Education

Originally published at a denizen's entertainment. You can comment here or there.

Lately I have been thinking again about education. There seem few who would look at education - the sort given to children as they age into adulthood - and say they are quite pleased with the situation and wish it not to change in any way.

Well. I am not presently prepared to argue the merits of mandated public education, so the following thoughts proceed on the assumption children are required to attend school in a similar way to existing situations in Anglo nations.

Mainly I think basic, primary education should be concerned with providing people with tools which will assist them in thought, aid them to flourish in the world. When I was studying to be a library technician I frequently thought that what we were learning would in many ways be the sort of thing people would benefit from learning at a young age. Information literacy, that is.

Facts in their raw form perhaps are less valuable than knowing how to acquire new facts as desired. Information literacy, knowing how to find information, to evaluate it once found... I think those skills would be of great benefit to people generally. Critical thinking, too.

Literacy, numeracy, information literacy, critical thinking. I suppose at the moment these are what I am considering foundational skills which primary schools would do well to teach. Before facts, teach how to understand and evaluate when presented to locate new information when sought and to recognise gaps in one's own understanding so that it might be recognised when more information is needed. To know fallacies and propaganda and understand not only if something is wrong but where and why.

Well. This is much of my present thinking on what would be beneficial as a basic and somewhat universal education. I am sure it is complete, and others have differing views.

One other thing I wonder about is reducing the stigma of failure. Not only or perhaps not even especially the idea that to fail a unit, assignment, whatever is shameful, but the related idea that issuing a failing grade must be avoided wherever possible.

A problem with this: my thoughts on that matter of failure are framed as a remedy to the complaint that increasingly students and their parents are being coddled in education, insulated from failure and standards continually lowered so everyone passes. The blame for this generally pinned on 'generational entitlement' 'special snowflake' syndrome or endemic problems in education systems where educators are pressured do things like meet quotas, 'teach to the test' or otherwise show results in order to keep going at all. I am much more inclined to heed the latter set of complaints than the former.

So, let's say these complaints have merit and describe a problem which do well to be addressed. It seems then simple to say failure should not be a problem, that it should be acceptable for a student to fail a course of study, a subject or unit, and then try again as often as wanted. Or not to. Something of 'proceeding at one's own pace'. If one does better in a particular area, but struggles in another, it makes sense to me that a student may proceed in the one area of study while still working on another - school progression not held in lockstep, nor straightjacketed in temporal extent.

And, I probably must stress that accommodations should be available. If a student would benefit from an accommodation, ey should have access to that accommodation.

That could be all for now.