Education, Stupid

My views on education don't seem to be shared by most of the rest of the world, if the educational system is any indication. Well, to be fair, I have views on my own education which cause me to be miserable in scholastic atmospheres for the most part. I spent a long time trying to avoid this, trying to find the better school, or the better teacher, but I probably could have saved myself a lot of trouble and just soldiered through, since that is what eventually happened anyway. But my views on other people's education are divergent from the common curriculum, so to speak, and that's really the important part.

Writing on a topic so all-embracing as Education (with that capital E) could fill a book, and I'm not capable of focusing on the topic for that long (maybe another reason why I'm unhappy in school). What I'm interested in purveying this evening (or morning, or afternoon, or whatever) is the importance of understanding why you learn something. It's amazing just how much more useful education can be if you just understand its purpose.

In hindsight, most of us realize that much of what we learned was either preparation for further learning or seemingly useless. Very little of our education beyond a certain point is immediately useful to us in everyday life. Much of the time, I believe (and I have no hard facts to back this up at all) people who grow frustrated with education do so because they look to the future and see no benefit from the things they are learning. If you look to the future and expect to be a construction worker, literature is going to seem less useful. Contrariwise, if you want to be an astronaut... well, literature is going to seem less useful. In point of fact, unless you're planning some career intimately involving literature, it's hard to see the use.

Literature is just an example, and really too broad at that. A better example would be essay tests. I can think of no one I know who is paid to go into a room and write essays on random topics in a given amount of time. If I did know this person, I would kill them and take their job, because I am a master of blue book tests (albeit that I, contrary to my teachers' prognostications in high school, never had to take a blue book test in college, which shows you either how much they knew or how hard I tried, ultimately unsuccessfully, to avoid my intense dislike of traditional schooling). So what is the point of learning to take timed essay tests?

That's a question many students ask, and I think they deserve an answer. So too do the students who ask why things must be done a certain way in school, like style guides that must be followed in footnotes (I loathe the MLA), or laboratory experiments which must be written up just so. Why do we shelter students from the truth?

The truth is that we are, for the most part, training students for higher learning. Most things which have nothing to do with our (eventually) chosen field have no immediate utility; school, up to a fairly high level, is simply training for more school. We are supposed to be teaching students to think on their own, as well as to learn more effectively and to communicate ideas they have learned. Those skills are important.

In the specific, tell students what you're really doing. Essay tests are not job training; they teach you how to think on your feet. Teach the shortcuts; any successful essay-test-taker will tell you that the biggest part of writing in crunch time is organization of thoughts, but what most people won't tell you is that coming up with a few choice introductions, even whole template essays, which can fit almost any topic is a huge step toward being able to worry about nothing but ideas.

If we're teaching children how to think, why not strip away all the distractions and let them think? Why not explain that things must be done just so because it removes a barrier to thinking. Why not call a spade a spade? Teach kids to cheat (not plagiarize, but cut the corners that don't matter). Innovation is all about finding easier ways to do things.

Okay, now that I've said that, I feel the need to state that it's a small part of my view, not really all that happy outside its natural habitat, and that I also believe in intellectual rigor. But I am perfectly willing to attempt to explain why the rigor is necessary. I guess that's all I'm saying; show all your cards.

Oh, and if anyone has a job which involves taking essay tests all day that they'd like to offer me, my salary requirements are very reasonable.