Education and psychology

unenlightened

This thread is a followup to Psychology, advertising and propaganda, but will hopefully be rather different in tone and direction. It will still though be an attempt on my part at indoctrination.

Indoctrination has a negative connotation, but it seems to me to be an important aspect of education. One learns the language, written and spoken, and many other cultural norms and habits, and these are not optional or negotiable. To read Plato is to begin the indoctrination into the mysteries of Western philosophy, and not to have done so, is not to have completed one's philosophical education. Indoctrinate yourselves with the times tables; they are those pieces of cultural baggage that one needs to have unthinkingly available in order to think about more complex things, like whether the 3 for the price of 2 offer on the 1 litre cartons is a better deal than the 'reduced' 2.5 litre carton.

In the case of advertising, the goal is clearly defined, to sell product, and psychological science is more or less effective in so structuring the media as to achieve the goal, and maximise sales. One might say that the strength of science is that it clearly separates ends and means, and speaks to means alone. Thus it will tell you how to build a hydrogen bomb that works, but not whether it is a good idea or not to do so.

So for psychological science to have a role in education requires a predefined goal. Given a clear goal, one can try this or that technique, this or that regimen, this or that curriculum, and see what best achieves the goal. Just as you have to decide whether you want a bomb or a sponge cake before science can give you the recipe.

Educational practice is very diverse, and so too are the notions of its goal. At the risk of provoking political argument and entrenchment, I suggest that there are two broad streams that can be characterised as liberal and conservative.

The conservative stream sets goals to do with preserving culture and knowledge, with producing citizens more or less like the previous generation. Only better. A better educated workforce, a better educated electorate, better parents, better citizens. The goal is to preserve the best and spread it more widely, the emphasis is on the needs of society.

The liberal stream is harder to characterise, because it is focused on the individual, on the learner rather than the teacher; one has to use terms like autonomy, freedom, wholeness, creativity. For this stream, because it is focused on the individual, a goal cannot be set in advance, but must be developed in vivo as part of the educative process.

There's a great deal more to be said about the goals of education, but I think it is clear from the above rather vague and brief characterisations that there is no necessary conflict between social and individual, , conservative and liberal goals. Both are important. However, scientific psychology can only reliably be applied to conservative goals, because they can be articulated in clear, and general terms.

If all you have is a hammer, all you will look for is nails; educational psychologists will therefore be strongly inclined to emphasise measurable outcomes of preset goals, because that is all they can do. And here enters the science value distortion.

Science is really good at doing stuff, so it must be able to do education, and whatever it does in education it can measure, and whatever cannot be measured is unimportant.

So round my way, education has become more and more standardised, more and more tested, more and more tightly pre-ordained, and the results have been declining. This is curious. In education it seems that the emphasis on measurement is measurably bad educational practice according to its own standards and goals. Science cannot make sense of it, because it cannot critique itself in terms other than preset goals; it cannot see the individual, cannot relate to the individual, only the social.

What is education?I am a conservative and I am a liberal in education. Thus google:

Education:

1. the process of receiving or giving systematic instruction, especially at a school or university.
"a course of education"
synonyms: teaching, schooling, tuition, tutoring, instruction, pedagogy, andragogy, coaching, training, tutelage, drilling, preparation, guidance, indoctrination, inculcation, enlightenment, edification, cultivation, development, improvement, bettering

2.
an enlightening experience.

Then one moves beyond the dictionary:

“The central task of education is to implant a will and facility for learning; it should produce not learned but learning people. The truly human society is a learning society, where grandparents, parents, and children are students together.” ~Eric Hoffer
“No one has yet realized the wealth of sympathy, the kindness and generosity hidden in the soul of a child. The effort of every true education should be to unlock that treasure.” ~Emma Goldman
“The only purpose of education is to teach a student how to live his life-by developing his mind and equipping him to deal with reality. The training he needs is theoretical, i.e., conceptual. He has to be taught to think, to understand, to integrate, to prove. He has to be taught the essentials of the knowledge discovered in the past-and he has to be equipped to acquire further knowledge by his own effort.” ~Ayn Rand
“The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think, than what to think— rather to improve our minds, so as to enable us to think for ourselves, than to load the memory with the thoughts of other men.” ~Bill Beattie
“The one real object of education is to leave a man in the condition of continually asking questions.” ~Bishop Creighton
“The central job of schools is to maximize the capacity of each student.” ~Carol Ann Tomlinson

{...}

As Tom Peters reminds us, “What gets measured, gets done.” Regardless of high-sounding rhetoric about the development of the total child, it is the content of assessments that largely drives education.

