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Only a few countries are teaching children how to think

economist.com

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Re: Only a few countries are teaching children how to think

#21

Post by CrankyPants »

kubov wrote: post #13

Well, reading that as a 22 years old Polish male gives me mixed feelings. I was living in Poland and studying there for my whole life and basically I have experience basically in whole educational process here (preschool, elementary, gymnasium, high school and now pursuing BS degree at polytechnic) I can definitely say that polish educational system is not that great. Of course we have a lot of people contesting in c…

Thanks for the insight.

Every major publication runs a piece just like this every few years. The exotic countries and methods always differ somewhat, but the formula is always the same. It's the pseudo-intellectual version of the filler/cover-baitait articles on new ways to become heart healthy, or inventions that will change the world, usually done well in advance and saved for slow news-weeks.

Not that the subject matter isn't of value, but it's always oversimplified, and oversold.

Re: Only a few countries are teaching children how to think

#22

Post by dnautics »

kevincrane wrote: post #7
sillysaurus2 wrote: post #2

Growing up, I declined to participate in the educational system (primarily to avoid harassment at school) and instead spent all of my time learning to program video games at home. So I would sleep through class, go home, and try to write Pong. My academic performance was nonexistent, but I came out of it with a career. I was wondering, was anyone else's childhood experience similar? Highschool felt at best a dungeon,…

I feel like I'm in the minority here (backed up by a similar discussion on reddit today), but I really enjoyed high school. I liked the classes, I felt like I knew what I was doing with life when I graduated and went on to college, and then there's the whole social thing that people seem hit/miss on. I made a ton of lifelong friends in high school, played on sports teams all 4 years, and evolved from a shy little kid…

I liked my high school experience as well, but I went to this school: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-B_Woodlawn

But I did attend elementary school in Japan (and had cousins who went to high school there at the same time I was) and while they may have achieved a proficiency higher than most americans, the freedom granted to me at my high school allowed me to do even better - and I was given a decidedly non-standard education emphasizing critical thinking and questioning of authority.

This served me exceptionally well in college, and on through grad school and postdoctoral studies. Perhaps this is a bit of an overgeneralization, but almost all of the East Asian postdocs that I encountered did not, outwardly, exhibit as critical a stance towards data and evidence as did american postdocs - with the generalizeable exception of the East Asian postdocs who did their grad school in the States.

Re: Only a few countries are teaching children how to think

#23

Post by westicle »

aspensmonster wrote: post #12
clavalle wrote: post #8

> the company is struggling to find Okies with the skills to fill even its most basic factory jobs. Such posts require workers to think critically Perhaps those educated enough to think critically put that skill to work before accepting a factory job making mass produced biscuits. My critical thinking skills lead me to guess that is not the most fulfilling, high paying, or upwardly mobile job even for Oklahoma.

>Such posts require workers to think critically, yet graduates of local schools are often unable to read or do simple maths. This is why the company recently decided to open a new factory in Poland... This was the solution? Seriously? Going through the hassle of opening up a factory on the other side of the planet across language and legal barriers all because the local population in Oklahoma didn't come shrink-wrapp…

I fail to see how that is a more simple solution. Teaching people how to think is both an educational and cultural challenge which far exceeds the trivial challenge of outsourcing work.

People have a wide range of different responsibilities (self, family, local community, humankind etc). I don't see why Polish people are morally any less deserving of jobs than Oklahomans. This company clearly thinks the Polish are more capable of doing the job. Who are we to say otherwise?

Re: Only a few countries are teaching children how to think

#24

Post by austenallred »

sillysaurus2 wrote: post #2

Growing up, I declined to participate in the educational system (primarily to avoid harassment at school) and instead spent all of my time learning to program video games at home. So I would sleep through class, go home, and try to write Pong. My academic performance was nonexistent, but I came out of it with a career. I was wondering, was anyone else's childhood experience similar? Highschool felt at best a dungeon,…

"Highschool felt at best a dungeon, and at worst a torture chamber." I had a largely similar experience, though my method of coping was a bit different. Simply put, day in and day out, I would try to manipulate systems as best as I could and raise hell.

