Is it to make good citizens of our children
is it to help them cope in a competitive world
is to make them fit in and maintain traditions
is it to make them fully rounded out human beings
healthy psychologically, physically and spiritually? — Brett
Are we defining education? Or just leaving it undefined for the time. I ask because at age four I stuck my finger in an electric light socket that was on. I learned from that experience, indeed I did! But I doubt if that's anything you had in mind.
Or just in terms of results? Are we distinguishing between education and training? Animals can be trained. But I am not sure that anyone can be taught anything, if by taught you mean just the activities of the teacher.
Good question, but a question that must have its ground prepared before it can be answered. — tim wood
Parents have the first and most critical responsibility: psychological, physical and spiritual health. When parents fuck that up, their children are screwed--not invariably, but almost always. Stupid, fucked up people have difficulty delivering healthy children to kindergarten. (There are unfortunate social reasons why some parents are stupid and fucked up; nevertheless, it is a major handicap to the child to have stupid fucked up parents. — Bitter Crank
You could say that early education was about opening doors to knowledge and modern education is about exploring the rooms these doors open to. — TheMadFool
In my opinion, it should be a combo of:
* Acquiring general knowledge/familiarity with culture, in a very broad, varied regard
* Acquiring critical thinking skills
* Acquiring practical life skills
* Acquiring more specific skills useful for making a living — Terrapin Station
Actually, I’m not sure by what you mean by ‘early education’, but early education, those years 5,6,7,9,10 would be about opening doors, and the following years about exploring those rooms. — Brett
Should we hope for, or expect, every pupil to achieve all of this — Brett
Yes, no matter what you introduce to them in school they go back to that environment. So should school/education be a way of escaping that? Is it more than teachers can do? Some kids go to school because they can get away from that environment for awhile, but they don’t necessarily engage. — Brett
education is suppose to teach us how to function in society. however it no longer serves that function because we are using the Prussian system which was meant to create conformity. this worked in the industrial economic system but in the information economic we need the exact opposite set of skills. however we don't fix this because democracy. — hachit
, then the most important things to teach are how to use our rationality to understand ourselves and society. This is something our brains find naturally difficult - as opposed to interpersonal social interactions say - and something that only effortful training can achieve. He suggests that an understanding of evolutionary psychology, scientific method and a feel for statistics, for example should have first call on the curriculum - — Kippo
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