I, too, think the educational system is the place to turn to help fix lots of society's problems. We have kids "captive" for 8 hours a day for 13 years, so it's an amazing opportunity to do some good. The problem is that everyone has different opinions about what "good" is. I tried a little experiment a couple months ago: I asked 5 of my highly educated friends from MIT how they would improve the educational system. And I got back five very different answers, most of which I found pretty unimpressive.
For example, my material scientist friend immediately launched into a tirade about how we should teach kids how subatomic particles actually work rather than the simplified model of the atom, about about how history is a useless subject that should be removed from school altogether. I couldn't have disagreed more.
Personally, I'd like to see tons of changes, including:
- vastly more funding, so we can attract more skilled and experienced teachers and have smaller class sizes
- year round school programs, so poorer children don't fall so behind during summer break
- more emphasis and encouragement around reading, which much fewer restrictions on what we consider "acceptable" to read (my high school did everything in its power to get kids to hate reading)
- systematic experimentation around different teaching styles and educational systems, so we can learn what works and doesn't
- history classes more focused on storytelling and distilling lessons from historical events, and less focused on pro-America propaganda and remembering random disconnected facts and dates
- more focus on practical psychology, rhetoric, debate, logic, and/or research in the curriculum (how can people become productive citizens and informed voters when they can't dissect an argument or perform research?)
- more emphasis on the benefits of the scientific method compared to alternatives
- practical education around business, finance, etc, so that poor kids aren't left behind in that arena
> my material scientist friend immediately launched into a tirade about how we should teach kids how subatomic particles actually work rather than the simplified model of the atom,
That's the problem, we have to get rid of the idea that there's a set of ideas that kids "have" to know. Why don't you let the kid decide what he wants to study. Like there will be limitations but fuck it, if s/he is interested in something weird, encourage it instead of killing it.
> vastly more funding, so we can attract more skilled and experienced teachers and have smaller class sizes
I think that the teacher model doesn't scale. Develop MOOCs and like online communities. School will be the bridge from real world to these communities. Teachers will help you when you get stuck.
> more emphasis and encouragement around reading, which much fewer restrictions on what we consider "acceptable" to read (my high school did everything in its power to get kids to hate reading)
Exactly. Also remove the idea that reading means reading fiction. Make sure that the kid is doing something somewhat productive and that s/he's engaged. Engagement is key.
>systematic experimentation around different teaching styles and educational systems, so we can learn what works and doesn't
> - more focus on practical psychology, rhetoric, debate, logic, and/or research in the curriculum (how can people become productive citizens and informed voters when they can't dissect an argument or perform research?)
Exactly. But also fundamentally just make sure the kids can explore whatever area of human endeavor they want to.
> That's the problem, we have to get rid of the idea that there's a set of ideas that kids "have" to know. Why don't you let the kid decide what he wants to study. Like there will be limitations but fuck it, if s/he is interested in something weird, encourage it instead of killing it.
The collective cultural experience is that this is sometimes incredibly valuable, but very often leads to intense study of subjects of marginal economic value. A person may be intensely interested in Latin and Greek Classics, but the odds of this producing skills for a livelihood are not as high as some other subjects.
Which is to say there's sometimes an awkward tradeoff between "Weird thing a kid wants to study" and "Thing that can be studied that will pay the bills later in life". This is not something that can be avoided by making education services free at point-of-consumption, because student time is finite.
For example, my material scientist friend immediately launched into a tirade about how we should teach kids how subatomic particles actually work rather than the simplified model of the atom, about about how history is a useless subject that should be removed from school altogether. I couldn't have disagreed more.
Personally, I'd like to see tons of changes, including:
- vastly more funding, so we can attract more skilled and experienced teachers and have smaller class sizes
- year round school programs, so poorer children don't fall so behind during summer break
- more emphasis and encouragement around reading, which much fewer restrictions on what we consider "acceptable" to read (my high school did everything in its power to get kids to hate reading)
- systematic experimentation around different teaching styles and educational systems, so we can learn what works and doesn't
- history classes more focused on storytelling and distilling lessons from historical events, and less focused on pro-America propaganda and remembering random disconnected facts and dates
- more focus on practical psychology, rhetoric, debate, logic, and/or research in the curriculum (how can people become productive citizens and informed voters when they can't dissect an argument or perform research?)
- more emphasis on the benefits of the scientific method compared to alternatives
- practical education around business, finance, etc, so that poor kids aren't left behind in that arena
I could go on forever.