Entertainment For Lively Minds
"Education" and "Knowledge"
Having watched the three political twats on "Newsnight" tonight, and their debate about education, I'm reminded of the quote "Knowledge is something you gain when you have forgotten everything you learned at school." A young lass on there said she wanted to be educated because "It would make me better." No-one could argue with that; but what's "better?' And what's 'knowledge'? Knowing more than anyone else? Do you need to have 'Education' to have 'Knowledge'? Or do you need to have a bit of fucking common sense as well? I speak as a parent whose 15 year old son seems to be regressing into a limbo like state of stagnation and "carntbearsed" attitude. I'm sure I was the same, but I was reading at the time. He watches reruns of "Have I got news for you" on his iTouch. Or are there just thick people and not so thick people?
Another quote from the Bible goes; "Knowledge (sic) Wisdom increaseth sorrow" So. is it better to be thick and happy or hyper-intelligent and suicidal? Just a thought.
- More from chabsy.
- Login or register to post comments
-
According to Einstein
"Any fool can know, the trick is to understand". Sounds pretty much on the money to me.
I've always felt he should have added,
"and then to do something with it."
Cantbearsedness
My 13 year old son has a severe bout of this at the moment. I'm pulling my hair out to be honest.
They call them the Millennials
There are books about them and everything. The instant gratification generation with short attention spans. It's a becoming a real problem in the workplace as they're hard to manage. They want it all, right now, without having to try and engage with very little except social networking sites.
I throw my hands up in despair.
I.Q.
If a Kalahari bushman set you an I.Q.test,could you pass it?
Is it
multiple choice?
Education is the toolkit...
... with which you can then gather and utilise knowledge throughout the rest of your life, if you choose to. Those without education simply don't have that choice open to them.
And there's the old saw about (paraphrasing) the truly "thick" having two strikes against them - not only are they thick, but they don't even know they're thick.
Cantbearsed
An excellent word that perfectly describes my two teenagers.
Everyone tells us they are nice lads, do OK at school etc. but the instant gratification/short attention span/ doing lots of stuff at the same time but not concetntrating on anything really does worry me and I am struggling for answers.
The look of pity I get from them when I sit down to read a book......
Will this generation ever read for pleasure, watch a feature length film without fiddling with a phone, enjoy cooking a meal?. Is it just me?
This business of parents running schools
This business of parents setting up and running schools. For the benefit of their little darlings. I can understand the instincts behind it and I hate the idea that some pillock like Ed Balls has any say whatsoever in what kids get taught in school. But hang on. The sort of parents who might set up one of these operations have a ferocious interest in their local school during the time that their children are attending it. After that their interest tends to wane. Schools have to hang around a bit longer than that.
Yeah.
You would hope that when their interest does start to wane a bit, there'll be a small number of equally committed parents ready to take up the baton as governors.
But in any case (sorry, teacher rant coming), this whole thing about "parental choice" is mad in any case. You don't make a free public utility better by introducing artificial markets - markets inherently produce losers, which means that somewhere, somehow, you're going to have a problem of "sink" schools. The only way you can level the playing field with schools is to make catchment area the only selection criterion (this would work even in 11+ authorities - pass or fail the 11+, you go to the most local grammar or comp). Of course there will always be parents who move to the right area, but you can't legislate against that. I think schools should be in the business of making things as fair and level as possible.
It'll never be perfect, but while you give parents "choice", you leave less clued-up, empowered parents with no choice. It's the well-to-do, well-educated parents who will REALLY have the choice, which means, ultimately, an educational aristocracy. It's cyclical: your well-educated parents are empowered to make the choice, they send you to the best school, you do well, you grow up empowered, you send your kids to the best school. Meanwhile, the same cycle applies, but less pleasantly, to the less well-educated.
Nah. If state education is going to be fair for everyone, you've got to remove choice (unpopular, sure), throw an insane amount of money and resources at the system, and apply that money evenly across schools. No more "specialisms", no more badges on school letterheads that represent a few tens of thousands of extra funding which the school down the road isn't getting. Every school should ultimately get the same budget, based purely on the number of kids it teaches, and the number of kids it teaches is a function, purely, of its catchment area. You'd need a lot of investment upfront to get the current "sink" schools up to scratch, then you level the playing field utterly.
It's the only fair way. I'm convinced of it.
Sorry, everyone. Rant-o-rama.
<applause> Clap Clap Clap </applause>
Although, I just noticed...
...I used "in any case" twice in the same sentence in the same sentence. Shame on me.
