- Xaris
- Jul 25, 2006
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Lucky there's a family guy
Lucky there's a man who positively can do
All the things that make us
Laugh and cry
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I haven't really gone into D&D since the early 2000s... has it uh, changed?
armgamingchair)
quote:Education in America sucks fat eggs.
I don't think many would argue with that statement. Either in terms of standardized testing, outrageous university fees, the ill-treatment of teachers and the sheer mindless tedium of sitting in uncomfortable desk staring at a wall for 8 hours a day, eating garbage lunch meals that you get to pay a sweet pound of flesh for, there's not a lot of good things happening in schools, and that's just from the curriculum side. Then you have the issues of rapey teachers, bullying, harassment, outdated and just plain inaccurate lessons (Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492 and that's ALL HE DID) and teachers having to serve double duty as both daycare personnel and educators, where parents get to demand their children get special treatment for their poor grades because they don't have time to help them read their assignments, and the fact that most high-school dropouts are making more money selling dope on their block then the graduates with college degrees do working at McDonalds (or if you're lucky, an investment firm.) It is really no big surprise that some kids just lose their mind, grab their daddy's gun and start blowing holes in everyone and everything they see.
So this is a thread to discuss and debate how education reform should be enacted--what needs to be changed, what needs to be taken away, and how the many problems facing a school-age child can be addressed in a functional, effective way.
My first and primary problem with American education is that it does absolutely nothing to prepare you for the real world. You learn math and science and history from lovely textbooks and then, fifteen years later in college, you go online and find that everything you were taught was actually wrong. Children are effectively on probation, sitting still and listening to teachers for eight hours a day, punished if they speak or move too much or get bored or lose focus, and even if they do absorb all the knowledge it still will prove itself to be highly inadequate to them succeeding in the "real world", where they'll largely just have to learn all new skills to adjust to a new workplace anyway, and they're expected to have a career in mind after high school graduation, then just 2-4 years to prepare themselves for that career, which may or may not even exist upon their graduation from university. There is no functionality to public education, and that needs to be addressed. So, I have three proposals I'll posit, proposals I think could be enacted relatively easily, but would require a vast increase in school budgets and a vast increase in the resources allotted education. I do not think it needs to be stated, but these resources would be easily obtained by, say, cutting the military spending budget in half, but we can quibble hard numbers around page ten, if we survive. So here we go:
Proposal 1: From middle school onwards into high school, students are given a year-long assignment: start your own business. Sixth grade would have the students breaking into teams--you can work alone and reap all the profits, but do all the work, or you can create a team as large as you can manage, so long as everyone has a job to do and everyone gets an equal share in the "company". Sixth grade it's only abstract, but you create a business plan, a product, and a means of distribution. In seventh grade, you revise your business plan and get introduced to basic economic theory, get a crash course on tax laws, and learn how to file taxes, and how taxing differs from business to individuals. In eight grade, you are given a crash course in website design, and are tasked to create a website for your business, a social media page for your business, and even utilize art class time to learn photoshop and create banner ads.
Moving into high school, you now actually start your business. Refined over middle school into something simple enough for a student to run, but still a functioning business with an actual product and actual revenue, your business becomes a major part of your grade. It doesn't have to succeed, mind--in fact, failure or success are not the deciding criteria of grading, but rather the efficacy of which you run the business, how well your employees work together, and how much you actually learn from the experience. All revenue from your business belongs to you, the student--nobody takes it away to put into a college fund, although that may be suggested, it doesn't go back to the school and it doesn't go to your parents either. Your success or failure directly benefits you. You can graduate high school with a functioning business ready to expand into the larger world, or you'll leave high school knowing exactly how a business is run, how to start a business, and what can make a business fail. You will, naturally and effectively, acquired every major skill you would need to work in a business or run your own business. Mathematics, science (at least weights and measures), interpersonal communication, managing a team, being part of a team, having actual responsibility--before you even go to college, you are prepared to enter the working world, and your university choice is now even more well-informed, as you can opt to escape the realm of business and enter technology, sciences or arts, or you enjoyed your experience and can go on to learn even more about businesses.
This functions in several ways, first and foremost acting as a means of combatting the sheer volume of corporate monolithic structures that define the workplace. Rather than being a wage slave for some other person's company, you will now be encouraged AND educated to create your own company, and to do so in a way that discourages exploitation and encourages cooperation, while still maintaining that competitive edge that Americans seem to love so much.
Proposal 2: Organic farms shall be another component of the curriculum. Rather than feed kids frozen airplane food or have them choose between junk and crummy vegetables, children from as early as elementary school through high school will have access to a greenhouse, a hydroponics facility, or even just a fenced off area of land, depending on where their school is located. They will be given access to a wide range of seeds and have a farmer/agriculture expert available to guide them in planting a seed, tending to that seed, helping it grow, and eventually enjoying the fruit of your labor. While this may initially be limited to easily grown plants like tomatoes or carrots, it would be my hope that students could grow any number of vegetables and fruits, and create orchards of fruit-bearing trees if possible, right in the common area of their school.
