Improving School and Travel
By John Taylor; 2009 June 05, Azamat 19, 166 BE
The Globe and Mail featured last week in "Facts & Arguments" an interesting essay on education by Dayle Peters called, "Nearing 50 and back in high school." He writes,
"After 35 years, two university degrees and six jobs, I recently returned to high school to pick up two pesky credits I was missing in math and physics. For the first time in a long time, I would be required to memorize things: formulas, definitions, procedures... I enrolled in the courses at a day school for students over 21. Almost all my classmates were in their early 20s. A few were in their 30s, but I was easily the oldest student." (May 27, 2009, Globe and Mail, Facts & Arguments)
Having just returned from the work force, he notices how reliant students at this level are expected to be on memory. In the workaday realm, if you do not know something, you look it up. This is the effect of the surprisingly influential Thomas Edison, a hypocrite, all but unschooled himself who nonetheless enjoyed sadistically testing his more educated employees on their factual recall. This is not education but a reductionist stereotype. In Edison's view, learning is nothing more than vomiting back a bunch of spoon-fed memorized facts. Sure, that is just how he invented the light bulb, by memorizing facts taken out of electricity texts. Influenced by this stunted way of knowing, an American broadcaster once asked Albert Einstein what the speed of sound is. "If I need to know that sort of thing," he replied, "I look it up in a book." Not so in a high school course. You have to memorize or it is assumed that you do not know it.
"My ... objection was: why should I have to (memorize)? My future at work, in the real world, never depended on whether or not I could summon a specific memorized fact without double-checking it. At work, if I needed a number, a customer name or an order process and I couldn't remember it, I'd look it up or ask someone. ... high school isn't like work. The curriculum still imagines students have no connection to the outside world. Writing a test or exam is like being sent on a journey in a leaky canoe with only the survival items you'd thought to bring. You arrive at your exam hoping you packed the right things in your head, hoping there will be no surprises and hoping you've got what it takes to get to the end without being swamped."
Peters makes some other pointed criticisms of education (to hear the whole thing read aloud, go to the iTunes store and look under "Facts and Arguments" for this podcast). For example, he notices that there is still no credit given for the ability to work cooperatively in a group. Team players, highly valued in the workplace, are not encouraged in school. Instead, individual performance remains the sole criterion for success as a student.
The theory of evolution does not describe nature only. It also is the model for schools. It is the only explanation as to why, after so many decades, education remains uninfluenced by such obvious criticisms. In school we consciously select for a narrow set of skills. The examination system selects solely for the ability to parrot information by rote. The best parrots become teachers, and they have a vested interest in continuing the examination system. It selected them, didn't it? How bad can the exam method be? Any attempt to point out that the parrot is dead is met with the same obdurate denial as in the famous Monte Python pet store skit. Same thing with politics, democratic politicians have no interest in tinkering with democracy, no matter how ridiculous and corrupt the system becomes, since that system picked them out. If I rose to the top, how bad can the electoral setup be? Nobody wants to kick out the ladder that took them to the top, but that is just what needs to be done today, more than at any other time.
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A reader sent me a recent essay by the American pundit and documentary filmmaker extraordinary, Michael Moore, called "Goodbye, GM." (http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/message/index.php) In this essay Moore suggests a nine point plan to get the auto industry back on its feet. While I agree that they are good ideas, I do not think they are radical enough. Here are parts of some of his ideas, along with my comments.
"1. Just as President Roosevelt did after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the President must tell the nation that we are at war and we must immediately convert our auto factories to factories that build mass transit vehicles and alternative energy devices. Within months in Flint in 1942, GM halted all car production and immediately used the assembly lines to build planes, tanks and machine guns. The conversion took no time at all. Everyone pitched in. The fascists were defeated."
jet: This is a very good point. All you need is a clear goal and a broad consensus that the job must be done immediately. We forget how quickly we can turn things around. The problem is not capacity, it is corruption. The oligarchy is telling society what to do, not the other way around. Factories are their jealously guarded property. Besides, Roosevelt had a history of standing up to the fat cats, even admonishing them in harsh terms, something you never see today. Yet so great was the emergency that they gladly retooled their factories and executives volunteered work for a dollar a year. Who has that mettle today?
"2. Don't put another $30 billion into the coffers of GM to build cars. Instead, use that money to keep the current workforce -- and most of those who have been laid off -- employed so that they can build the new modes of 21st century transportation. Let them start the conversion work now."
jet: The problem is not this simple. Yes, you have to keep them working or the expertise of an entire generation of workers will be lost. But the structure of business itself has to be retooled at the same time. The workplace at present is nowhere near democratic. Wealth is not shared, especially with workers on the lower rung. Profit sharing schemes must be adopted, and the artificial chasm between ownership, management and workers closed up. Companies that deal across borders must be licensed by a world regulatory body. As we convert energy to electric and transport to mass transport, we must also change the rot that brought this emergency into existence in the first place.
"3. Announce that we will have bullet trains criss-crossing this country in the next five years. ... Let's hire the unemployed to build the new high speed lines all over the country. Chicago to Detroit in less than two hours. Miami to DC in under 7 hours. Denver to Dallas in five and a half. This can be done and done now."
We should also think about converting to fully modular transport, as suggested by many visionaries in the past. With a standard chassis, it is now possible to have removable passenger compartments that would move from car to train to any other means of conveyance without the passenger ever leaving. This containerization is already universal in transport; it should also take over transit.
4. Initiate a program to put light rail mass transit lines in all our large and medium-sized cities. Build those trains in the GM factories. And hire local people everywhere to install and run this system.
Again, not enough. Commutes are as much to be avoided as recreational and educational travel are desirable. Housing and city planning as well as transport specialists need to design everything around modular, mobile houses. These would allow residents to find a perfect location for their own needs. Integrated with a modular transport system, residents would gravitate to a location close enough to work, shopping and other facilities not to need mechanical transport. Instead we should walk or bike. Let long commutes become a thing of the past.
I'll look at Moore's last five points later.
email: badijet@gmail.com
blog: http://badiblog.blogspot.com/
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