Well Crni, in some ways I agree and some I don't. I am unsure how exactly the education system works in your part of the world or class sizes and such, but I see one of the problems with the education system as being overcrowding of schools. With each teacher having less individual time for students it does not help. Also at some level I disagree about the teaching method as I think the method of teaching you are portraying while helping kids "deal" with school you are effectively kicking the can down the road. Without testing and a basis of minimum education we would leave these kids as underperforming adults who do not have the tools to deal with the world out of school. Learning to succeed is just as important as learning to lose. Our enabling of every child to be a winner will not teach them to be a good loser when there boss is yelling at them for fucking something up, and could lead to an even more entitled generation. We have to give people not only the tools to succeed but the tools to learn from there failure and find success. This is part of the safety net of schools, participation awards, incomplete instead of failure, and the general death of masculinity in schools. Oh that child is hyper and keeps staring outside, lets dope him up so he pays attention. Meanwhile he just wants to play soccer, and the teacher in reality has no time to find a way to make the lesson engaging for him.
I think you're missunderstanding my intentions. I am not saying we have to make everyone into a winner. Far from it. I agree with everything you say, giving out trophies for free is the worst you could do in education.
In my 'utopian' school, this learning process in dealing with failures, would come naturally, as you would give students projects, where they could of course 'fail', to experience mistakes is a huge factor in the learning process. The big difference is that you wouldn't have someone standing in the background giving them grades based on how well and quick they can memorize informations - of which we today know is a really bad way of teaching something. What I am actually asking, is that schools approach subjects, like we do it already with our so called 'hobbys'. If you love playing the guitarr, then you don't need someone standing next to you waving around grades and achievements. You wiill try to improve it, because you want it. And that's a lot more effective when it comes to efficient learning.
I know there are difference between the school systems in Germany and the US, but the basics, the principles coming from psychology and early child hood education, are the same. They literaly are. Regardless of culture, herritage or education system. A child has a natural urge to experience and learn about the world around it and the basic needs are the same for all children, we have to, or we wouldn't be able to learn the necessary skills to survive. Neurological and psychological studies by scientists like Gerald Hüther and Martin Spitzer, both Germans, show that learning can only happen if people are actually excited about the subject they are learning. You can't teach someone physics who's absolutely disinterested in physics, much less if they have to do it under preasure. What you have to do, is to find the subject the students are interested in and their capabilitys and give them a chance to join projects where they can 1. Learn the necessary skills to be succesfull and 2. An actual meaningfull way to apply them.
For example, a school could be build as an open platform where students get a chance to experience every subject, from math, to english classes or history at their own pace, the classes would offer now projects those students could attend. For example, there could be a project where students learn for a mathematical competition, other projects could even include scientific research, it could be even interdisciplinary. The teacher would be only a host, a supporter where the students could come to ask for help, if they believe they need it. In other words, I want a more 'scientific' approach, where students actually try to figure things out on their own, just like a resarcher - you would be surprised how much of that sentient can be found in toddlers and there is a famous quote of Einstein where he was asked how he came up with his theories and he said someting that he approached the topic like a child, what would happen if I rode on a ray of light?
This idea that we need to teach people in dealing with 'failure' is an outdated view when it comes to education. We're learning those skills already from the day we're born, the moment you take your first step, trying to learn walking. People often express the fear, that no one would learn anything, or missing on necessary skills. My experience however tells me, that children already do learn very well on their own, like writing, counting etc. That's what we do with the toddlers in my day care center. We read with them, we count with them, we give them oportunities to learn on their own and it works perfectly they come to me with a book and they soak informtions in like a sponge, and the best part is, it works completely without pressure or grades.
What I find interesting is how you can do studies on the subject where children actually enjoy learning, up to the point where they join pre-school/elemtary school and the joy of leaning suddenly takes a sharp drop. I always asked my self why. But now as I am actually working with children, I do not ask anymore, I know it.
Without testing and a basis of minimum education we would leave these kids as underperforming adults who do not have the tools to deal with the world out of school. Learning to succeed is just as important as learning to lose.
I hate to say it like this, but our schools already do a great job in creating those kind of adults. It always did. It's just becoming more and more of an issue, since we're not anymore industrial societies with menial manufacturing jobs where a large part of the public can spend most of their life in.
If we take in the possible effects of automatition and digitalisation, even the menial jobs that are still left might dissapear one day, leaving only jobs that require very creative and highly intelligent people. Not the kind of people that usually go trough the typical school system to say it that way.
It all goes back to the left's obsession with equality of outcome. They would rather every single living being be equally fucking miserable/disenfranchised/dead than some be happy and others not, regardless of how they got there
YES!1 That's E-X-A-C-T-L-Y what I want when I am talking about a more flexible education system that allows everone to learn on their OWN pace.
Did it ever crossed your mind, that you also have a lot of geniuses in school, who drop out because they are so bored by the subjects and speed so they never achieve anything (the so called unver achiever) because everyone is only looking at the fucking grades? There is a big problem, if not only 'bad' students but also exceptionally 'good' students fail the school system! That's a lot of wasted potential.
What we achieve with our current education system, is a normalisation and standardisation where everyone has to be equal when it comes to the knowledge. But I never understood why all people have to learn and memorize at the same pace, even inside the classroom. Some people are obviously faster in picking up certain skills while others are slower. What's wrong in keeping that in mind, and actually allowing for more flexibility here. I've seen 10-11 year old kidz, that could actually understand the prinicples of quantum physics, while others still had to figure out the basics of math and now you're telling me they all have to learn at the same pace and the same subjects. Isn't that quite socialist by the way? One size/approach for everyone?
We have to finally find a way to tread every child as an individual with individual preferences and characteristics. In other words, slow learners need more support, while others need more challanges in the areas where they excell. How comes that we're more concered about the numbers of different coffee flavours in some shitty Barista or Star Bucks with a personal name on our cups, but as soon someone suggests a more personalized education it's the worst thing ever ... I always thought individualism was a big thing with libertarians.
