roachboy

i can see the argument for a "life skills" course.
and i also know that, thinking back on my high school self and how i was, there is no way i would have shown up for that class. ever. i would have thought the idea of it patronizing. but i was kind of a nitwit. i think everyone who looks back on themselves at 16 sees themselves at 16 as nitwits.
embarrassingly so.


geez.


i had the same question (basically) that smooth asked above.

one of the many problems with high school education is that no emphasis seems to be placed on teaching critical thinking--i have long harbored the idea that high schools really should be teaching philosophy simply because it provides the motivation for critical thinking and the tools to be able to do it--and these are transposable skills, so would have an impact on how other subjects are processed.

which is, i assume, the problem with that idea.

high schools have to perform a wide range of social reproduction tasks--they aren't in the main terribly good at them (lots of reasons for that)--so one way in which these features are balanced is by the relation to power that cuts across this level of education--schools want to be able to manage the population of the students, so it is in their internal interests to encourage a docile, passive accepting population. this has obvious political consequences--but mainly i think these have been unintended consequences of the priority high schools have to place on population management in order to function--no child left behind, however, is different in that it appears to be primarily about generating political passivity--schol funding levels are pegged to standardized test scores, so schools now teach the bloody tests--with these tests, a wide range of information is presented in the same way---history is like mathematics is like botany is like vocabulary--teaching the tests means teaching the procedures required for the tests in a wholly naturalized way--so political questions are like natural science questions--everything is processed in the same manner. the consequence of this: what is real is rational, what is is necessarily legitimate--education is now about thinking within existing rule sets rather than about them. memorization and repetition are therefore more important than being able to think critically about procedures/rules. memorization and repetition are more important than the abilities to parse information for political arguments passed off as factual, say.

the result is a vast field of mediocrity in approach and results.
it is really quite a foul piece of reactionary educational policy.
AND it is underfunded: it is obviously much more important to develop high tech ways to kill people than it is to train kids well.
AND it is a wholly anti-democratic approach to education. it will generate exactly the opposite of the kind of polity democracy in any meaningful sense requires.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite