Coming Soon to a School Near You: Big Ed

[tonysam]

Excellent post by Marion Brady. Just a snip of this excellent piece:

Maybe because those originally pushing it were leaders of business and industry rather than educators, the effort was begun, and continues, without several relevant issues being addressed. There has been, for example, no discussion of the wisdom of standardizing knowledge in the middle of a knowledge explosion. Neither is anyone asking if the “core” school subjects – the ones being standardized – are up to the challenges the future will bring.

No provision has been made for coordinating or prioritizing the work of the various standards-writing committees.

No one has been assigned responsibility for mediating the conflicts which will arise as the supporters of various school subjects compete for learner time and public money.

No apologies have been offered to professional educators for telling them they don’t know how to do their jobs.

No one is addressing the fact that the world that school subjects try to explain is an interconnected whole that can’t be understood using a random handful of disconnected school subjects.

link

[tonysam]

1. Gee, another unrec

Amazing the hatred for public education and teachers on a "Democratic" board.

[msongs]

2. most of wht is taught in school is just passing knowledge with no long term use IMO nt

[proud2BlibKansan]

3. Schools should mainly teach HOW to learn

That's a lot more important than WHAT to learn.

[mzteris]

4. exactly. n/t

[lostnfound]

5. Long term use is for the owners of society - the masses no longer know how to write their own script

School prohibits "excess fraternization" (think unions or populist democracies or people sticking together without need for authority to tell them what to do).
School instills a fear of stepping outside the boundaries.
School assures that those who can and will show "compliance" are rewarded.

I loved school personally, at least from the time I remember, but I think it retrospect it was a process of putting blinders on, more than taking them off.

[Hannah Bell]

6. i'm sure a national curriculum & governance by DC & corporate charter schools chains will improve

all that.