|
Post by fonz on Dec 13, 2021 14:40:41 GMT
I got a good start with education, and I was lucky and/or privileged to get that. I learnt early on that 'learning things' was a good thing to do, and that if I worked hard enough at learning (even some things I had no natural curiosity for) then I'd be rewarded-with parental approval, with teachers' approval, and ultimately with some freedom later on to pursue a career that I wanted. Somewhere along the way, probably very early on in my case, I realised that I really enjoyed learning about things that interested me-music etc. All of the positive things about 'education' got reinforced, over and over again. The desire to learn has always been there. I get bored easily, but I know there's lots of things out there that I still want to know about-so I get a book, or usually a load of magazines, and get myself educated.
I get frustrated at people who can't be bothered to learn things, particularly when they blame others for their ignorance. But, I have all the time in the world for people who want to learn, and make themselves open to it.
|
|
~ / % ? *
god
disambiguating goat herder
Posts: 5,532
|
Post by ~ / % ? * on Dec 13, 2021 14:51:37 GMT
I think it is also important to know your learning style: immersive, hands on, intermittent, in/direct, visual, auditory, aural, social, etc.,
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Dec 13, 2021 14:58:23 GMT
So much of this discussion is about achievement, which is actually just one aspect of it. It's quite a narrow focus.
|
|
|
Post by tory on Dec 13, 2021 18:59:14 GMT
I find a lot of things interesting, far more so now than I did years ago, when I'd say with some vehemence that "I wasn't interested in that" etc. I studied English Literature at A-Level, but didn't enjoy it at all because the books "didn't interest me". There was a sort of fantastic arrogance in my attitude that was probably not helped by bored teachers. As if "If I'm not interested in it, then it's not worth it". I mean, I could positively punch my 18 year old self in the face sometimes.
A lot of it comes down to the fact that a bigger understanding of the world, and perhaps more importantly, how what might seem banal in one's youth becomes much more interesting as you get older, gives you a wiser perspective. If one is interested in something, then it becomes easier to absorb information and educate oneself about it. I'm more likely to watch a video, read a book or go on a course than I would if I wasn't. It seems to me that it is possible to understand a great deal about something in a relatively short time period (helped enormously by the internet), arguably more so than say 20 years ago when that information was simply not available. It would be the same as an 18 year kid schooling themselves in brilliant music by reading the right blogs, books et al and not having to grow up buying shit records or go to shit gigs for twenty years and achieving the same level of literacy in say, six months.
|
|
|
Post by fonz on Dec 13, 2021 19:08:57 GMT
So much of this discussion is about achievement, which is actually just one aspect of it. It's quite a narrow focus. We’ll, learning something is an achievement in itself. If one enjoys learning it becomes a leisure activity. Fundamentally though, I think educating one’s self makes you less reliant on others; there’s a survival advantage to that, potentially.
|
|
|
Post by Mr. FOLLARD on Dec 13, 2021 20:05:19 GMT
I find a lot of things interesting, far more so now than I did years ago, when I'd say with some vehemence that "I wasn't interested in that" etc. I studied English Literature at A-Level, but didn't enjoy it at all because the books "didn't interest me". There was a sort of fantastic arrogance in my attitude that was probably not helped by bored teachers. As if "If I'm not interested in it, then it's not worth it". I mean, I could positively punch my 18 year old self in the face sometimes. Such self-loathing! I also studied English Lit at 'A' level and found nearly all the prescribed texts boring - I don't see anything at all wrong with that. Why would your tastes align exactly with the style or subject matter of a small number of books that were chosen for you by a panel of teachers? It's a kind of forced learning that I suppose is inevitable but just leads to apathy in most students - or worse. I still hate Austen's Emma and the Conrad book just lay flat on the page like a sack of spuds. But I adored Songs of Innocence and Experience - and actually it lead to other things. You have to find what's 'good for you', like everything else in life. Sometimes you chance upon something that really stirs your soul and you realise the value of investing time in reading.
|
|
|
Post by tory on Dec 13, 2021 20:16:37 GMT
The idea that you "know" more than other (more educated) people though is what can be arrogant.
The fact is that much of education, particularly in the humanities, is an attempt to provide children with much-needed cultural capital. Shakespeare is hugely important for that, especially for the less privileged. Otherwise education becomes solely about "utility" and "what is useful".
Eliot said "reality cannot be deprived of the other echoes that inhabit the garden."
|
|
|
Post by tory on Dec 13, 2021 20:31:08 GMT
None of you will seek it out, but Oakeshott's "Conversations of Mankind" is brilliant on this topic.
It may be supposed that the diverse idioms of utterance which make up current human intercourse have some meeting-place and compose a manifold of some sort. And, as I understand it, the image of this meeting-place is not an inquiry or an argument, but a conversation.
