Enmos
Valued Senior Member
Typing.
Typing
Informal. a person, regarded as reflecting or typifying a certain line of work, environment, etc.: a couple of civil service types.
Typing.
Love.
I vote for English with emphasis on reading and writing (and mechanics) instead of on literature. Not having any appreciation for Shakespeare won't hurt you in the long run, but not knowing how to read and write will.
And if this was an ideal world, we don't need no English classes after fifth grade.
But being able to understand what Shakespeare is telling you about your world will indeed help you navigate through life. Not because people talk like Shakespeare but because Shakespeare wrote about archetypes and universal truths. How often do we use references just to the general storylines of Hamlet, Macbeth, or Romeo and Juliet? The details of these plots run even deeper and are timeless--that's what archetypes are all about. As one who in fact never learned to read at this level, because the adults in my life were too busy making sure I was overdosing on science and math so I could help beat those dadgum Rooskies in the Cold War (welcome to high school in the Sputnik Era), I'm constantly tripping over life and having my wife, with her M.A. in English, point out that I just did the same stupid thing that some character did in King Lear.I vote for English with emphasis on reading and writing (and mechanics) instead of on literature. Not having any appreciation for Shakespeare won't hurt you in the long run, but not knowing how to read and write will.
As I've said many times, if this were an ideal world we'd all be speaking Chinese, which is a far superior language for changing times. Of course it's hell to read but if it were our language we'd damn well fix that.kikuchi said:And if this was an ideal world, we don't need no English classes after fifth grade
Remember that science is in essence the thesis that the natural universe is a closed system that can be understood and predicted by deriving theories logically from empirical observations of its behavior. Each science teaches you certain techniques of empiricism, observation, logic and theorization. Physics is heavy on logic, chemistry on following a sequence of steps, engineering on measurement... and biology on observation. If you can take a frog apart and see how all the components fit together and how they operate in harmony, that helps you develop the skill to do the same thing when your rocket ship inexplicably stops running and you have to figure out why. Sure you can do the same thing with a carburetor or a food processor, but natural systems give you something that artifacts don't: everything isn't arranged neatly and efficiently but it still works.A good level of each is certainly wonderful, but there comes a point in which, unless it's your major, that knowledge is useless. What would a kid who wants to be an astronaut, say, do with the knowledge of a frog's innards?
I agree that American schools may have gone a teeny weeny bit too far in the direction of chaos and letting kids "do their own thing." That's just the famous American Pendulum Swing, the way our culture deals with the world. (E.g., pants buttoned around your neck in the 1950s, sex in the streets in the 1970s; you can't get a job in 1955 because you're not white or don't have a penis, and you can't get one in 2005 because you are and do.) The answer is not to swing the pendulum all the way in the other direction to the stifling atmosphere of a military environment. Children need to grow up to be more creative, more iconoclastic, more skeptical of authority than they were growing up to be fifty years ago, and military schools are not noted for delivering that kind of graduate.However, another issue is the method of schooling, which is absolutely horrible. Open up Military Schools, I say. It would discipline, train, and educate children much better than your average school.
But you'll sure impress the smart ones. Believe me, that cute girl will look like your mom after you've been married to her for twenty or thirty years, but the smart girl will be even smarter.Never have a I seen a cute girl and impressed her with mathematics.
As the Head Linguist around here that's music to my ears. Language is one of the earliest technologies we developed, and it's the one that distinctly elevated us above the other animals. We have unprecedented abilities to communicate, to plan and organize, to share information with people who are widely separated from us by time and space. This is the key technology that an adult must have mastered in order to take his place in civilization.No one subject is the end all-be all, but if I had to rank them, I'd place English first.
However, another issue is the method of schooling, which is absolutely horrible. Open up Military Schools, I say.
It would discipline, train, and educate children much better than your average school.
Which subject taught in school sticks with us the longest, and is used most often in everyday endeavours?
However, another issue is the method of schooling, which is absolutely horrible. Open up Military Schools, I say.
