How We Understand Education is Key
The major preoccupation and expenditure of state government is education -- in all its ramifications. Done in the way we’ve always done it in the past, is the problem of present day education, because something else entirely different is now possible and necessary.
Gone are the days when memorization of anything and everything was the most highly valued skill; what is even more important now, is simply being able to find information as needed -- and not merely learning and storing information for a time we might be able to use it -- or learning for learning’s sake. Rather than that being the measure of intelligence -- that is now a measure of unintelligence -- a waste, because there is so much necessary and urgent to learn now, and put to immediate use, in our actual, daily living.
Intelligence is how we actually live our lives -- and not some theoretical measure of how we could live our lives, if only we were intelligent.
Education has become a well-known failure because it is not necessary or appropriate in today’s capability for life -- in which learning, is a given -- and not something extraordinary and apart from our actual living.
The prototype for this new manner of learning, are those who get on their computers and are learning all the time -- as a way of life, integral to their lives. That’s how they do everything -- learning about it to do it, and not just learning with no intention or desire to do anything with it. So the motivation and purpose for learning has become something entirely different -- for which the old education model of just teaching people what they think they ought to know, is not productive -- and probably never has been, but we know that precisely now.
The new tools of our times, the computer and modern information processing strategies, has rendered the old education system obsolete. Test scores and performance will stagnate and regress because there is no critical need for that learning; if there was, as in the development of the computer, the growth would be explosive, and measurement is not possible when growth is that rapid and unprecedented. One can only measure the old by standards -- but not the new, which is the world we now live in.
The universities, the schools, the “news” media, former foundations of society, become unnecessary to maintain as institutions apart from our integrated lives -- in which individuals are capable of being universities, schools, media. So rather than the cost of these things going to infinity, they go to zero in the new society. Learning requires the learner -- but not necessarily the teacher, who may actually be a hindrance. It is just tradition that the student required the teacher -- and not that the teacher is necessary to the process. The best teacher is the student themselves.
But one good teacher can teach an infinite number of students -- rather than requiring a one-to-one ratio, which surely is an indication of poor instruction. And in requiring that education consume all of society’s resources, none is left to solve the other urgent needs of these times. Education doesn’t have to be a problem -- but understanding that is key.
posted by Mike Hu @ 11:06 PM
8 comments
8 Comments:
We need legislators who just don’t throw money at a problem growing worse because that is what the experts tell us to do.
The most important skill in a legislator is being able to process information -- from the self-interested sources -- and determine what is true, from what is manipulated. Having sat in on a few committee hearings, often the chair seems to know the lobbyists quite well and colludes in ensuring that the lobbyist has as much time to present their case while limiting the opposition to almost none. In this way, they’re much like the letter pages of the local newspapers -- in which support for one position can be suppressed while testimony for the other “favored” position seems overwhelming and eloquent. Any resistance is even edited to seem inept, incoherent, disreputable.
And so such people think everybody in the world operates in this fashion, and there is great hostility and resentment towards those who don’t go along. That’s the biggest complaint I hear, talking to the people. “Everybody says they’re going to do something, but they don’t. They sell out as soon as they get in -- and stay there forever.”
The truth, in civic life and affairs, has been a great casualty -- of "mass" media.
But the remedy is already on the way in the form of personalized media -- that allows one to filter out the false -- which was not thought necessary as long as the information was provided by and controlled by media monopolies -- which can be many sources saying the same thing. The break came when there were truly alternative sources -- alternative in the sense that they represented entirely different ways of processing and distributing information, which is a dynamic, ongoing process.
The old control hierarchies of information have been greatly overrun -- because information, the truth, cannot be controlled for long before it breaks out and through. Because what is true stands the test of time -- and withstands all attempts to discredit and undermine it. The truth is unchanging and relentless in that way, and so time is on the side of what is true.
One sees this in information all the time -- how some things said, are timeless, while others appear to wear false as soon as they are told, until by the next day, they are obviously false and forgettable. Much of what is “news,” is of this sort. It is interesting the moment it is heard and then the novelty quickly wears off and one loses interest and waits for the new “news,” which has a similar short shelf-life. That is what we know as the “news,” in contemporary life. It loses its value as soon as it is said.
Truth, on the other hand, becomes more valuable and appreciated with time -- and that is the value of truth -- information of lasting value, and not just to relieve the boredom of the moment, to impress with its ability to deceive and manipulate.
We don't need that kind of "mass" education. Information has moved from the "mass" to the more valuable "individualized," which is the learning that is more certain to be useful and rewarding.
We don't teach trigonometry because one person in a class of thrity might find it useful someday; we learn trigonometry (or anything else), when we need it, because learning anything is easy and instantaneous -- rather than requiring the traditional long formal education and/or apprenticeship.
That is the new paradigm in learning -- that it is easy and instantaneous, and thus, most useful for those who can benefit from it the most -- which are not the young but the old, who have to relearn everything they know. The young don't have that disadvantage of "already" knowing; their minds are fresh to learn anew.
That's why a lot of these kids come into kindergarten already knowing how to use a computer -- while many older, supposedly smarter people, say they'll never be able to learn how. A good teacher can teach anything in an hour. It doesn't tke a year or twelve -- although that ensures job security for the many teachers.
What is the priority?
Most teachers have a vested interest in making what they teach seem hard and difficult to learn as an indication of the value of what they have to teach. The students interest is to learn as easily and quickly as possible; so there is this conflict of interest and cross purposes between the two, rather than the cooperation, collaboration, and ultimately, the integration of the student as the teacher, which is the fulfillment of any learning and instruction. This end is frustrated by modern education pedagogy -- which maintains that the student can never be the teacher, and more importantly, that the teacher can never seem to be the student. The unchanging roles must be maintained -- but in this way, there can never be true mastery that can only be achieved when the student becomes his own teacher.
This is possible not only on the Ph.D. level but at every level and subject of learning. This is the true meaning and purpose of education that has been lost by modern education “professionals (administrators).” That is why it is so difficult, if not impossible -- and why the cost of education conducted in that way, goes to infinity -- without any increase in understanding.
And so when we have legislators that haven’t done anything else but go to school, and are told by teachers to throw more money towards educators, they obligingly throw more money at educators -- because they don’t know anything else, and have been taught that is the only thing they can do.
And who pays for all this generosity?
In Hawaii, it is the poor people -- who love supporting the upper midddle classes in the luxury they've grown accustomed to demanding that they deserve to be the rich too.
With the help of the newspapers (media), they will now convince the public that the median income is the new poverty level -- fueling inflation with that misperception.
The greatest problems of Hawaii, are this misinformation.
Once information is valid and truthful, problems solve themselves, or don't exist in the first place.
So the first order of business has to be ensuring the integrity of information. We need people in leadership who can tell the truth from b.s. -- and not be the source of it!
Post a Comment
<< Home