Standard education produces standard adults.

In the wind

rainbowtrout wrote: »

In the wind wrote: »

I read about a 1/3 of the way down that article & fund myself agreeing with it. Which helps focus where my problem lies with Standard Education & I reckon it comes back to 2 things.
[1] enforcing a subject on Students that either cannot or have no interest in learning it. Let's say history.
[2] The use of testing methods that reward ability to ingest, retain & recall History "facts".
Why not let those students develop their critical thinking, comprehension & pool of general knowledge in areas of strength & interest? At least they are ingesting & being expected to recall a topic that is far more potentially relevant than History for example for a Student that has a natural flair & affinity for say, building design.

How will a student know if they like something or not, if they are not exposed to it? You've picked history as an arbitrary subject, so I'll run with that: it covers a huge area. I loved all the stuff I did in primary school, about explorers - the race to the north and south pole, discovering cave paintings in Lascaux and Altamira, the discovery of Tutankhamen's tomb etc, the mystery of the Easter Island statues. To this day I would say it has influenced the kind of holidays I go on. In secondary I liked the age of exploration again, the roman empire, the cold war. The Irish political stuff - not so much. And that influenced my choice not to take it for Leaving Cert. It doesn't stop me being interested in all of those other things for interests sake. e.g. walking around Berlin on holiday and understanding the significance of so much of what exists in the city.

On a side note, building design exists for Leaving Cert, it's called Construction Studies and is the follow on from Junior Cert Woodwork. Personally I think you just have a set on History. Learning from our past, hopefully prevents us from making the same mistakes in the future.

I don't know how long you've been out of the education system, and you're clearly not a teacher, but exams do require some level of recall of facts, but in latter years exams have been designed to require critical thinking and creativity. There are a wide range of subjects available at second level and students are required to study very few compulsory subjects.

In the case where a student has freedom to choose & pursue his area of natural interest or ability then he would be able to explore History if he were drawn to it & if it didn't work out then move on promptly & not spend several years pursuing a topic that is irrelevant to him. I have nothing against History, just an example for example's sake.
Take your own case, you enjoyed history thoroughly in school & have carried that interest into Adult life - good for you (sincere) but it's not for everyone.
I left 3rd level 97-98 & my experience as a parent has only reached 4th grade so I agree I don't have 1st hand exposure to current 2nd & 3rd level education but from distant observation of Nieces & Nephews the Leaving certificate does not seem to have moved a long way from the fact recall measures that I remember.

Paddy Cow

I think the biggest problem with secondary education is they are memorising, not learning. When I started first year our Irish teacher used to get us to learn off large paragraphs that we could re-word a little to fit any essay. I then moved to a rural school (only 20 students in my whole year) and I was told not to do this. We were thought to understand the material. This was the approach for every subject.

I had a job looking after students attending Yates College and all they did was learn off essays. I remember one day two of them were learning off a geography essay! I couldn't believe it. There should be a ban on that type of "teaching". Any teacher who simply gets kids to parrot things off shouldn't be allowed to teach. A lot of these kids then struggle when they go to college. They expect to just learn off the lecture slides and pass their exams. They get a huge shock when they realise the slides are the bare minimum and they are expected to do a lot of learning and understanding on their own.