But as soon as I got older I noticed something terribly terribly wrong.
Plenty of people are unemployed, and when they do land a job it is rather a job that is completely unrelated to the college course they have taken. Once they are there, they feel stuck and is incapable of creating options for themselves to seek a way out. It is a direct result of a untrained mind.
So I has kept me thinking where did all those promising words went? Even the people at school who told me that are not even living the kind of life they told their students can. And so there I went and did some things differently.
So I has kept me thinking where did all those promising words went? Even the people at school who told me that are not even living the kind of life they told their students can. And so there I went and did some things differently.
Now I do believe the power of our minds, that we are born with infinite potential, a mind capable of achieving anything it desires just as the quotations above have stated. But question is: Have we ever experienced those said capabilities? There is no method of taking that away from people unless the mind has been trained the wrong way.
And the only one who is responsible for molding our minds from nursery period until adulthood is none other than Formal Education.
There are many reasons why this is so and these reasons can be readily observed by the ordinary eye. A child's mind is supposed to be free, playful, creative and inventive. Anything like music, art and inventions are the best things a child can do. And those qualities are kind of stuff geniuses possess.
But then as you all know, children are no longer given the chance to decide for themselves whether or not they are going to school but is required to finish 18 years regardless. Education now becomes compulsory. And the subjects that are poured into the child are the ones that would naturally destroy those qualities.
A person spends approximately 18 years in formal education bombarded with analytical left-brain subjects and by the time they finally get out from school, most of the wonderful qualities they once possess have already been diminished. This is simply taking the big picture of what formal education does.
I titled this article as Faulty Educational System because I do not oppose to the idea of schooling and education and I do believe education is for everyone. But it is the system of the school rather and the method of teaching and presenting of ideas are the ones that's faulty.
1. Learning Retention. How long can a student stay listening to a discussion in a classroom and actually understand the point of the topic? Presumably an hour and two, the mind can retain all the important things needed by that duration. But with extended periods of time, retention starts to slow down, which is usually the case in formal education. Once we get tired of reading and listening we usually rest and let our mind recuperate. But what happens in the classroom is simply the opposite, and must go on until the afternoon bell rings. If a students retention rate is good for an average of two hours only but must continue the eight hour curriculum five days a week, considering that he must stay up late at night to finish projects, assignments and review for an exam the next day. I do not think that the student's mind can actually learn if there is too much mental pressure being put together.
2. Subject Interests. Everyone is unique. We have our own tastes, likes and dislikes, strengths and weaknesses and speciality. If we are to observe our mind and the way we learn, we get to notice that we only actually learn when we have taken a keen interest towards a certain subject. A person who is very interested in music can learn about music a lot faster than those who have a little interest in music. And on the other hand those who have little interest in music in their part have their own individual interest and can learn faster in their own field of interest better than the one who is in the field of music. But what happens in formal education is that they let every kid study all sorts of fields whether they like it or not and very much expecting them to excel in each one. And if a kid doesn't excel, he is immediately ridiculed as dumb.
3. The Illusion of Memorization. If we say study, in school the first thing that comes to a students mind is memorization whereby information is loaded into their memory bank so it will be well ready for the exams. But if you try and look within your memory bank right now and see there if you can trace any passages from textbooks and literary discussion from your school days. None, absolutely none. All that remains there are those lovely and painful memories or those information that were valuable to us. Simply put that only the impulses which impacted us greatly will continue to remain in our memory bank and those information which our brain finds of little significance, for instance boring discussion and textbooks, is easily flushed out. Which proves that nobody really learns when using the method of 'memorization', which is the trademark of Formal Education.
4. Psychological Effects of Examination Scores. The original purpose of exams were to measure how much a student has learned. And examination scores are served as basis to measure the student's accumulated knowledge. So for instance a student receives an F for a grade signifying failure, so logically in order to pass succeeding exams and to prevent ridicule in classroom and spanking at home, he must by all means achieve sufficient amount of grades. That alone will land a strong psychological impact upon students where it will cause them to have their attention focused entirely on achieving high scores to pass exams instead of actually learning which was the original intended purpose.
5. Stereotypes. I do believe this is the worst of them all. When we say the word "smart" inside the classroom, it generally refers to someone who has high grades . So what happens if a student don't get high grades, what will people call him? Dumb. Kids don't know any better during that time, if a student does not pass an exam or excel in a certain subject does not mean he has learning problems, but the stereotype "dumb" keeps on going on letting students believe that they have some sort of learning incapabilities. And most students carries this all their lives believing that they're no good.
