What's The Deal With Education?

Meagain

I’m going to have to agree and disagree with you and hopefully bring about debate -

To me the practitioners of ‘the art of debate’ are not honest and open debaters, this art that is often termed rhetoric can be used for good or ill but I think it telling that these days many people see it at a derogatory term, because too often it is the art of persuasion through discourse by any means, it doesn’t care if it lies or tricks or cheats, it is the grandmother of propaganda and the mother of advertising, politically biased think tanks and for-hire lobbyists.

In other words if often doesn’t care what it promotes and might not even believe in it but will do its best to ‘convince’ other it is right.

In an honest and open debate the firmer grasp of the subject matter, should be enough.

But I count amongst ‘debate’ the peer review system which underpins a lot of the research process (although open to abuse – but that is another story).

I do agree that background, experience and study is needed - as I point out in my criticism of those who seem to believe that been taught the basics is pointless.

However I’d ask what is a ‘sound’ knowledge or background, and how do people know they have reached it, what or who decides when you have reached the level and are so allowed into a debate?

To me debate is about learning what you don’t know and so pushes you to fill the gaps in your knowledge, so to me the experience of debate is that it is a tool of research and can be incredibly instructive.

 

It seems to me that the right wing could see online education as a great way to achieve what they would like - reduced public finance for education (to cut taxes), more private ‘enterprise’ [corporations] involved in education, a lessening in the power of the teaching unions and the humbling of what it sees as a higher education ‘liberal elite’.

And I’m not the only one that has realised the possibility here is an interesting article I’ll post the conclusion but the whole thing is worth a read. –

Conservatives declare war on college

[SIZE=11pt]“If neither MOOCs [massive open online courses] nor state legislatures support the classic model of a humanities education, what happens to the anthropology and history students of the future? The scenario is ugly: University systems faced with declining public funding support are increasingly forced to turn to MOOCs, to the benefit of hard sciences and vocational training. Meanwhile, the humanities sector gets hung out to dry, unable to take advantage of new technology to the fullest extent while forced to make do with less funding.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]And that, of course, is exactly[/SIZE] what many conservatives want. For many conservatives, the humanities departments of public universities are bastions of the “tenured left” busily brainwashing the young people of America into godless socialist postmodernism. They’d much rather for-profit corporations were in charge of the educational agenda than the current academic elite.

[SIZE=11pt]With or without the help of people like Rick Perry and Rick Scott, online education will become a more and more important part of how we educate ourselves, at all levels, all over the world. But this particular disruptive transformation has a conservative wind at its back, and that’s something to watch, and perhaps even resist.”[/SIZE]

http://www.salon.com/2013/02/22/conservatives_declare_war_on_college/

 

Too often in America, what passes for political debate is nothing more than two or more specialists reciting talking points on TV or online, talking past each other, responding honestly to nothing said by anyone else unless it presents an opportunity to score cheap points. Supporters of both sides come away from it thinking their side won, and nothing is accomplished.

At the upper levels of for-profit and nonprofit organizations, the situation is much better. The CEO generally insists on sticking closely to verifiable facts in policy debates, and there has to be a clear winner in order to make a decision about how to proceed forward. In larger organizations especially, participants in such discussions have a considerable amount of relevant experience and background knowledge. I've seen a few of these discussions get wild, but most of the time, everyone is respectful of others. Playing dirty in order to "win" is often perceived as not constructive or useful to the organization, and therefore rejected.

Debates in the academic world are the most formal and structured of all, with a strict protocol enforced at all times. Verifiable evidence of every point is mandatory, and presenters are usually annoyingly stoic.

Of course, the most familiar debate format is a legal proceeding in court. The entire thing is essentially a debate with witnesses, the quality of which is largely determined by the judge. Lawyers on both sides want to emotionally manipulate the jury as much as possible, and it's the judge's job to prevent them from doing it. Results vary.

In general, I think most of us can agree that being questioned on your position will help you see any holes that exist in your logic or knowledge of a subject. Teaching the subject in a classroom setting will also serve this purpose.

 

My initial response was going to be lengthier but I was on a timed library computer and time ran out...

The posts above summed up most of my points but in addition to those, I'd add a good debater uses rhetoric to make the topic seem like an issue that the audience should be interested in, use simple yet precise language to make their arguments clear yet not alienate the audience with too much verbiage, and a good debater should know the possible rebuttals to some of his/her arguments. This last technique is the one I find most appealing, as it gives the impression of objectivity.

Reading philosophy and analyzing abstract/journal papers.

 

Karen

I don’t agree – was the mad policies that brought about the crash based on ‘verifiable facts’, or the hopes of a man in a casino placing a bet on red?

