Friday, 10 October 2014

Assumptions and Motivations









Vincent said...

When you say "The assumption is that the purpose, the only important purpose, of education, is to prepare young people to make the most of their future in the world" it is hard for a reader outside the system to grasp its force and point without being able to compare it with the view(s) shared or not shared "by most of the people who create and maintain our systems of education."

Also one must imagine that educators are answerable to those who put up the money, so that one has to understand what the wider society expects from education. I would have thought that your primary assumption is unarguable, so a little background would help see the problems.

Vincent said...
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The Hickory Wind said...

Despite the length and depth of thought that I've given to it, I still find it very hard to explain what I mean here. I am sort of assuming, as a working hypothesis, that the money is available and that it is worth spending it on education. As you may remember, but other readers may not, I tend to leap to the defence of the taxpayer against the predation and waste of government, but I am trying very hard not to make political arguments here. Since a proper reform on the lines I shall, very slowly, set out, would be much better and much cheaper than what we currently have, it should be relatively easy to sell to those who will have to pay for it.

On the other point, which I shall be saying a lot about in the fullness of time*, there are very many people involved in creating and running the education system, and their incentives do not lead them to put the benefits of students first: teachers want a regular wage and a quiet life; they can get these things without achieving much in the way of education; the administrators are concerned with making work for themselves, paperwork primarily; the politicians who devise the rules are motivated by what motivates politicians, with the result that the laws that bind schools are bureaucratic, populist, aspirational and impractical.

The general point is that the interests of students are not paramount.

*This slow-motion blogging is not at all what I intended, but life, in the form of work, mostly, has decided that it must be that way.

Vincent said...

Thank you for this heartening reply. The thing takes a leap forward in my mind, freeing itself from shackles which caused stasis or rather a ritualistic gnashing of teeth as interests & theories collide. I sense that Rousseau must have worked to a similar framework of freedom when he started drafting Emile in his head.

Never mind the slow-motion blogging. It's an ideal stimulant and tranquillizer combined. No stress of deadlines, yet something always to be developed and clarified. In this medium, you can even argue with yourself and lose. That's one of the best ways of self-teaching and learning, I find!