This addresses several primary issues, the first being nutrition and obesity. Kids are fat and lazy and they have no reason not to. The modern world creates an infinite divide between the source of one's food and one's food itself, and many children have grown up never seeing a cow or a pig, not knowing that carrots grow in the ground and apples grow on trees, and not knowing the difference between fresh vegetables and produce versus frozen and canned victuals they buy at the dollar store. As a part of the curriculum as well, students will have incentive to participate outside of just getting free food, and will come away from their education with an appreciation and knowledge for where their food comes from, what good food is versus bad food, and hopefully it'll encourage them to continue having their own gardens throughout their lives.
I'd even, if resource permit, allow high school-age students to have spaces to raise pigs or chickens or other lifestock, to make their own milk and cheese and even, if they want to, learn how to kill, pluck, skin and debone chickens, how to turn a pig into pork chops, and this could even tie into proposal one if some students should decide they would like their business to be a butchers shop. Of all of the proposals I have, this is one I feel almost most important and most doable. Giving children control over their own diet, eliminating the reliance on fast food or microwave dinners (especially if you have working parents who don't have the time or skill to prepare actually balanced meals) and giving them an appreciation for nature itself and the circle of life and death.
Proposal 3: Physical education is a joke in America. Unless you decide to enter the sports programs, your experience in PE is basically running laps, climbing ropes, playing basketball or just doing some dull exercises for forty minutes, if you even have PE at all. PE often just becomes a class to goof off during, or a second recess if you've got a chill teacher. What it isn't, however, is an actual class that teaches you anything actually useful. My solution to that is to turn Physical Education into Martial Arts Education.
I've gotten some flak for this in previous threads because I initially posited this idea as a solution to bullying--and I still think that it would have an effect--but there are greater benefits to this than just the capacity to fight back against bullying. For one, it teaches discipline, something strongly lacking in today's day and age. It encourages physical fitness and does it in a way that's actually engaging to kids. I knew no child growing up who wanted to be a runner, but I knew TONS of kids who wanted to be Power Rangers, and they'd hurt themselves trying to do flying drop kicks on the playground. Let's take that enthusiasm and put it into a context that's a little more controlled. By teaching kids the arts of self-defense, you will encourage an active lifestyle, cultivate an appreciation for the skill and technique of martial combat as well as the philosophies behind karate, ju jitsu or tae kwondo. Got a disagreement? Hit the mats. Have a permenant gym teacher who is trained in MMA and have the gym open to kids to spar, practice their technique, or just roll around. As kids grow into high school, this curriculum could expand to handle even more complicated techniques and situations, such as weapon disarmament, kendo or fencing training, archery and even, perhaps in certain states, firearms training, with a final exam requiring disassembling and reassembling a rifle before taking to shooting a series of targets.
Self-defense classes are already heavily encouraged in certain aspects of society for young women. Self-defense, discipline and athleticism are objectively good things, and by taking the natural predilection for violence and dischord on the schoolyard and channel it into something positive. Every martial art--or at least, every good martial art--has a fundamental philosophy attached to it, a philosophy that encourages responsibility, respect and above all, celebrates he who chooses NOT to fight. I honestly believe that with an entire school career of martial arts, you would have less incidences of surprise sex on college campus, you'd have less incidences of violence amongst peers and you'd have a healthier population, more active, more physically fit and more responsible in regards to the nature of violence.
I imagine this third option will be the most controversial of these proposals, but I think there's something to be said about having a population that can defend itself. Indeed, I'd argue that this is a fundamental aspect of the American character--the second amendment seems to be broadly interpreted as having the right to defend ones self against tyranny. I also believe that, with training in martial arts and instruction in the philosophies of combat, you'll have less gun owners, you'd diminish the impact of gun culture, and you could feasibly actually disarm the police force and maybe put a stop to the growing police state, much of which stems from abuses of authority. It is not a healthy society that puts all of its martial instruction and all of the powers of force into the hands of a singular organization. I'm certain everyone has dealt with a bullying police officer who knows that he's bigger than you, stronger or better armed, and can get away with pushing you around. In the world I'm envisioning, there lacks that discrepency. Everyone is on the same page. Everyone is on the same level, at least fundamentally.
I'd also point out that many countries accomplish this very same goal with mandatory military service. Every Israeli citizen must serve two years in their army and go through basic training, boot camp, martial arts instruction and firearm training, and this is open to both men and women. And you know what? It's not a bad idea. It creates social unity, national unity and empowers the populace. I object, however, to mandatory military service, so why not take the useful skills that com with it and apply them in less nationalistic ways.
So there are my major proposals--curriculum reform, nutrition reform, and physical education reform. I invite you to offer your own suggestions, politely challenge or debate the proposals I suggested, and generally discuss areas YOU feel education would be better served in reform. There are a lot of elements I haven't touched on, and I'd be very curious to see what people who had a different educational background to myself have to suggest. Thank you very much for reading.
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Jul 23, 2014 00:29
