[ExI] my view of education

[Dan TheBookMan]

On Dec 14, 2018, at 12:49 PM, Dave Sill <sparge at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> On Fri, Dec 14, 2018 at 3:15 PM Dan TheBookMan <danust2012 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On Dec 14, 2018, at 5:44 AM, Dave Sill <sparge at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> 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.
> 
> Oh, I think kids do a great job of learning by example. If they see critical thinking rewarded, they're motivated to seek the same rewards.

I’d like to see evidence showing there because there’s much evidence to show people don’t generalize well. Maybe I’ve misread the work on this, but it seems like most people don’t go from example to example well — unless primed and prompted.

>>> 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?
> 
> I'm talking about basic life skills that would help people get jobs. And what motivation would an employer have to teach these skills?
 
The skills you mention though are ones I would expect are better taught by having kids get out in the “real world” and work rather than sit in class being shown examples and hoping they’re apply those examples outside the classroom.

Regards,

Dan
   Sample my Kindle books at:
http://author.to/DanUst  
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