In a conversation the participants are not engaged in an inquiry or a debate; there is no 'truth' to be discovered, no proposition to be proved, no conclusion sought. They are not concerned to inform, to persuade, or to refute one another, and therefore the cogency of their utterances does not depend upon their all speaking in the same idiom; they may differ without disagreeing. Of course, a conversation may have passages of argument and a speaker is not forbidden to be demonstrative; but reasoning is neither sovereign nor alone, and the conversation itself does not compose an argument. . . . In conversation, 'facts' appear only to be resolved once more into the possibilities from which they were made; 'certainties' are shown to be combustible, not by being brought in contact with other 'certainties' or with doubts, but by being kindled by the presence of ideas of another order; approximations are revealed between notions normally remote from one another. Thoughts of different species take wing and play round one another, responding to each other's movements and provoking one another to fresh exertions. Nobody asks where they have come from or on what authority they are present; nobody cares what will become of them when they have played their part. There is no symposiarch or arbiter, not even a doorkeeper to examine credentials. Every entrant is taken at its face-value and everything is permitted which can get itself accepted into the flow of speculation. And voices which speak in conversation do not compose a hierarchy. Conversation is not an enterprise designed to yield an extrinsic profit, a contest where a winner gets a prize, not is it an activity of exegesis; it is an unrehearsed intellectual adventure. It is with conversation as with gambling, its significance lies neither in winning nor in losing, but in wagering. Properly speaking, it is impossible in the absence of a diversity of voices: in it different universes of discourse meet, acknowledge each other and enjoy an oblique relationship which neither requires nor forecasts their being assimilated to one another.
This, I believe, is the appropriate image of human intercourse, appropriate because it recognizes the qualities, the diversities, and the proper relationships of human utterances. As civilized human beings, we are the inheritors, neither of an inquiry about ourselves and the world, nor of an accumulating body of information, but of a conversation, begun in the primeval forests and extended and made more articulate in the course of centuries. It is a conversation which goes on both in public and within each of ourselves. Of course there is argument and inquiry and information, but wherever these are profitable they are to be recognized as passages in this conversation, and perhaps they are not the most captivating of the passages. It is the ability to participate in this conversation, and not the ability to reason cogently, to make discoveries about the world, or to contrive a better world, which distinguishes the human being from the animal and the civilized man from the barbarian. Indeed, it seems not improbable that it was the engagement in this conversation (where talk is without a conclusion) that gave us our present appearance, man being descended from a race of apes who sat in talk so long and so late that they wore out their tails. Education, properly speaking, is an initiation into the skill and partnership of this conversation in which we learn to recognize the voices, to distinguish the proper occasions of utterance, and in which we acquire the intellectual and moral habits appropriate to conversation. And it is this conversation whidh, in the end, gives place and character to every human activity and utterance. ("The Voice of Poetry in the Conversation of Mankind," 196-98)
|
|
|
Post by Mr. FOLLARD on Dec 13, 2021 20:33:50 GMT
I suppose once you go beyond what is useful and practical (and that is rarely taught in schools anyway) the sky's the limit as far as education goes. What books, what periods of history?
Even the very best teachers can only hope to light the spark of interest in Shakespeare in a small percentage of kids. Of course that stuff can enrich, but I don't remember a single kid who 'got' it at my school, and I don't think they've missed out for that.
It's an odd thing really - having to learn SOHCAHTOA or what a pronoun is - absolutely useless once you finish the exams.
|
|
~ / % ? *
god
disambiguating goat herder
Posts: 5,532
|
Post by ~ / % ? * on Dec 13, 2021 20:46:31 GMT
Does anybody know how do anything useful? Welding, perhaps?
|
|
|
Post by Half Machine Lipschitz on Dec 13, 2021 20:59:29 GMT
Does anybody know how do anything useful? Welding, perhaps? Aside from masonry, I can build a house. I’d like somebody else to do the foundation, but I could do it in a pinch. I can frame it, clad it, plumb it, wire it, and everything else that goes into it. I might not be as fast as the pros, but I know how to do it.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Dec 13, 2021 21:03:27 GMT
The idea that you "know" more than other (more educated) people though is what can be arrogant. The fact is that much of education, particularly in the humanities, is an attempt to provide children with much-needed cultural capital. Shakespeare is hugely important for that, especially for the less privileged. Otherwise education becomes solely about "utility" and "what is useful". Eliot said "reality cannot be deprived of the other echoes that inhabit the garden." Shakespeare is completely pointless for most pupils, especially weaker ones. And I have no idea what the point of that Eliot quote is, other than showing off.
|
|
|
Post by tory on Dec 13, 2021 21:12:11 GMT
Eliot's point was that if you reduce education to utility alone (which I'd argue is becoming more and more the case) then you miss the point of it entirely.
I suspect that serious English Literature may very well be off the syllabus in a generation or two because the kids "just don't get it". Education should be difficult and a challenge, not making it easy for kids who can't be arsed to read.
Much of the problem with educating humanities subjects in my experience is the simple fact that many kids do not read. If they do not read, they do not gain vocab, and then they struggle at school with difficult subjects because of it.
|
|
|
Post by DarknessFish on Dec 13, 2021 21:27:42 GMT
It's a double-edged sword though, the prescribing of quite dull texts as valued serious literature just puts kids off literature. If the value is in an increased vocabulary and exposure to more varied cultural treasures, then just getting the children to understand the joy of reading is more important than forcing Shakespeare down their throats.
|
|
|
Post by DarknessFish on Dec 13, 2021 21:34:13 GMT
But we seem to be off-topic here. That's education, rather than self-growth. Personally, I can't learn anything without actually doing. My job requires me to understand various technologies, and I always end up blagging it until I actually have to implement something. Online courses, books, youtube videos, they all prove fairly useless to me, until I actually throw myself into it. I've tried using apps like Duolingo to learn languages, I can answer all the questions, but couldn't speak a coherent sentence in German. But it's possible I'm just dim, too.
|
|