So this is what's eventually gonna happen:
The methods formal education use in teaching are really out modeled and are really the primitive way of doing it, a really dumb way of doing it. Students can hardly learn the way they should be with the use of such methods.
Though it seems that everything we have run through now are quite disappointing, there is though, one thing in formal school which I find impressive: Their accurate system which aims to form a strong belief in every single individual on how they should live their lives.
First of all education does not teach us when it comes to money. Second they promote their students to become employees and professionals (I think that's what they mean by the "bright future") And third, emphasizes the importance of diplomas to "ensure" a student's future.
That alone establishes a strong control over the belief system of people and will lead to this:
The bottom line is, we all have choices. Aight? This is a idea that has been going on ever since and here I have quotes and words from famous men of the past who has the same idea in mind:
"No man who worships education has got the best out of education.... Without a gentle contempt for education no man's education is complete." ~G.K. Chesterton
"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 thoughts of other men." ~Bill Beattie
"An educational system isn't worth a great deal if it teaches young people how to make a living but doesn't teach them how to make a life." ~Author Unknown
"It is a thousand times better to have common sense without education than to have education without common sense." ~Robert G. Ingersoll
"Education... has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading." ~G.M. Trevelyan
"Real education must ultimately be limited to men who insist on knowing, the rest is mere sheep-herding." ~Ezra Pound
"He who opens a school door, closes a prison." ~Victor Hugo
I stumbled upon this website called anti-school.org which is also against educational system and I personally loved the contents there. And here is one of the contents I found there which I find most intriguing:
John Caldwell Holt asserts that youths should have the right to control and direct their own learning, and that the current compulsory schooling system violates a basic fundamental right of humans: the right to decide what enters our minds. He thinks that freedom of learning is part of freedom of thought, even more fundamental of a human right than freedom of speech. He especially states that forced schooling, regardless of whether the student is learning anything whatsoever, or if the student could more effectively learn elsewhere in different ways, is a gross violation of civil liberties (Holt, 1974).
There are many reasons why this is so and these reasons can be readily observed by the ordinary eye. A child's mind is supposed to be free, playful, creative and inventive. Anything like music, art and inventions are the best things a child can do. And those qualities are kind of stuff geniuses possess.
But then as you all know, children are no longer given the chance to decide for themselves whether or not they are going to school but is required to finish 18 years regardless. Education now becomes compulsory. And the subjects that are poured into the child are the ones that would naturally destroy those qualities.
A person spends approximately 18 years in formal education bombarded with analytical left-brain subjects and by the time they finally get out from school, most of the wonderful qualities they once possess have already been diminished. This is simply taking the big picture of what formal education does.
I titled this article as Faulty Educational System because I do not oppose to the idea of schooling and education and I do believe education is for everyone. But it is the system of the school rather and the method of teaching and presenting of ideas are the ones that's faulty.
1. Learning Retention. How long can a student stay listening to a discussion in a classroom and actually understand the point of the topic? Presumably an hour and two, the mind can retain all the important things needed by that duration. But with extended periods of time, retention starts to slow down, which is usually the case in formal education. Once we get tired of reading and listening we usually rest and let our mind recuperate. But what happens in the classroom is simply the opposite, and must go on until the afternoon bell rings. If a students retention rate is good for an average of two hours only but must continue the eight hour curriculum five days a week, considering that he must stay up late at night to finish projects, assignments and review for an exam the next day. I do not think that the student's mind can actually learn if there is too much mental pressure being put together.
2. Subject Interests. Everyone is unique. We have our own tastes, likes and dislikes, strengths and weaknesses and speciality. If we are to observe our mind and the way we learn, we get to notice that we only actually learn when we have taken a keen interest towards a certain subject. A person who is very interested in music can learn about music a lot faster than those who have a little interest in music. And on the other hand those who have little interest in music in their part have their own individual interest and can learn faster in their own field of interest better than the one who is in the field of music. But what happens in formal education is that they let every kid study all sorts of fields whether they like it or not and very much expecting them to excel in each one. And if a kid doesn't excel, he is immediately ridiculed as dumb.