From this nice little piece.

That last sentence lays out the heart of the difficulty. In my language, the goals of education are set by the way we measure how successfully they are achieved. This is insanity gone mad, and calling itself 'objectivity'.

Shawn

You could really distil the sentiment of this post with the simple truism that there can be no object without a subject.

The study of the relations between the subject and object has been neglected greatly by public educators for the simple reason that public education treats every subject as an object, of which, knowledge must be poured into, which is rather stupefying and regretable.

Wosret

Isn't science as sole arbiter of truth a liberal fetish anyway? Isn't suggesting its limitations in any sense enough in itself to infer a conservative bent?

Terrapin Station

So round my way, education has become more and more standardised, more and more tested, more and more tightly pre-ordained, and the results have been declining. — unenlightened

The problem with "declining results" seems to have stemmed from two concerns:

one, alarming failure rates, where pressure about this was exacerbated by parents upset that their kids are having to repeat a grade, sometimes to an extent where they're threatening to have teachers fired, or threatening to sue the school or the local school district, etc.,

and two, attempting to remove what were thought to be subtle cultural--often racial--prejudices, since failure rates were often disproportionate when categorized by race/ethnicity (never mind that the factors involved in this were really far more complex).

Unfortunately, the way those concerns have tended to be dealt with is merely by making it easier for kids to pass. They're ushered--often more coddled--through school to an extent where one can earn a high school diploma even when one hasn't tackled core reading, writing, mathematics, science, etc. skills/knowledge very well.

In a nutshell, there was a lot of social and legal/financial pressures on schools to increase success rates for students, but the educational and social issues required to change those statistics were complex and/or impractical enough to implement that schools instead adopted the tactic of simply making sure that a higher percentage of kids passed no matter what.

BC

Some people in the United States, home of some colossal educational failures, are getting superb educations. They attend public and private schools known to offer effective conservatively defined education with at least some intent to develop the unique potentials of individuals. Maybe 10% to 20% of young people receive this education. Their parents are either wealthy enough to live in the communities with the best schools, or they can afford to send them excellent private schools.

Maybe 25% of the remainder receive something like adequate education mostly in public schools--suburban, exurban, and rural schools. The remaining half of all school children receive inferior education in either the conservative or liberal model. The personal uniqueness is ignored, they learn a minimum of basic skills, they are offered an indifferent curriculum.

From one point of view, the schools are mostly doing a fine job because their real task has been, since the 1960s, to manage the workforce. Part of this was to meter the flow of workers into work, part of it was to keep people in the role of consumer, and part of it was to keep people off the streets as long as possible.

From an even more extreme view, it doesn't matter to 60% to 80% of the students in school what happens during their "formal education". In the real world of the late 20th, early 21st century, what people really need to know can be taught by the 24/7 media of radio, television, internet, film, and print. Not a joke: The real function of most people is going to be a consumer who works in simple dead end jobs. What is taught in school (reading, writing, arithmetic, history, biology...) is mostly irrelevant to the mass of young people. At the present time, most of them are not going to be employed in demanding work (those people are getting high quality educations) and their most important role is as a passive consumer. You don't need to know about Homer or algebra to work at McDonalds or at an Amazon fulfillment center. You don't need American History to shop for clothes, food, toasters, etc.

Shawn

Not all has been lost. There have been a few public educators that recognized the problems presented in this thread, such as John Dewey, that education needs to be an active and fun endeavor. Unfortunately, people have settled for the easier option in my opinion.

BC

↪Question

there's a whole train load of educators who have some excellent ideas about how to organize education both for the good of the individual and for the good of society. Why don't we follow even some of their suggestions?

1. Because, in the view of our top gestapo leaders, there isn't an evident need to provide excellent education for all American youth, and once more, there never has been. We have never been generous with high quality education across the board. (Though, we have at times done a hell of a lot better than we are doing now.)

2. The top gestapo leaders haven't decided what to do with large numbers of people who are not economically useful. Uneducated, unskilled poor people are not terribly useful in a modern, post-industrial economy.

3. The top gestapo leaders aren't especially interested in personal fulfillment on individual's own terms. That is much too chaotic.

4. The top gestapo leaders are not interested in an electorate composed of well informed thinkers. "What good would that do us?" they ask.

