[ExI] my view of education

[William Flynn Wallace]

dan wrote    ’m a bit pessimistic if critical thinking and a questioning
attitude can be taught to kids who aren’t already open to them.

Simple example:  take a kid shopping for clothes and shoes.  Let's say he's
about six.  I speculate that he will want expensive ones, will pick on the
basis of what other kids are wearing, his favorite colors, etc.  (My own 14
year old daughter, long ago, simply would not wear Lee jeans.  I told her
she could have three pairs for the price of the Gloria Vanderbilt ones she
wanted.  I bought the VAnderbilt ones, of course.  When she had her own
children I reminded her of that scene, and she admitted that she was
wrong.)  So then show he how to put all of his criteria in some kind of
order:  what's most important?  Least?  Point out that if he gets those
Nikes he can't wear them to school because they would be stolen from him
right off his feet.  And if he spends so much money on shoes he will not
have much left over for coats, which he has to have, and he won't want to
have a cheap coat, and o on.  So, decision-making starts.

If the parent just buys what she thinks she can afford and the kid will
wear, and makes all of his choices for him, he learns nothing.  So parents,
I assume, though I have never heard of such, give a kid an allowance when
he is ten or twelve and he has to buy everyhthing from it:  clothes, games,
tickets, etc.  This is teaching like throwing a kid in the pool and tell
him to swim,is teaching.  So when he gets into trouble, having spend all
his weekly allowance on food, you sit down and help him make decisions, at
least to get him started.  But of course you cannot tell him how to rank
his likes, so he is forced to do that decision-making.

I have read exactly zero books on how to raise kids, so I just don't know
how much time they spend on critical thinking.  I hope it's a lot and
parents buy the books etc.

bill w

On Fri, Dec 14, 2018 at 2:14 PM Dan TheBookMan <danust2012 at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Dec 14, 2018, at 5:44 AM, Dave Sill <sparge at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Thu, Dec 13, 2018 at 1:15 PM William Flynn Wallace <foozler83 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Now I am a loyal American who loves his country. But. I want the truth
>> out and no lies and coverups in educating children.
>>
> Government-run education promotes the government, not too surprisingly.
>
>
> While I don’t doubt that, I wonder if it’s the biggest factor here. Are
> most people likely to not be loyal Americans or whatever simply because
> they weren’t taught so in school?
>
> School boards and colleges say that they are teaching critical thinking,
>> but my question is, where? How? In what class? One-sided teaching is the
>> farthest thing from fair it is possible to get. I think that is the worst
>> kind of critical nonthinking, and actually immoral.
>>
> Yeah, they don't teach critical thinking and generally don't reward
> students questioning their teachings.
>
>
> I’m a bit pessimistic if critical thinking and a questioning attitude can
> be taught to kids who aren’t already open to them. And a problem here is
> how general skills are often not applied to specific cases. I believe this
> explains phenomena like someone being for freedom of speech, but then
> supporting speech codes.
>
> Education or propaganda?
>>
> It's some of both, of course. I think where public K-12 education really
> fails is in teaching life skills like planning, time management, finance,
> decision making, etc.
>
>
> Most of those skills might be taught on the job rather than in school,
> don’t you think?
>
> Regards,
>
> Dan
>    Sample my Kindle books at:
>
> http://author.to/DanUst
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