Every teacher had figured out a system that they wouldn't deviate from. Spend the first two weeks of each class studying how the teacher behaves and befriending the students, and you're set for the rest of the year. From staging an "essayist uprising" in AP Literature complete with founding documents that closely mirrored the Communist Manifesto, to forcing use of sexual innuendo in every sentence in a class with a particularly senile teacher, to starting a "barefoot" trend (which was strictly against the rules but I hate shoes) high school was a huge game and a joke.

I feel I learned a lot from it, but almost never from the actual material. The pace was so mind-numbingly slow that I could spend my days plotting and sneaking out windows, while learning what really worked to influence people. Come test-time I could read the book for 15 minutes the day before class and do fine, or even just notice the patterns in the teachers' awful test writing and follow it throughout. High School, at least academically, was a complete joke.

Re: Only a few countries are teaching children how to think

#27

Post by rquirk »

Oh come on! It's a classic case of out-sourcing, isn't it? Workers in Poland get paid a lot less. The min wage in Poland is €384 per month (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_wages_by_count...) or $525 at current rates, while the minimum wage in the US is $7.25/hr (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_wage_in_the_United_Sta...) - or for a 40 hour week that'd be $1160. I don't know what taxes would do to that, but we're looking at double the rate in the US.

If on top of that Poles are better educated, that's great. Plus Europe needs jobs. But I'm sure the primary concern is the bottom line. BAMA could staff the factories in Oklahoma if they could get away with paying the workers $4/hr.

Re: Only a few countries are teaching children how to think

#28

Post by Qantourisc »

sillysaurus2 wrote: post #2

Growing up, I declined to participate in the educational system (primarily to avoid harassment at school) and instead spent all of my time learning to program video games at home. So I would sleep through class, go home, and try to write Pong. My academic performance was nonexistent, but I came out of it with a career. I was wondering, was anyone else's childhood experience similar? Highschool felt at best a dungeon,…

Well you DO need a school to learn to read and write. Atleast for a few years. Otherwise their won't be much learning on your own :)

And about declining school: there are does that decline them trough reasoning, and other due to being lazy...

The most important thing to teach a child, any child, and you need to get this one right: self-reflection/evaluation: what am I doing, what effect will this have?

Get that one right, and you won't need to do a lot of parenting at all after you got that one down. (Well for my parents at least.)

Re: Only a few countries are teaching children how to think

#29

Post by visakanv »

sillysaurus2 wrote: post #2

Growing up, I declined to participate in the educational system (primarily to avoid harassment at school) and instead spent all of my time learning to program video games at home. So I would sleep through class, go home, and try to write Pong. My academic performance was nonexistent, but I came out of it with a career. I was wondering, was anyone else's childhood experience similar? Highschool felt at best a dungeon,…

This is very similar to my experience. I did very well in the first 4-5 years of my schooling, but afterwards I coasted through with as little effort as possible. I spent my time reading, writing, surfing the internet, writing more, arguing with people, writing still. I played in a rock band, I organized concerts, did stand up comedy. Almost everything meaningful I learnt, I learnt outside of the curriculum. I learned to appreciate the beauty of mathematics from YouTube.

Today, I make a living using the skillset that I developed outside of school. I don't even have a resume. I was headhunted through my blog.

I think this is something that's going to happen a lot more. People Google for almost everything else, why not for employees?

School was never about learning- it was about indoctrination, subordination, assessment, sorting and daycare.

I'm biased, as you might be, but I think learning is something that's going to happen primarily outside of school- especially now that everything outside of school is so much more interesting and compelling.

Re: Only a few countries are teaching children how to think

#30

Post by ballard »

sillysaurus2 wrote: post #2

Growing up, I declined to participate in the educational system (primarily to avoid harassment at school) and instead spent all of my time learning to program video games at home. So I would sleep through class, go home, and try to write Pong. My academic performance was nonexistent, but I came out of it with a career. I was wondering, was anyone else's childhood experience similar? Highschool felt at best a dungeon,…

Neat.

I was fortunate to attend an over-achiever public hs with half a dozen perfect SATs and full rides to Ha'var-d. The prevailing view was "legally-mandated prison, CWOT." The best thing was finding ways to take classes that allowed more time off campus and coding time in the computer lab (eg total anarchy.) I'd never have wrote a friendly TSR virus that included hotkeys for a calculator and an ASCII table if it was "EZ-bake oven" rote instruction. Also, private school (Challenger) for K-3 probably did some good.

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