Re:Ten Lessons I Wish I Had Learned Before Teaching Differen...
by jerf on Monday November 13, 2023 @09:31AM
(#38250493)
I have reached the point of cynicism on this matter. It is easier to burn down the entire Western education system than to get people to seriously consider changes to the curriculum. I've often thought of it as a quasi-religious matter, as the author did, but it's even worse than that... people and cultures and societies can observably change their religion more easily than people can consider changes to the curriculum.
And even after it burns down the seed of the old curriculum may yet pass into the new.
Even here on HN where I'd expect people to be relatively open to it compared to the population, any slight change proposed will be shouted down about 2-to-1, no matter how absurd the inclusion is, how pointless the schooling actually is, and how observable it is that the matter in question has had its impact entirely dissipated by the age of 25 across the entire population. Curricula are not analyzed by any of the several rational standards I could construct for them. It is only, is that or is that not exactly what I was taught, covered over by one of a handful of thin rationalizations.
Fortunately for the Western system I am not a revolutionary and observe from history that plans that involve burning X down so we can institute the glorious world of Y often succeed in the former and all but inevitably utterly fail in the latter, so it is not a good plan. Nevertheless, it seems to me that in the absence of a frontier to give the middle finger to our entire educational system as they need to pursue some other goals forthwith (space colonies, perhaps, no time to dick around with useless differential equations when I need you to learn the useful ones RIGHT NOW so that the air processing systems start working again), there will be no change to the curriculum anytime soon.
And even after it burns down the seed of the old curriculum may yet pass into the new.
Even here on HN where I'd expect people to be relatively open to it compared to the population, any slight change proposed will be shouted down about 2-to-1, no matter how absurd the inclusion is, how pointless the schooling actually is, and how observable it is that the matter in question has had its impact entirely dissipated by the age of 25 across the entire population. Curricula are not analyzed by any of the several rational standards I could construct for them. It is only, is that or is that not exactly what I was taught, covered over by one of a handful of thin rationalizations.
Fortunately for the Western system I am not a revolutionary and observe from history that plans that involve burning X down so we can institute the glorious world of Y often succeed in the former and all but inevitably utterly fail in the latter, so it is not a good plan. Nevertheless, it seems to me that in the absence of a frontier to give the middle finger to our entire educational system as they need to pursue some other goals forthwith (space colonies, perhaps, no time to dick around with useless differential equations when I need you to learn the useful ones RIGHT NOW so that the air processing systems start working again), there will be no change to the curriculum anytime soon.