Yesterday I was thinking about what is most important in one’s education. That is, what did you consider to me most important then…and now. The thought came to me that learning how to think would likely trump anything else in one’s growth as a human. This brings up a number of quite complicated questions for me (as a teacher). How do you teach someone to how to think? How did I learn?
This is a big problem for me, in that there was little or nothing I received in my formal (K-12) education which had any direct impact upon this ‘most important’ skill. The sad fact is that I have seen a lot of things which relate to me experiences in early education (consider the first link below; Valedictorian Speaks Out Against Schooling in Graduation Speech to see what I mean…).
As a teacher, I need to better understand how I (and most others) learned how to think. From my recent experiences as a teacher, as well as my time as a student, I know that this is not something which is of prime focus in most middle school and high school classes. As a matter of fact, what little I did learn in high school about how to think came from situations outside the parameters of a classroom experience. I did have a number of opportunities to interact with teachers and fellow students on topics which were of interest to all of us (versus being impelled to digest information on subjects which are required topics in classrooms).
I got a chance to talk to social studies teachers about such topics as: 19th century Russian novels, Jacksonian Democracy, and such themes as : what is important to know in order to be a good citizen, as well as other open ended questions. Through these informal discussions in the hallways during lunch hour I started to see that rhetoric really meant, as well as developing some reasoned perspectives on some of these topics.
I don’t k now how to accomplish this to groups of 35-40 students at a time… I know that there are teachers who seem to accomplish something with these sorts of topics and methods with larger classes of students, but I am sure that they accomplish a lot less than they would like…
Part of me thinks that any real learning (and teaching) upon these more important topics are only effectively accomplished in very small groups. I would imagine that almost every teacher and student would agree with this. To create some sort of colloquium for students and teachers which would be small enough (two to eight people…) also strikes me as being financially impossible, considering how the education system is structured. It’s too bad, since this is about the only idea I can come up with which would have a potential to fix some of the real problems we face in educating the next generation.
So, on to the links… There are so many directions from which criticism of our education system is coming. In the following links you can see what could be described as direct attacks on some of the ‘third rail’ topics in middle and high schools as well as college education (e.g. attacks upon tenure, the traditional college experience, et.al.). I do find it interesting that some of these strident articles come from the political left (the home of teachers unions…) such as Slate.com and the New York Times. Nonetheless, they do cover some areas of the education industry which do need some real scrutiny.
Valedictorian Speaks Out Against Schooling in Graduation Speech
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/212383-Valedictorian-Speaks-Out-Against-Schooling-in-Graduation-Speech
High-School Graduates Unprepared for College Courses
http://slatest.slate.com/id/2264366
Reforming Schools: The Crowd Has Ideas, Too
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/18/opinion/l18school.html?_r=3
The case for getting rid of tenure
http://www.slate.com/id/2263348
Academic Bankruptcy
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/15/opinion/15taylor.html?_r=1
Where to Get the Best Free Education Online
http://lifehacker.com/5615716/where-to-get-the-best-free-education-online
