Author Topic: Does the world of school and jobs destroy love of learning?  (Read 432 times)

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Does the world of school and jobs destroy love of learning?
« on: February 19, 2016, 08:38:47 am »
Does the world of school and jobs destroy love of learning?

It's an interesting phenomenon.

Quote from: John Warner
Dear Education System:

Do you know whose voice I don’t hear very often in the great educational reform debate?

Students.

But why should we listen to students? They don’t know what they need, do they?

Maybe not, but they do know what’s happening to them. They know that school makes them miserable. They know that the purpose of learning things is to pass tests so they can go to college where they will pass more tests and then graduate school and/or career where they will at last reach the finish line and be able to start living their lives, hopefully that is, because if they do badly on any of these tests their lives might be ruined.

I talk to students all the time – college students -  and this is what I hear from them. Many of them are either wracked by anxiety or totally disengaged, having done the only sane thing and opted out of the race.

These are good students, accomplished students, nineteen-year-old students who are – and I am not exaggerating – already looking forward to the day they can retire.

You’re probably aware of the letter home from the Harley Avenue Primary School in Elwood, NY cancelling the Kindergarten show because they were too busy getting these Kindergartners “college and career” ready.

Is this anything but madness? What is the experience of those five year olds when they were told there’s no time for singing and dancing and playing because we’re worried about their paths to college and career.

Did they cry? I bet some of them cried.

The comedian Louis C.K. reported via Twitter that the Common Core-aligned math curriculum is making his kids cry.

In this thread, someone named Adam responds:

"This is one of those "the system is working" moments. High-stakes testing dovetails well with the "movements" for private prisons, union busting, disinvestment in higher ed, and Social Security privatization. The goal is a sclerotic political system where the many are uneducated, frustrated, and nonvoting, and the elite won't have to worry of losing their position, nor their children's advantages -- and where labor is taxed more highly than assets and capital gains."

I don't even want to spend too much time complaining about the education-for-jobs system.  I just want to fight that entire mindset and try to steal back a little love for learning for learning's sake ... long after being thrown overboard.

In other words, screw NASA.  Only gorts would want to go on a mission to Mars!

I study daily in defiance of the mantra to be a "productive member of society".

 “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life believing that it is stupid.” – Albert Einstein

Unschooling quotes
« Last Edit: February 19, 2016, 09:07:05 am by H »
Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

Gorticide @ Nothing that is so, is so DOT edu

~ Tabak und Kaffee Süchtigen ~

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