The Indoctrination of University.

We love specialisation.  We love it so much that we teach it to our children from a very early age.  After I moved to the USA my child's Elementary school had a "spirit day" where they get to wear the raiment of their favourite University.  Just think about that for one moment;  we're talking about children of ages 5 to 10, who are invited to choose their favourite university!  At that age I wasn't even qualified to choose my favourite flavour of ice cream when presented with more than 3 flavours!   My daughter, quite understandably came to me and said "Daddy I don't understand, I don't know anything about college?", and really who would expect her to at age 6?  And yet there were all the other kids parading around in their various Ivy League, or State University uniforms proudly. 

For me this raises many questions, and I hope it does for the readers too, and has more parallels with religion than I'm comfortable talking about (which is the subject of another post probably!)

But I wonder, upon what are these children basing their choices of college on?  Almost certainly the opinion of their parents. In general the parents of the children at this particular school, don't even question whether there is a need for the fruits of their loins to even attend a university, but clearly, not just any university, we've already bought them the uniform of the best college, which is apparently, highly likely to be the one the parent went to (no confirmation bias here at all).

These kids have barely learned to write their own names, and the college funds are already in full swing, along with the pre-indoctrination of where to study, and very likely what to study, and as the natural follow-on what to do once they graduate!

Is it any wonder that we're finding a shortage of creative problem solvers in the world?  Why would anyone learn to think for themselves, when they encouraged from their earliest experiences to be mini clones?

Chronological Advancement is Illogical, Dogmatic and Archaic

I've not written a post in sometime, because I've been working hard dealing with the "realities" of the public school system as it exists today.  I see lots of people talking about how an overhaul of the public school systems is urgently required; I see yet others claiming that the system needs to be torn down and completely rebuilt from the ground up.  Yet I also thought about some possible ways to solve the problems in the current system; here's one that's been pushed around for a while, so I'm going to add my voice to this, apparently relatively easy fix.

Why do we insist on grouping children by age.  The chronological approach to teaching is inflexible, dogmatic, and archaic.  It serves no purpose other than to enforce bright kids to study with kids that aren't as bright or maybe have difficulties in certain areas.   If child gets held back a year because he hasn't learned the content sufficiently (and when I say content, of course I actually mean "to pass the test"), it's a source of humiliation to the child (you just made him look dumb in front of all the other kids that managed just fine)  and to his parents ("Hey how's Johnny doing? He's in 5th grade now right?".  If the kid was acting out because he realised he wasn't at the same level as the rest of the class, then by holding him back a year, we've just entrenched his resent for the school system even more deeply.  Do we expect him to come back from this and do great things with his life?  I think not, all the positive reinforcement and sticker charts in the world are unlikely to make these kids a cheerleader of the school system.  Also we only get to advance the bright kids once a year, doesn't matter how much smarter you are, you get advanced with the rest of your class, no matter how stellar your performance (with the exception of very very rare instances, where the parents and school both agree and push for this, I can count the number of times I've heard about this happening on the fingers of one hand)

Isn't it much smarter to advance these according to ability, as needed?  Let's look at this for one moment.  There would be no need for a "No Child Left Behind" program since each child would be taught according to ability rather than age.  The kids that are naturally smart would get advanced once they outgrow the capabilities of the class they are currently in.  There would be less stress on the teachers to feel like they were neglecting the kids that need extra help because everyone would be at a similar level in the classroom.  The stress on the students that were unable to advance as fast as the other kids would be reduced, since they would always be surrounded by intellectually similar peers.

And if you take a look at vocational education and qualifications this is exactly how it works, and works very successfully I might add.  Can you imagine the absurdity of wanting to train a project manager as a natural progression of your career and being told I'm sorry, you can't take that course/learn that material until you're <N> years old. No, it simply doesn't happen except in our broken education system.  If I'm capable of taking a course and can meet the prerequisites of attending that course and/or exam, then I do so.  I might have 18 year olds on the course, I might have 58 year old students on the course with me, and no one cares, no one cares in the slightest about any age difference since we're all there to learn the same information.

I'll admit I'm biased, because it's an idea I think would work.  I'd love to hear the reasons why this wouldn't work.

The Church of Education

The Teacher Wars: A History of America's Most Embattled Profession

I'm sure this book has been around for sometime now.  I've not managed to get around to it yet, but it is on my list of books to read; however it does raise some interesting points.

If you're not familiar with it (and again I have not yet read it) it deals with the attitude towards the teachers of the education system, how and why they're maligned, or revered.

To me, and as is probably quite evident from this blog, I don't really blame (or praise) the teachers one way or another.  It's not that the teachers are good or bad, caring or uncaring, the problem is with the education religion; that is to say that the teachers themselves are probably a great bunch of guys, but I beleive that they buy into the education dogma, and the education religion.  Putting blind faith in a system that rarely gets objectively evaluated.

