Education
With so much being said about education nowadays, a lot of
folks are fed up with the whole debacle.
1. Education is not a
toy for the Federal Government or even State governments. Education is a protected jurisdiction of
States, best totally administered at the smallest local level, without any
interference from either the State or the nation. Education is a village matter.
2. The goal of
education is maximized cognitive creativity: the ability to move past rote into
fresh new ideas and art; the ability to think, to dream, to invent, to be.
Compulsory algebra is not conducive to either thought or
creativity. In fact compulsory much of
anything is destructive of both thought and creativity: for thought and
creation require space to explore.
Compulsory algebra will not produce a creative engineer or scientist: it
can only produce a mentally crippled dunce who is able to plug, shove, and
crunch numbers, nothing more --- a fool in a lab coat.
Neither is the "No child left behind law"
conducive of thought and creativity. All
such mandated programs, by their very lack of creativity and inventiveness, are
destructive of creativity and inventiveness.
A test cannot teach creativity and inventiveness unless it
is an extremely creative and inventive test, as say with "Blind Man's
Bluff" which calls for ever increasing inventiveness in places to hide,
and in which no two individuals can possibly hide in the exact same place. Mind you, I've faced some marvelously
creative and inventive tests. However,
penciling in circles, squares, or parallel lines were never among them. On the other hand the tests that began with “compare
and contrast” always taxed me to empty every creative and inventive thought
from my sweating mind. The very process
of emptying, paved the way for refilling with fresh explorations, and ideas.
If we wish our children to learn to think and create, the
very most advanced of all cognitive skills, we must expose them to art, and
music; yes, and even the risk of danger: for it is these things, seemingly
without rules or boundaries, that are truly thoughtful and creative. Children need shop, cooking, recess, and
other hands-on learning exposure. For
the child who finds such pleasure in books, let it be books. For the child who finds such pleasure in
sandbox, let it be sandbox.
I once had a teacher who loved murals and papier-mâché. We could count on doing at least four,
cover-the-class-room-floor-size murals, plus several papier-mâché objects, as
well as numerous posters in the school year.
In spite of the fact that I was the prototypical algebra kid, she was
the best thing that ever happened to us: she opened our young minds to
exploration and real education. We also
had music teachers, and scoutmasters with similar commitments. Consequently, I was fortunate to grow up in a
climate, a village of maximum creativity.
The best thing we could do to education is to kneecap the
Federal government's education overtures, and smash the fusty fingers of State
meddling. The most damning words I've
ever heard flow from a politician's mouth are, "Have I got a program for
you?" or "My program will fix education."
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