:-D
*More applause*
and another up arrow. I couldn't agree more, erm, idiotbear (seems strange, that sequence of words). It's a point that's rarely made by politicians. In fact the occasion when I heard it expressed in the media most clearly was, believe it or not, by Jimmy Carr! He was a panelist on Question Time, and when the subject came up, he made this point, that what parents need isn't choice, but the knowledge that the local school is good enough. If I recall, none of the party reps on the panel had made that point.
Choice is so overrated these days; it's almost become a fetish. Look! There are 50 different washing powders to choose from. Great.
Paradox of choice
I saw a good lecture once called the "paradox of choice", in a nutshell the more options you have the less satisified you are with the one you actually select - as though you are haunted by the belief that out there amongst those not chosen is the absolutely perfect one for you.
Catchments
We have a school round our way which has introduced criteria which effectively cuts out the poorer parts of the town. This was purposefully done but dressed up in a 'we think this is fairest' way. It clearly isn't and has created terrible anxiety as the gap between it and the alternative school has widened. It's basically a version of Apartheid.
When the property world returns to 'normal' behaviours, the effect this will have on house prices (in and outwith the catchment) will create even more anxiety. As it happens, my house is in the catchment and my kids don't go to either school, so I don't have an axe to grind. And even though this situation is great for the value of my house, it is totally wrong.
To paraphrase Churchill...
...catchment area is the absolute worst criterion for deciding school admissions. Apart from all the other ones.
man adapts to circumstance...
I taught sixth-formers, a couple of years back, at the school I used to attend as a pupil. The lessons used to be an hour and ten minutes, but I found they'd been cut to 45 mins, which, after you've greeted, explained and handed out resources, left about 7 minutes for actual teaching. I tried to set homework, only to be told by my head of dept. that "we don't really do homework anymore."
Some of the kids were really nice, but the attention-span thing was definitely a problem - especially if it continues into the workplace.
Oddly though, some of the most inept, stupid people I've ever met were in academia: I used to attend seminars for MA/PHD students, and the berkish behaviour - such as not being able to turn a TV on if it was on standby - was laughable. They had the framework of intelligence, but lacked the guile and charm that real life gives you.
The most interesting people that you meet are a good blend of intelligence, self-deprecation and worldly charm - and you can definitely work on all three.
And the difference
...between being educated and not is, I'm sure, the difference between whether or not you read. I teach a lot of different kids, from a lot of different backgrounds. The ones who read, regardless of whether or not they're rocket scientists, are the ones who do well, because they can concentrate.
I've seen really bright kids, REALLY bright, dropping out of sixth form like flies because they can't concentrate or apply themselves. I mean, we were all lazy, but this is something else. They're so used to being spoonfed. Sure, there's the instant gratification thing, but also there's the recent and massive obsession with testing, which has led to pressured teachers feeling they have to give the kids nothing but test preparation, on a plate, instead of teaching them to think. It terrifies me, and again, it's a result of Labour nicking Tory policies and taking them to absurd lengths.
Would you...
...send your children to a school run by Toby Young?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/secondaryeducation/7404696/Free-our...
There's a hell of a difference between intelligence and common sense, Peterthecook echoes my experience of some academics. Forget turning on the TV, perhaps start with a shower...
In fairness...
...he's only on the steering group. Lots of interesting ideas going on there.
The teenage daughter
at the moment is way too cool for school
sends 100 texts a day according to the bill
spends hours looking at other people's photos on Facebook. Even people she doesn't know (WTF, right?)
occasionally looks up when the News is on, and asks fucking stupid questions
homework means cutting and pasting from the internet
makes us watch rotten telly, most of which is Grange Hill with swearing
The teenage daughter
at the moment is way too cool for school
sends 100 texts a day according to the bill
spends hours looking at other people's photos on Facebook. Even people she doesn't know (WTF, right?)
occasionally looks up when the News is on, and asks fucking stupid questions
homework means cutting and pasting from the internet
makes us watch rotten telly, most of which is Grange Hill with swearing
my kids
never look at Facebook (it's banned), don't send texts or I take their phones from them, do 90%+ of homework tasks set, if they cut and paste from the net I make them re-do it. Oh, and I have about 300 kids. I'm a teacher obv. Hope I'm as successful when my little un hits puberty.
I have very young kids
and all this talk is making me a bit fearful for the future. At the risk of turning this forum into Mumsnet with beards, I'm trying to bring them up as best I can but from the comments above the onset of cantbearsedness seems unavoidable. Worrying.
I know what you mean.
God, I'm thinking of flogging the telly and not letting them near a computer until they're 18.
Everyone worries about the next generation
And to date everyone has been wrong. Didn't your parents worry when you were a punk ?(or Teddy boy, or Mod, or raver - delete as appropriate).