3. The Illusion of Memorization. If we say study, in school the first thing that comes to a students mind is memorization whereby information is loaded into their memory bank so it will be well ready for the exams. But if you try and look within your memory bank right now and see there if you can trace any passages from textbooks and literary discussion from your school days. None, absolutely none. All that remains there are those lovely and painful memories or those information that were valuable to us. Simply put that only the impulses which impacted us greatly will continue to remain in our memory bank and those information which our brain finds of little significance, for instance boring discussion and textbooks, is easily flushed out. Which proves that nobody really learns when using the method of 'memorization', which is the trademark of Formal Education.
4. Psychological Effects of Examination Scores. The original purpose of exams were to measure how much a student has learned. And examination scores are served as basis to measure the student's accumulated knowledge. So for instance a student receives an F for a grade signifying failure, so logically in order to pass succeeding exams and to prevent ridicule in classroom and spanking at home, he must by all means achieve sufficient amount of grades. That alone will land a strong psychological impact upon students where it will cause them to have their attention focused entirely on achieving high scores to pass exams instead of actually learning which was the original intended purpose.
5. Stereotypes. I do believe this is the worst of them all. When we say the word "smart" inside the classroom, it generally refers to someone who has high grades . So what happens if a student don't get high grades, what will people call him? Dumb. Kids don't know any better during that time, if a student does not pass an exam or excel in a certain subject does not mean he has learning problems, but the stereotype "dumb" keeps on going on letting students believe that they have some sort of learning incapabilities. And most students carries this all their lives believing that they're no good.
So this is what's eventually gonna happen:
The methods formal education use in teaching are really out modeled and are really the primitive way of doing it, a really dumb way of doing it. Students can hardly learn the way they should be with the use of such methods.
Though it seems that everything we have run through now are quite disappointing, there is though, one thing in formal school which I find impressive: Their accurate system which aims to form a strong belief in every single individual on how they should live their lives.
First of all education does not teach us when it comes to money. Second they promote their students to become employees and professionals (I think that's what they mean by the "bright future") And third, emphasizes the importance of diplomas to "ensure" a student's future.
That alone establishes a strong control over the belief system of people and will lead to this:
But enough about those stuff. What can we do then? What are the alternatives? I do believe there is one, and that is Self-Education.
We might not have noticed it yet but we all have learned more in our own environment than in school. Take our dialect for example, presumably we are all enrolled in English based schools and we know for a fact that only few comes out literate in English even after finishing college, but when it comes to our own dialect we all became proficient with it even before reaching the age of puberty and that goes without the support from formal education.
The bottom line is, we all have choices. Aight? This is a idea that has been going on ever since and here I have quotes and words from famous men of the past who has the same idea in mind:
"No man who worships education has got the best out of education.... Without a gentle contempt for education no man's education is complete." ~G.K. Chesterton
"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 thoughts of other men." ~Bill Beattie
"An educational system isn't worth a great deal if it teaches young people how to make a living but doesn't teach them how to make a life." ~Author Unknown
"It is a thousand times better to have common sense without education than to have education without common sense." ~Robert G. Ingersoll
"Education... has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading." ~G.M. Trevelyan
"Real education must ultimately be limited to men who insist on knowing, the rest is mere sheep-herding." ~Ezra Pound
"He who opens a school door, closes a prison." ~Victor Hugo
I stumbled upon this website called anti-school.org which is also against educational system and I personally loved the contents there. And here is one of the contents I found there which I find most intriguing:
Fact - Parents require ‘education’ more than their kids.Disagree?? Then answer the following fundamental questions…....
- By 'investing' lakhs of rupees and almost 20 years to get this degree, what have I, or others like me got in return??
- Is the work that I am doing today, in any way related to what I learnt in school and college??
- The person who opens schools, does so keeping in mind the future of children or his own future??
- The teachers who come to school; do they come to 'teach' or just to complete their job??
- Who is the person who issues 'degrees'? What is his standing in society??
- Is anything taught in schools which you can't learn sitting at home yourself??
- By simply tying a black coloured belt on my waist, will I become a black belt karate champion??
- By 'purchasing' an MBA, MTech or MSc degree, can anyone ever become a Master of Business, Technology or Science??
- After investing lakhs of rupees and 20 years, does any school give a guarantee that my child will not join the battalions of unemployed youth just as I had joined after my ‘graduation’ ??
- Does any School teach you how to earn money??
Quote from Wikipedia:
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