5. The top gestapo leaders are not interested in spending a lot of money improving the lives of ordinary people. "What have ordinary people ever done for us?" they ask.

and so on.

You know, top gestapo leaders like the people who have been running things for quite a long time.

Moliere

Indoctrination is, so I'd say, an inevitable aspect of education. Since classes establish norms for their own functioning, people follow those norms by participating in the class. And action, even if done resentfully, is a way of indoctrinating people. The important thing is to acknowledge that this is so, and to ask, if it is necessary, which norms are appropriate for a proper education?

Here's a list of four that seems to fit to me, but I'm open to amending: Rationality, work-ethic, respect for authority, and creativity in various degrees or emphases. Some would prefer to phrase things differently (i.e. it's not indoctrination, it's normalizing), but I'd say these four aspects hit on at least what is significantly agreed upon and actually (attempted to be) taught in American schools, at least.

But norms are different from goals.

One goal often stated is "making good citizens" -- so the standard response to the student (or, sometimes, parent) who would say "When are they ever going to use this in the real world?" would be to point out that good citizens who vote and participate in society need to know things like history, or basic arithmetic, or familiarity with the humanities, or the basic laws which the physical world seems to obey.

These days, though -- at least to judge by what is coming out of the government, whether that be liberal or conservative -- it seems to me that national greatness is a stronger proclivity. So the goal is to make great citizens who are good at science and math so that we have a crop of brilliant scientists who we can get to invent good weapons and goods for military and economic dominance -- and for those who don't make it, who are compliant and able to fit into a hierarchic economy under capitalist discipline. All the rest can come along for the ride if budgets allow, but these are the goals which are prioritized.

In many ways, to get back a bit to the themes of the previous thread, it seems to me that the students and those who work within the schools are all treated like objects which produce commodities (good citizens, strong nations, or correct beliefs) for the state, or for various interests utilizing the state. The people with the least amount of say -- at least officially -- are the people doing the educating, whether that be the students, the teachers, or their communities. Hence they are objectified in the sense that they are denied autonomy, 1, and treated like machines which produce goods, 2.

unenlightened

In many ways, to get back a bit to the themes of the previous thread, it seems to me that the students and those who work within the schools are all treated like objects which produce commodities (good citizens, strong nations, or correct beliefs) for the state, or for various interests utilizing the state. The people with the least amount of say -- at least officially -- are the people doing the educating, whether that be the students, the teachers, or their communities. Hence they are objectified in the sense that they are denied autonomy, 1, and treated like machines which produce goods, 2. — Moliere

Yes, I didn't want to rehearse the argument in detail again, but that is the problem exactly. The vision of schools as factories and students as products to be quality-controlled, makes teachers into assembly line workers, to be dictated to by efficiency experts.

Shawn

Indoctrination is, so I'd say, an inevitable aspect of education. — Moliere

What about critical thinking? It's not a hard subject to teach, but the benefits are innumerable and priceless.

BC

What about critical thinking — Question

Are you out of your mind? Teaching critical thinking to the masses clearly is a lose-lose proposition to the top gestapo leaders.

BC

Indoctrination is, so I'd say, an inevitable aspect of education. — Moliere

It is inevitable. Even if one is conducting education according to the freest, most progressive, learn-when-and-what-you-desire-to-learn Summer Hill type school, a doctrine about the world is being taught. In the case of Summer Hill, and its like, is is that the individual's fulfillment is the ultimate value, that society can damn well wait until you are ready to learn, and so on. I don't know how the students react when they run into the more typical society rule that you are free insofar as you obey.

Moliere

↪Question

I guess the way I'd put it is that critical thinking is a normative enterprise, and therefore to teach critical thinking is to indoctrinate people to those particular methods and values of critical thinking, 1, and 2 -- all classrooms have social norms which allow them to function, and these are the subtler forms of indoctrination (in whatever norms we happen to choose, though the discipline of the workplace is not hard to see in our schools, given that we literally follow bells going off and have specified times for travel, lunch, study, etc.)

I did think, after writing the post, that perhaps this dilutes the notion of "indoctrination" to some extent -- but it's worth noting, I think, because there is no such thing as a neutral school which just gives students the three R's, given that even a so called "neutral" school must, in order to function as a school, establish and enforce norms which people become accustomed to.

