Education

Since I am, now, mainly a teacher, education is something I tend to think about a lot. What do we want to achieve with education? Why educate? And what should we be teaching?
My daughter and I were discussing this last night, and a couple of things came up that I think we should be thinking about more seriously.

It is generally agreed that educated people are better citizens - they pay their taxes, they obey the laws, they are generally more tolerant and more civic minded than the uneducated. They are healthier and their kids are generally better looked after. However, what is an education that will achieve this?

Initially, education for everyone sprang from the reform movements, who felt that illiterate people will be exploited by bosses and rulers, and so pushed for education for all. This was allied to the industrial revolution, and the need for workers that were trained according to some mass production method. 

There was a lot of opposition, and to a large extent education remained the province of the rich, until state school funding started, and gradually we have what is now, if not universal in all countries, certainly in most of those that value education, the accepted system: Children attend school from the age of six to about sixteen or eighteen, then go to university or college, and then become part of the workforce. Schools have set curricula for the subjects they teach, usually drawn up by some board or ministry of education.

During the initial reform a number of critics were very scathing about teaching the masses, especially as this would make them dissatisfied with their position in society. Obviously the use of education to stratify society did not end there, and in fact, is still with us today, where children with wealthy parents generally get a better education than poor children.

So, my thoughts about changing education are these:

Remove all impediments to children attending schools - whether rich or poor, white or black give them an equal opportunity to learn.

Weed out the scholars, the knowledge seekers, and place them in one track. Allow the rest to be trained in basic literacy and numeracy, and to discover their aptitude and be trained to the best of their ability in that aptitude.

Why am I asking for this rather radical strategy? Simple. Every day I've been a teacher I see the scholars or potential scholars, the ones who would love to explore a subject, either becoming bored because they have to proceed at the pace of the slowest child in class, or educating themselves. And, conversely, I see the agonies and boredom of those children who have to struggle with subjects they have no interest in and no aptitude for. Radical? Maybe. But think about it a bit...