If you could change the education system

[Mal Kiever]

How would you change the education system if you were able to?

[frankiej]

Make Critical Thinking a compulsory class.

[5thHorseman]

At high school in uk, more maths, science and history, less business, make sport opt in. Basically make school days longer.

[Epimethean]

I work in a school exactly like the one you envision, 5th. There is a reason it is one of the top ten schools in the country.

[mayor of simpleton]

Three things come to mind...

1) make an intro to logic, where the differences between truth, validity and soundness is made clear, as well as having a clarification as to what are fallacies... the hope is that children can actually learn how to "connect the dots" between difference fields of study, as well as have a ability to risk an individual opinion now and then. Basically so that they can have the courage to fail now and then, rather than play it so safe and sound that they drown in the masses.

2) have a greater emphasis upon physical fitness... what good is all the knowledge in the world if you have to be in a hospital bed with an oxygen mask just to keep the brain cells functioning.

3) grant the teachers more authority as to control their classrooms... parents who only have a few children are not really the best authorities as to educating larger classes. It's sort of like people who like to eat out in resturants making claim that they know best how to work in food services, better than the people who do it as a profession. Basically the ability to have children should not be confused with the ability to educate them. One requires the ability to communicate knowledge and the other just requires functioning sexual organs planting a seed into an egg.

Meow!

GREG

[Mal Kiever]

I would give kids much more choice as to what to learn, and they would be taught according to which methods are most effective to the individual. Creativity would be encouraged, and part of the teacher's job would be to identify talents and encourage them. And teaching wouldn't be restricted to the classroom.

[Epimethean]

The last school I taught at offered the trivium. I taught the intro to Classical logic two years running. Unfortunately, the other instructors did no justice to thinking and used the course as a glorified study hall. I won't even go into what happened to rhetoric.

[Autumnlicious]

Model after the Finnish school system, not the Korean one.

[Epimethean]

I would give kids much more choice as to what to learn, and they would be taught according to which methods are most effective to the individual. Creativity would be encouraged, and part of the teacher's job would be to identify talents and encourage them. And teaching wouldn't be restricted to the classroom.

That sort of choice can backfire a la Burger King consumerism. There is a scope and sequence which education must address, and then there are electives. Good teachers nearly always include challenges to creativity. Recently, the university came out to watch a Latin challenge I issued to students, and one of the deans told our principal that she had not seen anything so creative in challenging thinking at any school she had visited. That session was not inside a classroom.

[Mal Kiever]

I would give kids much more choice as to what to learn, and they would be taught according to which methods are most effective to the individual. Creativity would be encouraged, and part of the teacher's job would be to identify talents and encourage them. And teaching wouldn't be restricted to the classroom.

That sort of choice can backfire a la Burger King consumerism. There is a scope and sequence which education must address, and then there are electives. Good teachers nearly always include challenges to creativity. Recently, the university came out to watch a Latin challenge I issued to students, and one of the deans told our principal that she had not seen anything so creative in challenging thinking at any school she had visited. That session was not inside a classroom.

I'm not sure what you mean there. How would my suggestions backfire? What kind of sequence are you talking about? What do you mean by challenges to creativity? I'm not disagreeing or agreeing but it's just that I don't know what you mean.