Is "Education" Good for Our Children?

Now that I own a business, it is becoming more and more clear to me that my "education" was, in a way, garbage. Well, ok, not ALL of it. I've learned to read and write. I've learned to do calculations. And I learned a few things about the universe. However, my formal education attempeted to extremely limit my ability to be creative. Now I can see why- I was trained to become an employee. They wanted me to become part of the crowd of people who graduates, get credit cards and buy a house and a car. They wanted my life. They wanted me to get a job and try to climb the ladder, like most people. They wanted me to become the lowest form of servant- an employee. But I wanted to become the highest form of servant- an entrepreneur. But they tried to make me think like an employee. Specially at university, where I was punished for thinking like an entrepreneur. There, I learnt that we "must" imitate everyone and quote those on higher positions.

But having a business made me even more of an entrepreneur. Now, every time something goes wrong, every time something doesn't work, I don't see a problem. I see an opportunity. Immediately, I arrive to solutions to the "problem" and my mind goes into creative mode. The business simply unfolds like magic from the "problem". I'm an entrepreneur.

Is "education" good for our children, or does it limit them to a lifetime of debt and poverty?

(Also, I find the educational system very convenient for corporations, as they probably don't want more entrepreneurs, who might want to compete against them, and they always want more employees in order to replace existing ones or further grow their businessess.)

 

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I know exactly what you mean. I studied at home for much of my life, for that exact reason. 'Education' is the conventional sense is a euphemism for 'mind rape'. (Ok, I listen to too much Death Angel).

 

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I think you are exactly correct. The original purpose of universal puplic education (at least here in the US) was to support the idea that an ignorant and illiterate population could have no hope of making informed decisions about who to elect and why. Such a noble ideal.

Today, primary education, imo, churns out "employees" as you put it. We need cannon fodder for factories, convenience stores, and fast food chains.

(I'm currently an "employee" although at a fairly creative level, developiong embedded hardware and software systems. I've also been involved in two start-up companies.)

Is this a bad thing? Maybe not. There are those who will always see the potential to become more than that. And "we" need convienience stores...

That sounds a bit self-serving and snooty, but I think it's a reality we must live with.

 

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education is good for our children it teaches them asic maths, english skills, and without those most of them will be unemployable

 

i believe that the education system is geared to maximize it's efforts.
to educate the maximum amount of students with a minimum of resources.

i also believe that it is geared to weeding out the ones that can't make the big decisions. in other words it doesn't inform you of certain things, you must have the intelligence, motivation, and courage, to find them on your own.

 

If so, then why do they punish you when you think outside the box?

 

give an example of what you mean.

 

You write a different perspective on a historical event or on politics and get a 0 for doing that.

 

The thing is, you're right. I've thought about this before, but what is boils down to, is a pecking order. Does the grass rebel because it is the lowest on the food chain? No, because it can't. The world is how it is, and I think that on the biggest levels, it is fine the way it is. Of course, smaller issues of things such as unrest, racism, stealing, cruelty and such can be done away with, the big 'issues' have no cure. A perfect world is a boring, safe one. Read the book 'The Giver' to really understand what I mean. We can't get rid of education, and there has to be people out there. The 'losers.' The garbage men, and the McDonalds workers etc. I read a story once that frames this impossible problem perfectly. It was a story where peoples minds were controlled, at birth your brain would be altered to make sure that all you wanted to be was a garbage man, or a computer programmer, or some other job. So, the scientists, pretending to be the 'good guys just fulfilling the peoples wants' only taught them how to be the garbage men, etc.

 

You must remember that education is for preparedness, everything about education. Why they train you as a servant is so you can build character. Some people live their lives at the top for so long that when they suddenly find themselves at the bottom they don't know what to do. My chem prof told us about a friend of his in Grad school, this guy(his friend) was voted the most brilliant chemist even before grad school, he even took his grad school exam with ink; then he failed his graduation thesis in grad school and he didn't know what to do next. Educators don't care about what you do with what they teach you, they just want you to have choices, and maybe even some actual enlightenment.

 

hmm my education was different i went to schools at the weirdest schools would put harry potter to shame victoria in au has good education i would say the best in australia
and won the best education award thingy and true to its tale

dunno what its like over other countries accept mine was wierd never learned much at normal schools they were boring to the shit
but other places were cool like this castle in sydney has these tunnels underground and blood stains where they used lions in the old days to kill the ahm bad people and the princess of darkness she would sit and watch the display with her peasansts
that was way cool school mate the bees bloody knees
yeah i used to love exploring that place

 

I don't mean to defend any "educational system" -lord knows the flaws are obvious - but the idea of a bunch of teenage entrepreneur types, scornful of garbage men and other menial types, ignorant of history and political thought and even the basics of physical science, turned out of the schools at 14 to gift us all with the benefit of their creativity and unfettered imaginations, doesn't appeal.

The average teenager isn't qualified to be a garbage man - they couldn't handle the job well.

And that's OK - such real work is not what they are supposed to be doing.

One of the real problems with computer software, for example, is that so much of it is designed by children.

 

I have a real fear for the furture in this regard, at least that of the USA. My first hand experiences with the curricula and test performance oriented education of at least my own children are indeed frightening.

 

How about just learning how to read, write, do arithmetic and geometry really WELL and NOTHING ELSE...from the ages of seven to fourteen.

After that, everything else is optional.

 

"Never let formal education get in the way of your learning." - Mark Twain

Is education good for our children? Our current methods are obsolete. To understand, here's an interview with Alvin Toffler, author of Future Shock, The Third Wave, and more:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DWj-G-VZEQ

- N

 

History, politics, science, and literature are far more important for the citizenry of a democracy that intends to remain one (as school subjects) than reading, writing, and arithmetic;

for the same reason that walking and swimming are more important than leg exercises and breath-holding practice.

One problem here is that too much reward is given to money, too little to contribution. The genius of the US was originally, partly, that it educated its women - despite such education being absolutely wasted, in the sense that it did not (directly) pay on the job market. The entire economy of the US was supercharged by that investment.

The current system pays education poorly, for at least two artificial (market distorting) reasons: credentials are assigned the value of education, and have been inflated; the US imports education it has not paid for, driving down the price of employing it.

Last I heard, there were about 18,000 medical degrees granted to US citizens in a given year, and 24,000 medical jobs filled. Just for one example.

And another factor: As long as so much of the cost of education (time and money) is paid for up front by the educated person, it will be a dubious bargain for them, because they do not certainly and reliably receive so much of the benefit - many of the benefits of having educated people around are distributed widely, and unspecifiable in advance. If the cost is not distributed similarly, too little education will be acquired for greatest systemic efficiency.

We are not going to be able to import education forever.

 

Interesting, except he still needs to eat food, live in a house, and move about from place to place...all forms of wealth that require little of the 'knowledge' he believes will become the most important world commodity.

 

But the better the technology, the less people required to do all the farming/growing, which leaves an abundance of people left for other skills.

- N

 

For the love of gods, don't educate your children!

>:}