Malik Greatly Disapproves. Again.

[loyalrebel]

[It's been a while since Malik's spoken up on the network but this is something drastic to him and it needs addressing.]

It has been recently brought to my attention that the education system of modern times is sorely lacking in a number of regards.

I was told that beyond the basics of reading and mathematics anything else was not important and was not even taught, and this desperately needs to be rectified.

We may be learning magic and other such things from our overlays, but there are areas that are horrifically left by the wayside in this arms race we have entered in to.

I may not know much about history as it is from most of your perspectives but there has to be educators among us or at least those who will be willing to step up and help the children among us not return home uneducated louts who respond to the idea of mathematics or reading with "why should I care?" or "it is too difficult".

[He's not sorry Phillip. This is probably your fault kid.]

Comments

[thornsofmalkav]

I'd be happy to help with that.

[claudiometer]

You'd be a good one. You know your stuff, and you know how to make it interesting.

...Though really, especially since you're in the art end of things, who says you can't have both? Do the shop crap and have craft classes on the side. It'd be easier to really interact with the people who wanted to learn it, and you could help without being held to the education-industrial complex's stupid standards. I know American schools are terrible about the arts, and Japan's even more test-happy, so God only knows how they handle that.

[haveabiscuit]

I've taught classes through countless outside disruptions. We can't allow the Trumps to deprive the children of a proper education.

[truerevelation]

Huh. Ma used to run classes for the little kids, now I think about it. Might be somewhere to start.

[claudiometer]

In this case, there's no reason not to have your cake and eat it too. You don't have to go to school to know how to teach people to knit. Maybe for some of the business stuff, but not what you'd want to teach.

[truerevelation]

Well, it ain't like I ain't got time to think about it, right?

[final_summoner]

What other things would you want people to learn? History and geography...don't really apply here, do they? And other than that, everyone has their own jobs to learn...

[claudiometer]

That you do.

You would make an amazing teacher, though. It's just a question of where to put that talent that wouldn't crush the spirits of everyone involved.

[loyalrebel]

People will eventually ask to learn Red magic, probably before they would ask to learn how to read a night sky to get the time and a sense of direction.

[Admittedly he's not sure he's going to teach red magic to anyone. Ever.]

[truerevelation]

[Is that a laugh there?]

Heh. Thanks.

[professorwolf]

Very good, then. I'm afraid I'm not very familiar with the subject to know what's involved, so thank you.

Randolph Lyall, by the way. Biology and health teacher. Also a werewolf.

[Yes, he's very open about that. Might surprise Minerva a bit....]

[claudiometer]

...Well, in that particular example, you're probably right. The problem with star-based navigation is it depends on a certain set of stars to do the heavy lifting. Considering there's no guarantee we'd get dropped anywhere with constellations we recognise, land-based navigation is more likely to help.

People are asking about what sounds interesting to them, and/or what they have a practical need for right now or in the near future. There are ways to make the basics sound like either or both of those things, but pretty much everyone in your target bracket went through school as a requirement, not a privilege. We're expected to sit there, absorb information, spit it back out for a test, and somehow divine the practical uses for it without ever actually being told what those practical uses are. Give a teenager a chance to learn something they're passionate about and they'll love it. Tell them they have to know something Because You Said So and they'll resent the lesson and the teacher both, and at that point it's probably better to know you don't know it than kind-of know it and screw something up.

[flumine]

"Modern" is a relative term. There are outliers on both ends of the temporal bell curve.

...We learn more than that in the Core.

[dawnoftruth]

And then, where must we end? We could go so much further than we have. Even with what I am told of this place so far.

Did you really? That's rather fascinating. And I take it, a rather different war than I imagine.

[ringslinging]

Whether it counts probably depends on how much they were teaching you. Some military schools are pretty thorough, some not so much.

[ringslinging]

If we don't have anyone with better qualifications, I might be able to do something with math or physics, but I've got zero experience teaching.

[ He's not sure if he'd be that good at it, but. He likes kids? Kids are cool. He can give it a shot if nobody better steps up to the plate. ]

[neverfeltthatway]

He doesn't mean anything like a military school as you probably understand it. We joined the military, and in our training was the closest thing we've ever had to a contemporary school - but only insofar as it made us better soldiers, in our time. We learned logistics, and military strategy, and titan ecology - but there was no classes on language or history, and no math or science beyond what was immediately relevant to our role.

Most of the training there was physical, anyway.

[ringslinging]

Yeah, that's pretty minimalist compared to most worlds I've been to.

[neverfeltthatway]

Our world is pretty far behind most that I've seen, in terms of knowledge or technology. And the focus had to be on everything that made us better soldiers - there was no time for anything else.

...most of us would never have gotten a chance to use anything else we learned, anyway.

[ringslinging]

The tech probably has a lot to do with it, really. The Air Force Academy back home has pretty high standards, but you don't really want to give an idiot the keys to a bomber.

[neverfeltthatway]

That's probably true. We needed to know how to use our three dimensional maneuvering gear, how to keep ourselves supplied, how to behave in combat, and we needed to understand the enemy we were fighting.

Anything else was superfluous. We didn't need to understand how our gear works. [He is just a little bitter about this - but he understands it, and doesn't even necessarily think he'd do anything different, had he been in charge.]

[fridgeninja]

That isn't exactly what I meant. For one thing, I'm still planning on college. it just isn't my top priority at the moment.

[ringslinging]

The more advanced a piece of technology is, the more creative ways someone will find to break it.

[detectivewonder]

I could teach biology and chemistry. At least, I'm informed enough to qualify. I don't really think I'd make a good teacher, though.

[neverfeltthatway]

Probably true, though I'm not sure it's relevant on the level of the 3dmg.

Anyway, I've learned a lot since coming here, but I wouldn't mind doing so in a more structured environment.