Now I know there are a ton of people out there saying to themselves "I know a teacher..." or "I'm a teacher...", "who reads about new educational methods from cutting edge educational leaders all the time; I'm always trying to further my understanding and abilities".   Anyone should be admired for trying to better their knowledge, and expand on their abilities, self-improvement is at the root of personal progress.  The difference is whether your self-improvement reinforces what you already beleive with a fresh angle, or whether you are pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone into areas that really make you think differently.  For example, if I want a fresh perspective on the church, should I go and speak to a pastor? Or would that give me a slightly different perspective on what I already think I know?

I beleive many teachers are the same way and for the most part and I think a public that maligns teachers for doing the best job they can in a system that is so deeply flawed is a little naive and short-sighted.  The teachers at a grass roots level buy into this stuff, they go to University, and learn education from professional educators that assisted in building the system as it exists today; or to put it another way, they're going to the Church of Education, to learn from the Pastors, and Priests, and in some cases Prophets (or should that read profits?).  They are taught how to contribute to the post-war revolution of building lots of new little cogs for the post-industrial machine; this is where the system is flawed.  You can't blame the congregation for the flaw of the church (cult?), all you can do is wonder why no one else is seeing past the dogma and making their own minds up about things, how many truly think critically about it?

I'm not going to make my mind up about the book until I've read it, I beleive that there are good able members of the congregation and less able ones.  I think the answer to why Johnny can't read, may be easy to attribute to potential teacher failings (as the public so often does), but I think the problem runs far deeper in a system that values test results over ability and strength.

I look forward to reading this book with interest.

Linchpin by Seth Godin

Lots has been written about Seth Godin, and much has been written by him; some people love what he has to say, others have a favourite book and find his other works "very similar".   Whether you love him or not, one of the key principles in his books is creative thinking, perhaps more colloquially refered to as "thinking outside of the box".  Many of the ideas he presents are controversial, although less so more recently; and one of my favourite topics is when he talks about schools and universities as they exist today being rooted in the premise that we need to create lots of little cogs that make the big machine work as whole.

Here's an excerpt from the book (reproduced with permission, thanks Seth),

Does School Work?
If I drill and practice and grade and reward you for years on doing math with fractions, what are the chances that you’ll learn fractions? School does a great job of teaching students to do what we set out to teach them. It works. The problem is that what we’re teaching is the wrong stuff.
Here’s what we’re teaching kids to do (with various levels of success):
Fit in
Follow instructions
Use #2 pencils
Take good notes
Show up every day
Cram for tests and don’t miss deadlines
Have good handwriting
Punctuate
Buy the things the other kids are buying
Don’t ask questions
Don’t challenge authority
Do the minimum amount required so you’ll have time to work on another subject
Get into college
Have a good résumé
Don’t fail
Don’t say anything that might embarrass you
Be passably good at sports, or perhaps extremely good at being a quarterback
Participate in a large number of extracurricular activities
Be a generalist
Try not to have the other kids talk about you
Once you learn a topic, move on 

Now, the key questions:
Which of these attributes are the keys to being indispensable?
Are we building the sort of people our society needs?
The problem doesn’t lie with the great teachers. Great teachers strive to create linchpins. The problem lies with the system that punishes artists and rewards bureaucrats instead.
Here’s what Woodrow Wilson said about public education:

“We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class, of necessity, in every society, to forgo the privileges of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.”

After retaining brutal Pinkerton men, trainloads of strikebreakers, and even the National Guard to violently put down strikes, Andrew Carnegie decided that the answer to worker unrest was a limited amount of education. “Just see, wherever we peer into the first tiny springs of the national life, how this true panacea for all the ills of the body politic bubbles forth—education, education, education.”
The model is simple. Capitalists need compliant workers, workers who will be productive and willing to work for less than the value that their productivity creates. The gap between what they are paid and what the capitalist receives is profit.
The best way to increase profit was to increase both the productivity and the compliance of factory workers. And as Carnegie saw, the best way to do that was to build a huge educational-industrial complex designed to teach workers just enough to get them to cooperate.
It’s not an accident that school is like a job, not an accident that there are supervisors and rules and tests and quality control. You do well, you get another job (the next grade), and continue to do well and you get a real job. Do poorly, don’t fit in, rebel—and you are kicked out of the system.

Seth's book proposes treating our endeavours, work, jobs as art, to work creatively, and encourages creative thinking to make your work, more inspired, more fulfilling, not just for yourself, but to affect those around you too; to be inspired and be inspiring to others. To think creatively about what you do, see it objectively and ask yourself is this the best way to approach the situation or is the fundamental approach flawed due to dogma, staid, simply because "we've always done it this way".  As the Buddhists say, "there is no good work or bad work, there is only work; and our prejudices, biases and thoughts colour it so". Seth challenges you to challenge yourself.  Buy a copy, and challenge your own status quo; decide for yourself if you want your kids growing up to be Linchpins, or Cogs?