Another very helpful comment BC!

As far as I can remember, older style education was dominated by content learning rather than teaching critical thinking skills. Though earlier than my educational experience, high schools offered the subject in logic, which definitely wouldn’t go amiss in today’s world!
Previously, the content of education related directly to a more stable society and knowledge base. The job you may have had in mind while you were at school still existed by the time you graduated. However, modernity and the post-modern have changed all that. Today job categories disappear overnight!
The problem with any education system is it leaves significant sections of the population sidelined. They just don’t fit in.
Critical thinking skills are paramount and are taught, but sometimes way beyond the grasp of youngsters and using content beyond their ken.
Unfortunately, this is countered by policy demanding the use of cut and dried standards which become the hoops through which teachers and educational administrators have to leap to qualify their students a grade. Real education gets buried in beauracracy, policies and politics!
The education policy of the ’90′s touted the ‘Knowledge Wave’. That was a misnomer because it emphasised the use of computers in schools as the golden bullet to problems within our education system. Surely computers are like pencils, just tools used within education not education itself!
As far as giving advice is concerned, people do expect an instant solution and not just a fob off. However, it’s hard to please some people when you admit to them you just don’t know the answer and direct them elsewhere – they want the answer here and now and they take your response as though you just don’t care.

I think that’s my copy. Thanks for reminding me!

what can I say Ian, other than I totally agree! Esp. good points re how society ‘punishes’ and ‘rewards’ based on our ‘trivial’ (pun intended) knowledge…

Great post and I agree entirely.

I think the source of the problem is the current model of education used almost everywhere – my pet peeve! Modern education is all about rote-learning facts, which is tantamount to eavesdropping on knowledge as you aptly put it. As long as you can remember facts you will do well in the education system.

A far more useful model of education would focus on how to learn, not what to learn. Critical thinking and the ability to recognise what you know or to honestly admit you don’t know are both just common sense imo. This is particularly true in an age where facts are ridiculously easy to get hold of.

Unfortunately, following on from our current education system, society punishes those that don’t know and rewards those who do (tests, game shows, employment etc) – not a very strong position given the average person knows such a negligible percentage of what there is to know that, with rounding, they could realistically be said to know nothing

(I could rant about this all day… lol)

many thanks BC,
Excellent thoughts, and good book recommendation (Peter Reid was reading it last year at Carey).
Enjoying the heck out of that new album of Lydia’s!

Both ‘left’ and ‘right’ perspectives indeed should not be seen as two sides to any of the social issues you have listed, but rather as a ‘holistic’ perspective. They need to be placed side by side as if at a negotiating table rather than opposite each other across the table. This is more likely to resolve the issue.
As a landlord who has recently been in contact with ‘poor’ people (ie less ‘well off’ than we are) I’m struck by other circumstances that these folk are in that go deeper than their finances. In fact their finances are a result of personal perspectives (and therefore lifestyle), created no doubt by family and maybe cultural background. This sort of critique is, of course, a social minefield especially in the light of being politically correct. The picture also has to incorporate the responsibilities and praticipation of those more well off as well.
I recommend a book, which I think covers these topics well, called ‘Walking with the Poor:Principles and Practices of Transformational Development’, by Bryant L. Meyers. It is focussed primarily on third world applications, but it could well be applied to all top order ‘developed’ societies. Probably more so, since the invasive and seducing effect of western monoculturalism is currently so powerful. This book could well be applied in critiquing the perspectives we have about our own cultural issues.

Thanks Sheila!
That’s precisely the kind of experience that I was certain others know of. And again, it reminds me that we certainly don’t have to by (physically!) disabled to get ourselves into such patterns. Many thanks for sharing!

Hi Dale,
I so relate to what you have said here. One of my nieces is Down Syndrome and now at age 32 is in her own flat with some support. But it seems to me that this is making it easier for her to stay inside all day watching DVDs and eating junk food. I find it very sad to observe since she is actually quite able to interact and take part in various activities and social situations – but only if she is in an environment where this is “part of life”. Left to be “independent” her choices are far from life giving.

((comment deleted as it looked VERY much like spam or trolling, and didn’t engage with the post at all.))