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Morris Dovey

F. George McDuffee (in )
said:

snip

| History clearly shows that any society/culture/economy where a
| majority of its people loses (or never attains) at least a basic
| level of understanding of its principal and major activities is
| doomed in the long run (and most likely in the short run) because
| they are unable to control what they have created (popularly
| termed a "Frankenstein's monster"). Failure to understand
| farming in an agricultural society, science in a technical
| society, etc. is a disaster in the making.

Agreed - but I'd like to point out that we're failing at even more
fundamental levels than you've stated:

We're not succeeding at teaching the basics of problem-solving. I'm
finding that, more and more, kids and young adults seem to have
difficulty applying knowledge they already posess to the solution of
problems they haven't confronted previously.

Our educational institutions aren't getting across to students *why*
it's important to learn what's being taught. History, for example, has
become the boring exercise of learning dates and names rather than the
adventure of discovering what mankind can/can't, must do, and must not
do in order to survive and flourish.

Too much of education is disjoint from the real world. In the past, I
occasionally taught junior high and high school math. In one school I
was told to do nothing more than baby sit an unruly seventh grade
class. The principal knew that I was a "computer guy" and suggested
that I spend the hour talking about computers to fill the time. It was
interesting that this bunch of "problem" kids, was able (in _one_
hour) to design logic for a (very basic) CPU - and they were so "into"
the process that they didn't want to stop when the bell rang. The only
possible conclusion for me was that it wasn't the kids who were the
problem.

At another high school I was called in to take over for a math teacher
who was laid up in the hospital for several weeks following an
accident. I decided to take in a "show and tell" for each topic for
all of the classes to illustrate how the stuff they were studying was
used in the real world - and encouraged questions and discussions of
the applications. It was damn near magical! The kids - all of 'em -
decided that math could be not only interesting, but fun. The
eighth-graders (studying arithmetic and geometric series) took the bit
between their teeth and galloped into differential calculus without
having a clue that's what they were doing. I feel truly sorry for all
of the math teachers who miss out on having the kind of highs I
experienced. But the important point is that all it took was providing
links between the subject matter and the real world to "set the hook."

| It does not matter if the lack of understanding occurs because of
| failure to teach and pass on hard-won knowledge, or new "things"
| are introduced into the society/culture without a basic
| understanding by the majority of the people *AND THEIR LEADERS*.

Actually, it _does_ matter if we consider it a problem and have
serious intentions about solving it.

snip

| This is yet another example, where a critical public asset or
| facility, in this case free compulsory education, has been
| hi-jacked by the elite so they can impose their ideology and skim
| the benefits (i.e. college preparatory education) while the vast
| majority is deprived of the benefits (i.e. preparation for life
| rather than for yet more education) although the majority is
| expected to keep paying [more] for it.

I'm not sure that it's been hi-jacked by the "elite". I think it's
being suffocated by apathy, mis-directed good intention, incompetence,
changes to family structure, and laziness - and I don't think it's
possible to lay the responsibility on any single grouping of people.

| The cure for this is local action, where the voters (parents)
| fire the existing school board, and where the new school board
| then fires the existing superintendents and principals, and so
| on.

Some of the above (and I'm not excluding parents) definitely need to
be replaced with better; but I have difficulty believing that what
you're advocating would amount to very much more than a bureaucratic
version of musical chairs. I think we need a better solution than
that.

--
Morris Dovey
DeSoto Solar
DeSoto, Iowa USA
http://www.iedu.com/DeSoto