What is the point of K-12 schooling?
comments | Posted in thoughts on Sunday, September 16 2007 21:23:00 GMT
NOTE: I think very highly of my friends (and their friends), and this post is not directed as an attack or rant towards anyone ... merely my thoughts on schooling.
A friend of a friend of mine wrote this blog post, Welcome to the Real World, discussing why we go to school, or whether we should be dropped directly into college level studies and forgo the rigmarole of kindergarten through 12th grade.
A local cached copy of the article can be found in my cached pages: why school.
What do we learn throughout school?
We learn a lot while at school. Our learning encompasses many areas, both social and scholastic. We develop (over many years) the capacity the build arguments and learn how to communicate with individuals and groups.
Learning is a cumulative process akin to building a complex structure out of Legos. We all need various little pieces of know-how to build grand structures. Various little pieces of such knowledge include: basic arithmatic basis reading skills basic writing skills (printing and cursive) this ability alone takes years to become proficient in simple problem solving and deductive skills time management skills
What purpose does schooling serve?
Schools give a child a place to learn the various minutia described above. A major benefit of schools are the many examples and methods a child is shown to complete a task. Very few people are savants at learning, we must each be shown how to complete a task, at least once, so that we may internalize the process and reproduce it later after having learned it.
So school is a huge pond to gather experiences and perform this learning in. We also learn about past things. Take for instance someone who has not ever been to school and they stumble into a Native American ... in some place called a reservation. Without the basic historical knowledge of Native Americans learned as a child that person would not know who these people where, why they were in a certain area, or what had happened to them to be there now.
Without this learned knowledge. Survival of the fittest simply would not apply. Survival of the fittest comes from generations of individuals sharing and mingling their traits together. But, if everyone didn't go to school until college ... we would all be starting from 0 and having to learn everything we should have learned as a child. Over generations there would be not survival of the fittest because each generation would all be equally un-fit to begin with. People would go nowhere because they would not have learned what came before, how to interact with others, and how to approach solving problems.
What can I get out of school?
The short answer is: whatever you wanted to get out of school.
School is a bountiful resource to those fortunate enough to be able to attend one. If you wanted, or found a desire, to learn mathematics then you could have learned the building blocks of mathematics. And, in university taken that knowledge and explored original ideas and concepts never before thought of.
You can get exposed to other ways of looking at a single math problem from your 5 friends you met while at school. Each of these friends would have a different way of attacking the exact same problem.
School and Learning may not always be fun. Learning is a never-ending process in which we all continually learn, stumble and endeavor in areas of interest we are familiar with ... and at times completely alien to.
Whats the point of a degree?
A degree is a pole by which to measure your level of competence. In point of fact, an interview process will ultimately decree whether or not you get a job. The piece of paper that says 'i know this material' merely helps to confirm to a company or individual that you are an expert in your area of interest.
What about Real Life™ at what point do we learn that?
At every point of your life you are learning and experiencing everything about real life. You are constantly in it and surrounded by it. It takes teachers, guides, family and friends to realize this small fact. Did you not realize that you were learning and experiencing things that would help you get a job, relate to people and solve problems all throughout your time in school and growing up? Maybe you didn't learn enough up until now.
You take what you want from school and life, and nothing more. The earlier one realizes this fact ... the better.