Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Why is Atlantean Education Bad? (Part I)

Numerous posts and much thought later, I've come to realise that to answer this question, you have to think about what you really want from an education system. This means that asking Atlanteans why their education system is bad doesn't work, since most of them give silly reasons. Why so? Because they are products of their own education system.

Here is the key then. A system that produces rational reflection, coherent and critical self-analysis, fair comparison with other cases, and fair consideration of the limitations of a given case, is likely to be a better system than one which doesn't. In the case of typical Atlantean complainants, they are likely to not have spent much time or effort reflecting, produce incoherent but critical self-analysis, some exaggerated comparison with other cases, and unfair consideration of the limitations involved in any case.

On the other hand, the Atlantean-in-the-street is generally happy with it, and the local system is often held up as one of the better ones worldwide. But many of the more vocal ones seem to think it's bad. Why is this?

I think that the more vocal ones are those who have had education outside the system, thus allowing them more scope for the various approaches to criticism. Yet these are often non-participant observers, who have therefore given up part of their right to interpretive accuracy. It's a double-edged sword, this gift of perception; if you stand outside, you might miss the introspective vision, while if you stand inside, you might miss the more objective view.

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4 Comments:

Blogger LoneRifle said...

Hang on.. so is there no way to judge the system accurately? Is there a remote chance that somebody educated somewhere else before coming to study in Atlantis, say, for the British A-Levels or equivalent, could give a slightly more impartial view, if not an objective one?

Tuesday, February 16, 2010 9:24:00 pm  
Blogger Trebuchet said...

LR: if you can't define degree of partiality, you can't say 'more impartial'; likewise, there is no way you can judge social science outcomes objectively — this leads to the concept of 'successful at what you intend to do' rather than 'successful in terms of what I think you ought to do', a concept useful in our own personal lives! :)

Tuesday, February 16, 2010 11:55:00 pm  
Blogger boonleong said...

"Just as compulsory primary education created a market catered for by cheap dailies and weeklies, so the spread of secondary and latterly of tertiary education has created a large population of people, often with well-developed literary and scholarly tastes, who have been educated far beyond their capacity to undertake analytic thought".

-- Sir Peter B Medawar, "The Phenomenon of Man"

Friday, February 19, 2010 9:55:00 pm  
Blogger Trebuchet said...

BL: "The biggest worry about schools... is not that they are failing in their own terms; it is that their terms of reference are antiquated and constricted. The problem is not ineffective means, it is inadequate ends."

— Guy Claxton, 'What's the Point of School?'

Sunday, February 21, 2010 9:07:00 pm  

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