synopsychic | Malik Greatly Disapproves. Again.

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Malik Greatly Disapproves. Again.

[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.]

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If they do not want to learn then they will not be forced to.

I will not apologize for being incredibly disappointed in humanity. Sticky notes, fountain pens and pizza seem to so far be the only good things I have encountered from the future.

I don't expect you to. Formal education has its bright spots, but... well, these days it's more teaching kids how to take tests than to absorb any actual information.

I was younger than most of our current gaggle of teenagers when I dropped out. There is stuff it'd be useful for them to know, but the trick is getting past 'why should I care when no one's making me show up?' Probably more useful to make the information available to everybody, and then the people who are interested can ask about more. [Because really, who says that'll be just the kids?]

But if they do not care then they will not show up and participate either.

[he's totally fine with teaching adults too but... yeah.]

Why is learning how to rip people's hearts out of their chests more important than arithmetic or a second language?

That's why you start out by giving them a reason to care. To use your other examples, schools are notoriously bad at actually teaching the practical applications. Math class doesn't cover how to balance your funds, and geography barely touches on using that info for navigation - not to mention modern maps are maybe half as informative as yours at best. You might be able to figure out where you're going, but not what to do when you get there.

...Okay, I seriously hope no one's asking for that particular lesson, but the point is people are finding practical reasons to get into the magic and the Grid crap and everything else we pick up from jaunts. Give 'em a practical reason to get into math and science and they'll probably show up, and if they don't, their loss.

Yeah.
You know I wasn't ever great at school. But if someone'd ever bothered to say 'hey, this is what this stuff is good for' rather than just 'sit down 'n shut up 'cause I said so' before my last year... maybe I woulda done better sooner.
Makes a hell of a lot of difference.

Exactly. And aren't you guys basically past the 'required' part anyway? At that point you're better off learning things because you want to, but the people who designed it are still expecting kids to care because they're told to.

The whole system's screwed up.

Did I ever tell ya I was thinkin' about goin' into teaching when I got out of high school? Nothin' for sure. But ... I sorta wondered. If I could get through to a kid in my situation, or do what my old history teacher did for me...
But it woulda meant bein' part of all that.

Eh. I dunno. I'm just thinkin' crap.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

[Is that a laugh there?]

Heh. Thanks.

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.]

...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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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Malik Greatly Disapproves. Again.

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