On Monday, February 2, 2015 at 5:10:18 AM UTC-5, archytas wrote:

The more experience of education I get, the less respect I have for it.  I believe we should all get more opportunity for education, but also that most of what is on offer is part of a dreadful control fraud.  There is an urgent need for a substantial minority report that doesn't treat our schools and universities as sacrosanct.  My own belief is they do us great damage.

Most people don't do well at school and don't get to university.  If we take IQ as a reasonable measure (it isn't in the end) we find most people aren't going to find university education much use to them.  It was designed for people with high IQ above 115.  This is a small percentage and we aren't much good at increasing IQ.  In recent times, we have increased the percentage of kids who can get into university, largely by dropping standards to qualify more at school and college.  We may have gotten much better at teaching, but I've seen no sign of this.

What is obvious around the world is that the prestige of your education is more important than content.  We still have an elite being put through very expensive schools and Ivy League institutions.  Science remains largely unknown.

Schools and universities are not much about education.  If they were, then all of us would be able to tell the story of it going dark and night and hence big bang.  Very few know even something as basic as this.  Child-minding is the most essential function.  Indoctrination and socialisation is next.  Increasingly, we hear it is all about preparation for jobs.

If we started again, what kind of education would we design?  One that leaves thick kids with, say, autistic spectrum disorder, to the wonders of a basket-weaving future in a world in which baskets are better made by machines?  Or one that trains the 'smart' to make it politically incorrect to call them 'thick kids' but leave the 'educationally challenged' to the same fate?  An education that leaves us voting on the economy, yet not knowing how one works (this is peculiarly true of economists)?

Anyone any ideas?  Probably not, you all went to school!   

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