|
The Great Education Hoax
Sunday, October 18, 2009 11:12 PM
It’s hard to stop them at the beginning. They will experiment and theorize, take things to pieces and reassemble them. They will invent, dream, tell jokes and stories, sing and cook and dance. They will help manage the classroom. They will help each other and look after the little ones. In short, they will use all of their brains. For these are still whole people.
And what will school do for them? If they are lucky, school will expand all that mind power in special ways. It will fill the gaps in their community’s knowledge as snugly as a piece in a jigsaw. If they are lucky. But most of them won’t be lucky. Whether they apparently succeed, or obviously fail, most of them will emerge more damaged than when they went in. The greater part of the world’s brain power is unused, paralyzed or distorted.
Maybe you’d been good at making complicated models of little cars. But later it was only geometry that was important. You liked geometry, but you liked making things as well. Or you’d loved making up fabulous stories. But later they only wanted you to compare and contrast other people’s stories.
And then, one day, you noticed a huge gate just by the school exit. It was labelled Public Examination System. It was a special gate because, however hard you all pushed, it only opened wide enough to let a few through it. A notice on the gate said that if you did get through it you would have an important position and a lovely life. You noticed that teachers seemed to prefer people who looked like they’d get through the gate.
And one thing was very clear it was impossible to get through the gate with all your skills and knowledge. They were far too bulky and couldn’t be wrapped up tightly or neatly enough. So you had to get some pieces of paper on which you’d written the answers to some questions. The answers were supposed to represent all your skills and knowledge. And the questions were things like: what are the principles of x? or X-a+b(x.yk)=? or compare and contrast X with Y, or translate A into B. You had to write them very fast or they didn’t count. Nor did the questions you would have liked to ask. Or the answers you would have liked to have given.
By this time you always studied on your own. You couldn’t let anyone see your work in case they copied it and managed to squeeze through the gate ahead of you. You knew the fewer the people pushing at the gate, the better your chances of getting through.
Nevertheless, everyone knew the system was fair. It was obvious. After all, the ones who were going to get through the gate were called Very Able Children. The ones who went on trying were called Average Ability. And the rest were called either Below Average, or Below Average With Behaviour Disorders, depending on whether they smashed the place up or not.
And a few teachers in the rich world saw this and realized how they and their pupils had been hoodwinked. And they wanted to bring back all the knowledge and skills of the first day. And make people see that Knowledge Is Power. And to realize that all the Fun and Shopping in the world cannot compensate for the atrophy of their marvellous brains, and their helplessness in the hands of the moguls. But they could only get a few people to listen.
|
|