[UPDATE: Just read this comic instead: http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2729]
I write this today primarily as a public announcement of my intention to curtail my computer use and increase my book usage. I may begin using this blog to share my thoughts about things I am reading and thus encourage myself to focus not just on taking in the information from the books I am reading, but to engage with the writing and develop critical thinking skills.
By most measures, I am a well educated person: two Associates degrees, a Bachelors degree, and almost halfway through a J.D. I've been in school for approximately 24 years now, starting at age 5.
Yet, I increasingly feel like I have had nothing more than a sporadic and meagre education. I also feel more and more like any education I have actually received has been of my own doing and not through anything required at any school I went to. My years of schooling have, for the most part, been mere training, not education.
What is the difference between training and education?
To me, the difference lies in which skills are being emphasized. Training involves practical skills. How to sit still, how to listen, how to follow directions, how to get along with others, how to tie your shoes, how to line up and calmly walk out the door when the fire alarm goes off, how to read, how to do basic math, how to draw so there isn't a gap between the ground and the sky, how to fill out scantrons, how to take standardized tests, how to do simple science experiments, how to write checks, how to not get pregnant, how to fill out job applications, how to fill out FAFSA forms, how to figure out what the professor wants you to say so you get higher grades, how to write an essay, how to use computer programs, how to deal with bureaucracies. Most of these things are very important to know generally. Some of them simply make teachers' or school administrators' or government officials' lives easier and have no value in and of themselves.
Education is less obviously practical. Education requires a logical step before one sees any usefulness in it. Education is inherently philosophical in nature. It is less about "how to" and more about "why to." Having an education will of course mean that one knows how to do something, because the practical skills often go along with the philosophical understanding. But mainly it is a different type of "how to": how to think critically, how to analyze, how analogize, how to contextualize.
Only the very basics of these higher-order skills are taught in American public schools.
Schools* teach classes that provide a basic groundwork of a liberal arts education - science, math, reading, language arts, social studies, foreign languages, art, and music (well, among those schools that still bother teaching art and music, anyway). But, as anyone who has spent time in a typical American classroom knows, before college, most of class time is spent either on busy work or on keeping a small number of students from disrupting the class. There is little time spent discussing what we have read, and the "discussion" is primarily based on facts, not analysis. Quizzes and tests mostly only tell the teacher whether a student has done the reading, and at most ask if the student understood the reading. They never ask whether the student can analyze, contextualize, critique, or analogize the writing. "Did you do what you were told to do?" and "Do you have basic reading comprehension skills?" should be questions teachers stop having to ask after elementary school, if students are receiving an education and not just training.
And yet these questions continue to be the most important ones teachers want answers to up through college! The required "liberal arts" courses at many colleges are little more than a continuation of high school classes with fewer disruptive students, but larger class sizes. Read this, regurgitate its facts, maybe do some simple analysis or analogy, move on to the next thing. Only a couple of people participate, the rest are mere warm bodies in seats, assuming they bother showing up for class. The tests are easy and primarily fact-based or repeat the simple analysis already done in class (thus only answering the questions "were you in class?" and "did you pay attention in class?") so that grading can be uniform. It is not until the upper-level courses, when one has chosen a specialty, that one begins getting an education in that topic. But even then, the emphasis is often on simple analogy and basic critique and is never cross-disciplinary. For those majoring in something "practical," (i.e., there's a job title in the name of the major) the upper level classes focus almost entirely on practical skills.
So, most of us either essentially go without an education or we have to teach ourselves.
I have been somewhat trying to give myself an education, simply by reading a lot of various books. I have a theory that a focus on reading primary sources (and good translations of primary sources) can increase critical thinking skills, simply because the material isn't being analyzed for the reader as in a secondary source. Unfortunately, since starting law school,** I have had less time to read non-legal primary sources.
I have, however, maintained plenty of time for Twitter and video games.
A simple solution reveals itself.
--------------------------------------------------
*When I say "schools" I am talking only about American public schools, and am mostly generalizing from my own personal experience. I have no clue whatsoever what private schools teach. That is an entirely different world than the one I am familiar with.
** Law school is, at its heart, a trade school. The purpose of going to law school is to learn how to do a specific job. However, the professors have to write all these academic articles and like to believe that law school is not a trade school, but an academic pursuit. Thus, strangely, law school provides something of an education, though only in law. Tests are heavily focused on analysis and are frequently open-book after the first year. Meanwhile, law school fails at being a trade school because it provides little training in the practical skills needed to be a lawyer. It's a strange world we live in.