Having said that, I favor indoctrinating people towards critical thinking, self-reliance, and empathy -- but I have a hard time saying that the methods of schooling are not at least similar to traditional indoctrination. It's just preferable to do them rather than to not (as people without said indoctrination don't fare very well in our society)

Moliere

↪Bitter Crank

I visited a middle school which ran on the the John Dewey system back when I was in school. Granted, I didn't actually look into her data or do the study, but the self-report, at least, was that the students faired well once they transitioned to a traditional high school (which they do for social reasons, given that diplomas are a necessary mark for social mobility in the US)

And, yes, that's exactly what I meant. We are in agreement.

Shawn

↪Bitter Crank

Surprisingly enough we used to do it in the States. There are plenty of videos of proof of this. Make America Great Again !

Banno

The liberal stream is harder to characterise, because it is focused on the individual, on the learner rather than the teacher; one has to use terms like autonomy, freedom, wholeness, creativity. For this stream, because it is focused on the individual, a goal cannot be set in advance, but must be developed in vivo as part of the educative process. — unenlightened

It might be preferable to think of education as seeking to bring forth the potential found in each individual.

Individuals are embedded in a social context, so one of those potentials is, ipso facto, the capacity to function in the given social context. Hence some grasp of language, mathematics, art, science and social science is implicit in education; together with the capacity to deal with others.

Seeking to preserve the status quo is a politically motivated addition to this basic framework. Indeed, keeping things the way they are amounts to denying some individuals their potential.

unenlightened

Individuals are embedded in a social context, so one of those potentials is, ipso facto, the capacity to function in the given social context. Hence some grasp of language, mathematics, art, science and social science is implicit in education; together with the capacity to deal with others. — Banno

Yes, exactly. There seems to be broad agreement here so far, that education involves indoctrination and liberation together. The point I am trying to get to by making the distinction is not that one should be pursued and the other neglected, but that one is measurable, testable, and predictable, and the other is not.

One cannot have a qualification, a competition, a hierarchy, of liberation; it isn't that sort of thing. And this means that this aspect of education is not amenable to science and scientific psychology. It is quite close to the problem of defining the value of philosophy, which philosophy professors' inability to articulate led to the closure of several departments in my country. No product, no funding.

And so there is a strong tendency, amongst politicians particularly, to neglect what cannot be measured, or fitted into a neat slogan. There is much talk here of 'failing schools'. And failure is failure in the measurable, in the grasp of language, mathematics, etc. Failure to bring forth the potential in other ways does not register.

Deleteduserrc

↪unenlightened

Yes, exactly. There seems to be broad agreement here so far, that education involves indoctrination and liberation together. The point I am trying to get to by making the distinction is not that one should be pursued and the other neglected, but that one is measurable, testable, and predictable, and the other is not.

One cannot have a qualification, a competition, a hierarchy, of liberation; it isn't that sort of thing. And this means that this aspect of education is not amenable to science and scientific psychology. It is quite close to the problem of defining the value of philosophy, which philosophy professors' inability to articulate led to the closure of several departments in my country. No product, no funding.

And so there is a strong tendency, amongst politicians particularly, to neglect what cannot be measured, or fitted into a neat slogan. There is much talk here of 'failing schools'. And failure is failure in the measurable, in the grasp of language, mathematics, etc. Failure to bring forth the potential in other ways does not register.

It's easy to register a complaint. What do you want to do about it?

unenlightened

It's easy to register a complaint. What do you want to do about it? — csalisbury

Well, I want to discuss. I want folks to acknowledge that teaching and learning is more than can be specified by a curriculum and measured by test scores, and then I want space, time and freedom to be left for it to happen. It's a rather unfair question really to ask me to specify a method for achieving something that I have just characterised as impossible to specify, and set goals for.

But there is always a meta-learning happening, regardless. One teaches to the test, but in so doing one teaches that only test performance matters, that wrong answers have no value, that speculation and exploration are a waste of time.

"Dear parents

We would like to remind you that magic words such as hello, please, you’re welcome, I’m sorry, and thank you, all begin to be learned at home
It’s also at home that children learn to be honest, to be on time, diligent, show friends their sympathy, as well as show utmost respect for their elders and all teachers.
Home is where they learn to be clean, not talk with their mouths full, and how/where to properly dispose of garbage.
Home is also where they learn to be organized, to take good care of their belongings, and that it’s not ok to touch others.
Here at school, on the other hand, we teach language, math, history, geography, physics, sciences, and physical education. We only reinforce the education that children receive at home from their parents.

Thus a Facebook meme of a school notice.

