Everything We Know About Education is Wrong? Existential Musings...
In his paper Everything You Know About Education is Wrong, Roger C. Schank discusses the purpose of education and eloquently puts forth the argument that our current education system is.... well, shitty.
Not really a new idea.
But he goes into specific subject areas, ennumerating the issues within math, history, and literature, as well as giving his two cents about the esteemed "college education".
I agree with many of statements he makes, but I'm having some trouble rationalizing some of his points.
Take, for instance, his argument about literature:
"It is difficult to understand how literature continues to be a subject taught in school. Each culture has it literary icons: Dickens in the U.K, Cervantes in Spain, Dante in Italy, Rousseau in France, Twain in the U.S. and so on. But, much of what these people have written serves more as fictionalized history than as literature. Nevertheless, to be literate in one’s own culture is seen as an important thing in schools and thus students are forced to read books they really do not understand and certainly do not like so that they can join intellectuals in conversations about them. Cultural identity is an interesting issue of course, but forcing old book on young students is probably not how one establishes it."
I understand where Mr. Schank is going with this.
Making a student read a book as an assignment with the purpose of analyzing the text can kill any excitement the child might have had for actually reading the book. It becomes an arduous task rather than an enjoyable and relaxing activity.
But I also know that reading is an activity that many students - specifically high schoolers - don't make time for. I used that same excuse - "I just don't have time" - as justification for what was basically dropping reading cold turkey. I remember that in middle school I was a bit of a bibliophile. I loved spending my time exploring fantastical worlds while tucked away between the shelves of my school's library. I read nearly every novel in the fiction section of my middle school library, blowing through 800-pages of fantasy, sci-fi, or historical fiction as if they were nothing.
Then I entered high school, fully determined to finish the dozens of series I had postponed during the summer. I was excited to discover new worlds in the high school library, maybe even explore the dreaded non-fiction section.
But those plans came to a halt.
I'm not exactly sure what happened. I was doing well in my classes, nothing was overly challenging.... I was doing a few hours more of homework than I had been doing in middle school, so maybe it was the increase of workload?
Reading, sadly, became the activity that I set aside. I read only two books that weren't a part of a school assignment that freshman school year. And that number only dropped when I became an upperclassman.
I was actually a little glad that we had assigned readings in school. It gave me a reason to sit down for half an hour and just read. Even if my friends and I complained about having to do double-sided reader's journals and answer analysis questions about what we'd read, I ended up really enjoying some of the assigned novels (like The Kite Runner - oh my gosh that book is awesome!). And if we hadn't been assigned to read them, I probably wouldn't have picked them up until college, if ever.
So while learning literature may be more about celebrating famous cultural icons like Charles Dickens and Mark Twain than about teaching the student, I certainly think their are benefits to those assigned readings.
Argument #2: Going to College is Very Important for Success in Life
"The same arguments apply to college of course. Obsession with getting into college forces high school students to conform and do what they’re told. Obsession with becoming a college graduate makes students study when they would much prefer to party, play on sports teams, and otherwise pursue anything that seems fun after having finally escaped the watchful eye of their parents. The fact is that college is pretty much wasted on 18 year-old children. Furthermore, college professors, who at the best universities are really researchers, have little interest in teaching “introduction to my subject” to 18 year-olds who clearly aren’t paying attention.
The real value of going to a great university is the interaction with intellectuals engaged in scholarly pursuits. But the fact is that this interaction is wasted on most students. College students are not attending college in order to become intellectuals. Like high school, college serves as a kind of filter. There is an unwritten agreement between professors and students. Student pretend to be interested in what professors are teaching and professors try not to notice when their students skip class, or fall asleep in class, or surf the web in class. The fact is -- college doesn't work very well for most students, except that it does produce graduates who can say they went to college and it does allow professors to earn a living while they pursue their real research interests."
Again, I see where Schank is going with this.
Going to college and getting a fancy degree doesn't guarantee success in life, neither does success necessitate those "achievements". Some of the most successful people in the world never graduated college. But,,, no matter how much I advocate for "doing school differently" and "improving the education system", there's a fundamental part of me that (once again) screams "NO!!" when I read this.
My objection isn't completely reasonable, but isn't 100% unfounded, either.
My mindset, which is admittedly rather flawed a result of the current education system, is that I haven't gotten this far, wasted this many hours of my life memorizing facts about European history and the structure of cholesterol molecules and how to find the derivative of inverses, just to be told that college doesn't matter.
But it is true that some of the most successful people in the world - Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerburg, and Ellen DeGeneres just to name a few - either dropped out of or never attended college.
College is not the end-all-be-all for success.
And I know that. Or at least, I used to.
I hadn't realized it, but over the past 2 years the idea that doing well in high school and going to college has been pounded into my head. That is what success means. And that mindset has only elevated with the college application process. Why am I applying to college? Well.... because that's what you do to get a good job and become successful. But how is graduating high school and going to college a measure of your success, especially if everyone does it? Well... I don't know.
It's as if I need validation for all of the work and "learning" I've done for the past 4 years.
A "this is why I've been stuck in this building listening to teachers talk about things that may be interesting once I finally understand them, but are of no importance in the long run."
It's just a whole big existential crisis.
