on schooling
musings on education, new forms of schooling, and what schooling has done to children
sari and
on schooling
one of the reasons school fails to help people model success is that a series of tests introduces no randomness.
Success in real life involves a great and careful search of unknowns, not a pinning down or studying of knowns
across many dimensions we have been acculturated to value the aggregated over the individual, and defaulting to the average consensus has become comfortable in its familiarity. This is what I observed in how students are taught writing by following templates like the five-paragaph essay. No one believes the products of that process are actually, yo... See more
“I have never understood the importance of having children memorize battle dates. It seems like such a waste of mental energy. Instead, we could teach them important subjects such as How the Mind Works, How to Handle Finances, How to Invest Money for Financial Security, How to be a Parent, How to Create Good Relationships, and How to Create and Mai
... See moreclasses smart people should be required to take (part 3)
- how to accept that there are people smarter than you
- how to talk about something other than work
- how to get a life outside work
- how to not feel guilty for taking a break
- how to take some risks (asap)
- how to get… Show more
things schools should teach
Children Full of Life (1 of 5)
youtube.comA beautiful documentary (this is part one of 5, 10mins each) that follows a fourth grade class in a Tokyo neighbourhood, led by their astounding educator Toshiro Kanamori. He asserts that: Life is undervalued every day. A teacher’s job is to show how precious life is. And unlike any classroom I’ve been in, “the class goal for Grade 4 is to understand how to live a happy life and how to care for other people”.
A second major illusion on which the school system rests is that most learning is the result of teaching. Teaching, it is true, may contribute to certain kinds of learning under certain circumstances. But most people acquire most of their knowledge outside school.
Ivan Illich • Deschooling Society
if we actually believed that maximizing positive variance was more valuable than minimizing negative variance, we would design our education systems very differently. most schools are variance-minimization fields
-Visakan
Schools are good at teaching and measuring intelligence, so that’s what people tend to value and aspire to. But in almost any field, smarts is what gets rewarded long term.
You cannot measure empathy like you can SAT scores, so it’s not surprising that one is given more weight on resumes. But who is more likely to succeed in life – a person whose ma... See more
You cannot measure empathy like you can SAT scores, so it’s not surprising that one is given more weight on resumes. But who is more likely to succeed in life – a person whose ma... See more