Actually, language too, and a great deal else is taught at home. I have to say that I never want to teach anyone that it is not ok to touch others. Otherwise,I have some sympathy with this view, that schools cannot do more than the mechanics of education, that they can only build on what has already been learned.

Yet here they are, laying out the very values that they claim are unteachable, and demanding that they be taught by parents. Because these values are just those things that cannot be taught by recitation, and tested by exam, but they are also inevitably taught through relationship and environment. I wonder if teachers would care to hear from parents in the same vein?

Dear teachers,

I teach my child respect by showing her respect, just as I taught her to speak by talking to her, and not at her. She comes to you aged 4 with an insatiable curiosity and hunger to learn about everything, with confidence and enthusiasm to relate to adults and children, with her own developing personality, and with a need to participate in the community and feel valued and appreciated.

And in a few short years, you do your best to turn here into a bored, sullen uncooperative unhappy box ticking non-entity. You do this by treating her as an object, by showing no interest in her as a person, and then you have the temerity to blame the parents.

Agustino

Dear teachers,

I teach my child respect by showing her respect, just as I taught her to speak by talking to her, and not at her. She comes to you aged 4 with an insatiable curiosity and hunger to learn about everything, with confidence and enthusiasm to relate to adults and children, with her own developing personality, and with a need to participate in the community and feel valued and appreciated.

And in a few short years, you do your best to turn here into a bored, sullen uncooperative unhappy box ticking non-entity. You do this by treating her as an object, by showing no interest in her as a person, and then you have the temerity to blame the parents. — unenlightened

Interesting points. I'd just add that in my opinion, the child needs to encounter, at some point, part of the harshness of reality - and they will inevitably encounter it. What I mean by this - not everyone will be valued and appreciated by others. Not everyone will treat you as a person - many people will treat you as an object. And so forth. If the child is kept insulated from all this by force, then they'll have a very negative reaction when they finally encounter them - think about Buddha for example, how he went so far as abandoning his own family when he finally encountered suffering. Civilisation can always collapse at any moment, and the rule of the jungle can always return. So the child needs to understand this Real Politik as I call it, and not blindingly trust that everyone will act morally. Schools are not very effective at teaching it, because they never focus on helping the person - as a unique individual - find a way to overcome these situations and reframe them. For example, school doesn't teach people who aren't valued by others to find value by themselves. In daoism there is a story - there was a crooked man who everyone laughed at and said he was useless. Then war came, and all those who laughed at him went to perish. Only he remained and lived - because he was useless. There's both advantage and disadvantage in all situations regardless of how you are. It's about (1) learning to see it, and (2) learning to use it.

Children need to be taught how to harness negative feelings - rejection, etc. These skills are very rarely, if ever actually taught. Most of the time, for most people, they are never taught - they are just expected to handle rejection well. Furthermore, another important lesson I believe, is that there's not much to be gained out of life, therefore don't expect much - live closer to the moment, rejoicing in the small things that are there. Ambition is not a problem (the Chinese Daoists realised this) - it's unrestrained ambition which impatiently demands the impossible that is a problem, because it will ultimately lead one to engage in activities which end in their own failure. These skills are really elements of strategy - how to navigate the world regardless of what it throws at you.

unenlightened

↪Agustino

Well I'm venting my spleen there of course. There was a piece on the radio the other day about the value of failure. A head teacher who consciously embraced failure as valuable, as part of learning and improving, and wanted teachers and pupils alike not to fear it for themselves or despise it in others.

There are other things happening in education, and I suppose it is up to us philosophers to try and hold the space open for such ideas and relationships to develop.

Imagine we put failure on the curriculum, and set tests. For a pass, you have to turn up but not answer any of the questions, but for a distinction, stay away altogether. :D

Agustino

A head teacher who consciously embraced failure as valuable, as part of learning and improving, and wanted teachers and pupils alike not to fear it for themselves or despise it in others. — unenlightened

Yes being capable to deal with failure I agree is important. But I'm not sure that's everything there is to it - personally I haven't really ever failed when I tried something. If I thought I was going to fail I wouldn't try. I only tried when I was quite certain I'll succeed. For example I was like this with my driving license. Many people go try to take the test immediately after they finish driving school - I was like "No, I can't do it, no point going". So I waited about 1 year until I was finally ready to take it (people were actually calling me a coward and laughing at me :P ), and I passed it from the first try. Whereas I had friends who kept failing it even after I had passed it - they just had too relaxed an attitude to failure. I was the same with my girlfriends - by the point I asked them out, I was certain that they'll accept - like it would have been a miracle by that point, considering how things were going, if they refused.