I write this today primarily as a public announcement of my intention to curtail my computer use and increase my book usage. I may begin using this blog to share my thoughts about things I am reading and thus encourage myself to focus not just on taking in the information from the books I am reading, but to engage with the writing and develop critical thinking skills.
By most measures, I am a well educated person: two Associates degrees, a Bachelors degree, and almost halfway through a J.D. I've been in school for approximately 24 years now, starting at age 5.
Yet, I increasingly feel like I have had nothing more than a sporadic and meagre education. I also feel more and more like any education I have actually received has been of my own doing and not through anything required at any school I went to. My years of schooling have, for the most part, been mere training, not education.
What is the difference between training and education?
To me, the difference lies in which skills are being emphasized. Training involves practical skills. How to sit still, how to listen, how to follow directions, how to get along with others, how to tie your shoes, how to line up and calmly walk out the door when the fire alarm goes off, how to read, how to do basic math, how to draw so there isn't a gap between the ground and the sky, how to fill out scantrons, how to take standardized tests, how to do simple science experiments, how to write checks, how to not get pregnant, how to fill out job applications, how to fill out FAFSA forms, how to figure out what the professor wants you to say so you get higher grades, how to write an essay, how to use computer programs, how to deal with bureaucracies. Most of these things are very important to know generally. Some of them simply make teachers' or school administrators' or government officials' lives easier and have no value in and of themselves.
Education is less obviously practical. Education requires a logical step before one sees any usefulness in it. Education is inherently philosophical in nature. It is less about "how to" and more about "why to." Having an education will of course mean that one knows how to do something, because the practical skills often go along with the philosophical understanding. But mainly it is a different type of "how to": how to think critically, how to analyze, how analogize, how to contextualize.
Only the very basics of these higher-order skills are taught in American public schools.
Schools* teach classes that provide a basic groundwork of a liberal arts education - science, math, reading, language arts, social studies, foreign languages, art, and music (well, among those schools that still bother teaching art and music, anyway). But, as anyone who has spent time in a typical American classroom knows, before college, most of class time is spent either on busy work or on keeping a small number of students from disrupting the class. There is little time spent discussing what we have read, and the "discussion" is primarily based on facts, not analysis. Quizzes and tests mostly only tell the teacher whether a student has done the reading, and at most ask if the student understood the reading. They never ask whether the student can analyze, contextualize, critique, or analogize the writing. "Did you do what you were told to do?" and "Do you have basic reading comprehension skills?" should be questions teachers stop having to ask after elementary school, if students are receiving an education and not just training.
And yet these questions continue to be the most important ones teachers want answers to up through college! The required "liberal arts" courses at many colleges are little more than a continuation of high school classes with fewer disruptive students, but larger class sizes. Read this, regurgitate its facts, maybe do some simple analysis or analogy, move on to the next thing. Only a couple of people participate, the rest are mere warm bodies in seats, assuming they bother showing up for class. The tests are easy and primarily fact-based or repeat the simple analysis already done in class (thus only answering the questions "were you in class?" and "did you pay attention in class?") so that grading can be uniform. It is not until the upper-level courses, when one has chosen a specialty, that one begins getting an education in that topic. But even then, the emphasis is often on simple analogy and basic critique and is never cross-disciplinary. For those majoring in something "practical," (i.e., there's a job title in the name of the major) the upper level classes focus almost entirely on practical skills.
So, most of us either essentially go without an education or we have to teach ourselves.
I have been somewhat trying to give myself an education, simply by reading a lot of various books. I have a theory that a focus on reading primary sources (and good translations of primary sources) can increase critical thinking skills, simply because the material isn't being analyzed for the reader as in a secondary source. Unfortunately, since starting law school,** I have had less time to read non-legal primary sources.
I have, however, maintained plenty of time for Twitter and video games.
A simple solution reveals itself.
--------------------------------------------------
*When I say "schools" I am talking only about American public schools, and am mostly generalizing from my own personal experience. I have no clue whatsoever what private schools teach. That is an entirely different world than the one I am familiar with.
** Law school is, at its heart, a trade school. The purpose of going to law school is to learn how to do a specific job. However, the professors have to write all these academic articles and like to believe that law school is not a trade school, but an academic pursuit. Thus, strangely, law school provides something of an education, though only in law. Tests are heavily focused on analysis and are frequently open-book after the first year. Meanwhile, law school fails at being a trade school because it provides little training in the practical skills needed to be a lawyer. It's a strange world we live in.
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