Randy Cassingham's Blog

Au contraire, Randy.

My point is, that in the face of fact, that more and more people defend stupidity as a valid state of mind, education becomes progressively more expensive, as the amount of people willing to undergo the process of education diminishes.

There is no room for advancement, because even what there is now is looked down upon.

Once again, getting back to my youth - when I was studying in school, it was self-evident, that I WILL go to university or college or another establishment of high education. It`s been a standard, and it`s been possible to fund high education establishments simply because of sheer number of students passing through.

Nowadays, however, it`s looping. The less people go through college, the more colleges have to rise the price, which in turn discourages people further.

It does not helps, that colleges are staffed by ordinary people as well, who prefer more money for same job.

And so it spirals down. Not just because colleges intentionally raise the monetary bar of education, but because less and less people would even try to get over that bar.

Advances in education? There have been a few but many have been overlooked.

One small but astounding example occurred back in the 1980's, The British Broadcasting Corporation aired a documentary, one in its Everyman Series, where TV cameras came to a school. A class of eight year olds was divided into two groups at random. One group was taught the normal curriculum. The other was taught the same with a couple of new subjects added. If I remember correctly, the other subjects were "logic" or "how to think" and "philosophy".

Five years later the TV cameras came back to interview the two groups, now 13 years old. The differences were astonishing. The "control" group, who were fed the normal staple of knowledge, scored normally in exams -- a mix of Bs, Cs, Ds, and Es, with the occasional A. They were typically shy, had expected behaviour and were bashful in front of the cameras.

But the group that had been taught "logic, how to think and philosophy" had been scoring well above average. In fact, almost all the time they were scoring straight As or Bs -- in every subject! They seemed to have acquired a rare thirst for knowledge. What's more, their love for a subject was less dependent on the skills of the teacher. They were confident in front of the camera and could elucidate their thoughts like adults. They seemed more mature, more in control of themselves and weren't shy at all. They had an active sense of humour. Oddly enough, they seemed to like all their subjects, ranging from sciences to the arts. The "normal" group, meanwhile, when asked why they didn't like a certain subject that they had not done so well in often blamed the teacher!

Other advancements have also been overlooked such as the teachings in "how to think" by the well known lateral thinker Edward de Bono from in the 70's and 80's. Memorionics is also known to improve memory, one of the pillars of good education. Chess is thought to improve academic performance, as in the famous Bronx School Chess Program.

Schooling can do more, however. They should provide deep training in getting organised in life generally, in making and following a plan, in the good habit of making a list and and priority management. There are various modern and fun ways of improving task performance. Business knows how and so does the military. Some of their methods should be employed.

My gripe about education is that the parents seem to think the schools can do it all. It's better that the parents blame themselves. They pay a heavy price when the home is not imbued with a learning culture. Instead of reading and acquiring knowledge, they waste time being entertained by games and TV. The quality of parenting is the key determinant in a child's education. What happens at the home migrates to the school.

People have been grousing about the lowering of standards in public school education for a long time now. After subbing in public schools for a couple of years now, I say it's a growing problem, and the dumbing down is intentional. Very simplistically speaking, the text messaging craze has resulted in a streamlining of parlance that ripples out in teenage communication. I know this because I've heard kids say it. If I had a dime for every time a kid asked me to explain a word I used, I'd have a nice little stack about now. An overly simple explanation perhaps, but valid, considering the handwritten notes and text messages I've intercepted in class. I'm grateful when the communication is illiterate rather than pornographic, but that's another soapbox rant ;-)

I think it's important to make a distinction between literate and educated. Public schools are under fire for failing to educate our children. I think we lost that war years ago, around the time zero-tolerance (another soapbox rant) debuted as the ideal enforcement and disciplinary tool for public schools. Political correctness (yet another rant) was and still is more important than actual education. I personally think public schools are lucky to be turning out literate graduates. If we can squeeze some education among the basics, then so much the better. In the end as I see it, education is what we do with the gift of literacy as well as how we learn to think for ourselves. It's not how much we learn, as much as how to find information when we need it.