For a pass, you have to turn up but not answer any of the questions — unenlightened

Common that's too much conformity - everyone has the same non-answer. Instead everyone should have to answer with the wrong thing - that way it is underdetermined - there's many more wrong answers than correct ones, so students can develop their creativity. ;)

Then you can get answers like this :P :

That deserves distinction for being both right and wrong :-O

unenlightened

↪Agustino

Absolutely. There's a few of those being rightly celebrated, though I suspect some are really adult jokes. I can do without the 'blonde' cliche though, It's an insult to Trump and everyone who shares his hair colour.

- personally I haven't really ever failed when I tried something. If I thought I was going to fail I wouldn't try. I only tried when I was quite certain I'll succeed. — Agustino

You're missing out then. But I suspect this is just a matter of terminology. To get from can't drive to can drive, one has to start with can't drive, and start driving, preferably somewhere quiet and with someone to intervene before one hits a tree. One overcomes the failure there; the test is not where one learns anything

Agustino

I can do without the 'blonde' cliche though, It's an insult to Trump and everyone who shares his hair colour. — unenlightened

Yeah I agree, I didn't actually mean that to be there, it was just the first image I found with the find x problem - and me being lazy I just took it

You're missing out then. — unenlightened

Maybe I am. I am quite slow to get started at something, and I don't like failure. This is a personality trait of me though - I seek to avoid failure more than I desire success. I remember being like this from a very young age. I may have learned it from playing chess, which I used to do all day long with my grandfather before I started school. One bad move costs you more than one good move gains you - so the first priority is make no mistakes. And I've adapted that through all of my life - early lessons are hard to forget :P - although I suppose that if I'm missing out on good, I'm also missing out on bad

To get from can't drive to can drive, one has to start with can't drive, and start driving, preferably somewhere quiet and with someone to intervene before one hits a tree. One overcomes the failure there; the test is not where one learns anything — unenlightened

Yes that is true. That kind of failures I have overcome, although I don't like those either, so I have to push myself through them.

Buxtebuddha

Teachers aren't intended to be moral instructors anymore. Yet, in reality, the expectations for most teachers in too many schools is for them to be like parents to children that have abysmal home lives, which necessitates them taking on certain responsibilities that are not in their job descriptions. This is the disconnect, at least in the US, between school and state. The assjamming of tests, STEM programs, and other drivels on teachers is just another way of ignoring the real problems.

Banno

↪unenlightened

What grates is the proclivity of those outside education to set themselves up as arbiters. No other profession has so much external interference.

Would that they would just fuck off and let teachers teach.

Banno

↪Heister Eggcart

Providing guidance as to how one ought behave socially is pivotal to teaching; One might pretend that teachers are not moral instructors, but it would be no more than pretence.

Marchesk

Providing guidance as to how one ought behave socially is pivotal to teaching; One might pretend that teachers are not moral instructors, but it would be no more than pretence. — Banno

If that's the case, seems like teachers wasted a lot of time lecturing, assigning homework, and testing on stuff most of us largely forgot that wasn't social. I guess we learned to mostly get along being forced to learn in a place with a lot of people we didn't particularly care bout for seven hours a day. Preparation for the office, I suppose.

Banno

If that's the case, seems like teachers wasted a lot of time lecturing, assigning homework, and testing on stuff most of us largely forgot that wasn't social. — Marchesk

As if one might test, assign homework and lecture to a group who did not first know how to behave.

Marchesk

As if one might test, assign homework and lecture to a group who did not first know how to behave. — Banno

Sure, but at what age do you suppose that's learned?

Buxtebuddha

Providing guidance as to how one ought behave socially is pivotal to teaching; One might pretend that teachers are not moral instructors, but it would be no more than pretence. — Banno

Agreed.

If that's the case, seems like teachers wasted a lot of time lecturing, assigning homework, and testing on stuff most of us largely forgot that wasn't social. I guess we learned to mostly get along being forced to learn in a place with a lot of people we didn't particularly care bout for seven hours a day. Preparation for the office, I suppose. — Marchesk

Speaking of the United States, I don't think you realize the degree to which the state has its hands in teacher performance and how they have to teach. Tests, I would agree, have been over emphasized, but again, teachers are forced to put the focus on them, otherwise they'll see pay cuts or even be fired.

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