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

[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.

[loyalrebel]

So... Unless it is something they care about nobody wants to learn anything.

You are all so backwards seeming to me about things. How do you know if you enjoy something or are good at it if you do not try to learn? Even then, things you do not enjoy are important to know.

I dislike English but I need to learn it to understand what people from Europe are saying.

[claudiometer]

It's more complex than that. It usually is, with this kind of thing, though.

The older teenagers of a 21st-century-Earth stripe probably already have a solid background in most of what you'd push for - math, science, history, literature, the works. American schools are kinda crap at handling teaching foreign languages, but the Japanese kids probably at least have some background in English, if not also languages closer to home for them. I've tried, but I can't get anything to stick if it's not a programming language. [If there's one thing she kinda misses about Nova Venezia, it's being genuinely multilingual.]

Granted, the solidity of that background depends on the location and the school, but most of us have tried things we're not particularly interested in, or weren't at first. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt, taken five unnecessary tests on it. I think your original source of information on this topic was... a little underinformed.

[Which, yes, gives her a good idea of who it was. There are only so many younger kids around here who'd end up talking about school systems.]

Now, with the younger kids, it certainly can't hurt to give them the extra ballast. But the best teachers are always the ones who make their topic sound interesting, and like I said, if you're going to the trouble of giving some of these lessons you might as well focus on their practical applications.

[loyalrebel]

Of course it would be practical things.

Just because someone else can wave their hands and magically heal something doesn't mean it's useless to know how to clean and stitch a wound.

[claudiometer]

I expect a lot of the healer types would agree on that.