It would discipline, train, and educate children much better than your average school.
Wait... aren't you the new kid who a few months ago was lamenting the fact that your education wasn't what it should be, that there were whole libraries full of stuff you didn't know? At least you know how to learn: you spend an awful lot of time here.I went to country school. I did my work while the teacher taught the upper grades. By the time I got to the upper grades, I already knew it from watching. I also got to pick the books I wanted to read (Stranger in a Strange Land, not such a good choice. Grapes of Wrath, good choice). I also sat in the same room with my brothers and sister, so any acting up, got told on.
Another good one is physical therapy, which is already a good profession. The Baby Boomers are not going to yield easily to the constraints of old age.I thought of another subject that would work in well with either Jr High or Senior Hi schools. Funeral Directors. That way the children would be taught what happens when they die so that they just might be more damn carefull when they are alive!
I think pride would be better than honor. Honor needs to be taught carefully and it often is not. Some of the most evil deeds are done to protect the "honor" of the perp, his family or, in the worst case, his country. E.g., the overthrow and destabilization of the government of the only secular, pro-Western Muslim nation in the Mideast to settle a family feud.A military environment is a wonderful one for a child to grow up in. How, you ask? It disciplines them, teaches them respect and honor. . . .
Thank you for unconsciously pointing out the biggest problem with the military mindset: male chauvinism. There's nothing wrong with being physically fit and it's certainly become a big problem with today's style of "parenting by abdication." But "toughness," in a society that celebrates the masculine and denigrates the feminine, warps into aggressiveness, and often even into a primitive "us-versus-them" tribalism that works against the very process of civilization. E.g., the overthrow... oh wait I already noted that one.. . . . and raises them to be tough men.
I see. You're being sarcastic. The word "Spartan" is now an insult and rightfully so. Despite being Hellenes, the Spartans lived in thatched huts in virtually Stone Age conditions, with the artifacts of civilization reserved for the government, which was a military theocracy with only faint stirrings of democracy and kept no written records. Male newborns who were not thought fit for military duty were left to die and the rest were sent to military camps at age seven--where they did not learn to read. Their rites of passage encouraged them to attack and rob foreigners and their society had no emphasis on education, the arts, and most of what we now recognize as "culture."Case in point, Sparta. That type of schooling is ideal.
I understand that it's a rite of passage for every child to rebel against these contstraints, but after all they do accommodate the biological reality that children are children. Their brains and endocrine systems only begin to approach full physical development in adolescence. Their emotions and judgment are simply not adequate for the task of choosing how best to prepare for adult life--a task which BTW is recursive, since one must already possess considerable understanding of the world before one can correctly decide what further understanding is needed to make one's way in it.Others should decide what you should know. Trust experts. Interest should not be a primary factor in what you learn.
Being far to lazy to rewrite the whole progressive critique of education, I shoot for pithy.I understand that it's a rite of passage for every child to rebel against these contstraints, but after all they do accommodate the biological reality that children are children. Their brains and endocrine systems only begin to approach full physical development in adolescence. Their emotions and judgment are simply not adequate for the task of choosing how best to prepare for adult life--a task which BTW is recursive, since one must already possess considerable understanding of the world before one can correctly decide what further understanding is needed to make one's way in it.
I understand Toffler's criticism that much of what we elders teach is "obsoledge" because we have the luck to be living through the most accelerated Paradigm Shift in history. (The old Chinese curse: "May you live during interesting times.") But what we need to work on is our approach to education, doing a better job of figuring out what children are going to need to learn. Not abdicate and let twelve-year olds decide that it's more important to develop videogaming skills and learn rap lyrics than to know what rights the Constitution grants them or that Iraq is too far away to attack us.
As I've said many times, if this were an ideal world we'd all be speaking Chinese, which is a far superior language for changing times. Of course it's hell to read but if it were our language we'd damn well fix that.
Yes, let's train children to be used to and expect society to be run like dictatorial organizations with rigid hierarchies and no respect for the individual. That will make make for great citizens in a democratic society.