Probably a lot of today's kids will screw up school, and at a later date realise what an idiot they were and get themselves a decent education. My wife prefers to hire them on the grounds that they have made deliberate decisions about their lives, and are keen to make up lost time. Much less likely to have a mid-life, or mid-career, crisis.
The kids are alright (probably)
Yeah. It doesn't stop the worry, though.
Between 11 and 14, I bunked school, stole, lied compulsively, drank, smoked dope and entirely failed to engage with my education. Except English. English was different, and I never had to try, which is probably why I got along well with it: effort wasn't something I really understood at that point.
My poor parents, who did a pretty bang-up job of bringing us up, were tearing their hair out. Maybe they were just a LITTLE too protective, but not crazily so - I was allowed to be more independent than some, less than others. It wasn't their fault in the slightest.
Eventually, it got to the point where I was a biscuit away from expulsion, which even I could recognise would be a disaster. So towards the end of Year 10 (well, we called it Fourth Year then), I did a small but significant about-face, and got my act together. I was just lucky I did that before it was too late to salvage my GCSEs.
I was always a bright kid, and I really should have got straight As and A*s, but the Damascene conversion was just a touch too late, and as it was I got half A*s and the rest Bs and Cs. Then I did well in my A Levels and degree, and now I'm fine.
But bloody hell, my poor mum and dad. I apologise to them regularly.
Long story short, it's just a teenage thing, I'm sure. The vast majority will just snap out of it when they realise that the stakes are pretty high.
(Although - the one thing that happened 16 years ago that wouldn't happen now is this: if I'd failed, I would have FAILED. Retakes weren't ever mentioned. So that was a motivating factor.)
My god!
Is it 16 years since A* grades were introduced! They're coming in at A level from this year, as I'm sure you know.
Yeah.
We were the first year of A*, if I remember right.
Feynman in Brazil
I can't paste the whole thing since it's too long, but the link below leads to an excerpt from Richard Feynman's utterly fabulous "Surely You're Joking, Mr Feynman?" in which the physicist gives you perhaps the best illustration of the difference between education and knowledge with a bunch of Brazillian students.
http://www.feep.org/articles/feynman.html
The book is worth reading for his bongo playing exploits.
Feynman and Sagan
two of my all time heroes; not only did they talk the talk, they walked the walk too.
That article is wonderful and is a perfect example of the problems of testing and of the difference between education and understanding (and knowledge): the education is the bit you buy - the bit provided by someone else. Any idot with enough money can have one of those. The understanding has to be be provided by you. That's the bit students don't unerstand now because they've been fed the consumer model of learning. Learning ain't like buying a tin of beans.
The consumer model of learning.
Yep. A whole generation of kids thinking they're the customer, and if they make a pig's ear of their education, well, they've been let down by the "service provider" - nothing to do with them being lazy or feckless or - gasp - plain thick. Bah.
This kind of talk makes me depressed, because it's true.
Zappa:
Einstein said "Information is not Knowledge" but it was Frank Zappa who expanded it into a kind of negative ring of logic: "Information is not knowledge, Knowledge is not wisdom, Wisdom is not truth, Truth is not beauty, Beauty is not love, Love is not music, Music is THE BEST
C.F. Too poor for 'posh' school?
Utterly horrifying programme: would they put the rich thick kids through the mangle to get into Eton and Harrow like these 'poor' sods? 'Course not; 'Education' is a nonsense when it comes down to how much money you have. Look at bloody Wills and Harry, thick as a worker's butty.
Nice juicy thread, I like it
I'm not so interested in the actual politics of educational systems (mainly because I don't really feel qualified to comment, but I am interested in reading all your opinions) but I am really interested in this line of thought on a purely speculative, philosophical level.
- Is it better to be a happy idiot? On reflection, I think it is. But the key thing is the lack of awareness. As soon you are aware of your own ignorance it becomes less bearable. But, yes, on a general sense I am troubled and depressed by the THINGS I KNOW: if I had a magic wand that would make me forget everything and just be a happy idiot, I would strongly consider using it.
- Is reading the key to wisdom? I'm always wary of arguments that say this, as I feel there is a bit of snobbery here, a "tyranny of reading". The tendency is to assume that reading is always better than anything else, no matter what. But there is a huge amount of shoddy writing in the world (and it's increasing exponentially) and I can't help feeling that (to take the extreme long term view) the printed word is a relatively recent human invention. "Literature" may just be a footnote in history in a few hundred years time.
In addition to this, I commonly find that the music, art, film, etc have a far more profound effect on my wisdom and self improvement and awareness of the world than books.
I would admit, though, that my argument is pretty skewed because I am speaking as a relatively "well educated" person, and so I have the luxury of choosing to exercise my reading skills or not.
(I might come back to this. No time just now)