The success or failure of many companies are often purely about luck, rather than judgment. There are many books on the lead up to the crash that make this perfectly clear.

The thing is that a company with a owner or CEO can be like a dictatorship and if you have competent and sober people in charge it can go well but if not…

In the political world I prefer to live in a democracy (although what has just happened in Britain is hard to take).

Oh there is also the back stabbing, briefings against, tantrums and deep and dirty politics going on, not to mention the occasional punch up in the pub, remember academics are still human beings.

I‘d recommend a read of Cicero’s Murder trials –
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Murder-Trials-Defence-Cluentius-Classics/dp/014044288X

And the Rumpole books of John Mortimer
http://www.amazon.co.uk/First-Rumpole-Omnibus-John-Mortimer/dp/014006768X

I agree, cheers balbus

 

Meagain

But interpretation is often an opinion and ‘facts’ can often be difficult to pin down – a lot of things we debate about (especially in politics) are about what should or could happen in the future often based on a interpretation of what has happened in the past.

Things can get subjective – two people can read a book one can hate it the other love it - which viewpoint is the correct ‘fact’? Now imagine a book is taught at school and you are told for a ‘fact’ that it is a masterpiece, a work of genius, a classic, but you find it boring, irrelevant to your life and difficult to read – are you therefore stupid and wrong?

*

So let us say your put forward your criticisms of the book down in an essay and receive an ‘F’.

Next time you have such a book presented to you, you lie and put down how wonderful is the structure the depth of character presentation etc and you are given an ‘A’

What have you learnt?

What is ‘solid knowledge’?

 

Meagain

That wouldn’t be what was debated, people would presume the companies that would be hired to build the bridge would have that knowledge.

The real debate or debates would be - is a bridge needed, where do we build the bridge, can we afford a bridge, should we spend the money on school hospital etc rather than a bridge, will the bridge bring economic benefits, is compensation to be paid for the land used for the prospective bridge if so at what amount, is it to be a toll bridge or free and so on - its only after those types of debate and the decision made that the construction company would be hired.

And those debates would be full of opposing opinions often based on subjective knowledge and speculative projections.

Why, I mean very few of the people who would be involved in the above debates would have any knowledge of bridge design and building, they would just presume the companies that would be hired would have that knowledge.

The people that decide to go to war don’t have to have fired a gun let alone know how one works or is built, they will presume the army has that in hand.

 

Meagain

I think we are at cross purposes – I’m not saying that debate should replace formal teaching; I’m saying that it can be a useful tool within education, as I’d hoped I’d pointed out earlier.
I also point out that in mathematics and many scientific subjects there is a high degree of certainty as to the ‘facts’, in other subjects things can be a lot more hazy –

Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon in 49BCE you could say that was a recorded ‘fact’ – but was he right to do so?

Is Hamlet better than Game of Thrones?

Is Keynesianism better than free market economics?

In these type of questions the facts are harder to define, the waters more murky and the views increasingly subjective.

It’s hard then to say ‘this for a fact, is the right answer’.

*

Oh and my answers

Julius was constitutionally wrong but if he hadn’t acted he was a dead man walking.

Game of Thrones (my wife strongly disagrees)

I side with Keynes

I’m not saying that my views are the right ones, but I’d try and defend my views in a debate.

 

You never know how good you are at basketball until you play someone much better than you. Same goes for wrestling, and fighting, and your arguments.

To me reading philosophy and analyzing papers is akin to the karate master who thinks he's the baddest man on the planet and has yet to test it in reality. It's too easy to fool one's self.

 

I wasn't specifically talking about investment banks, which are a tiny fraction of all the privately managed organizations in the developed world. They certainly have more than their share of problems.

The typical midsized company is not regularly involved in so much drama. They debate things that most outsiders would consider to be quite mundane and ordinary, simply applying established business principles to their specific situations. Such as, should we change inventory management software? The heads of the information technology department, head of warehouse operations, and probably also the customer service and quality control people will all have their views on what needs to change. They all get to plead their cases to the decisionmakers. Forming a consensus is ideal.

Seen more often in the smallest of companies. As they get larger, the CEO becomes more likely to pay big money to be advised on various specialties. When you get to the level where there are a half dozen or more vice presidents, each one has a slightly different background, and is entrusted with different responsibilities. Some departments are large enough and autonomous enough that they can have departmental meetings and set internal policies that don't have to be approved at a higher level.

The average company has thousands or tens of thousands of small decisions to be made on an annual basis. The companies that still make all of these decisions according to a military model, top down, tend to be older ones that are shrinking as they lose market share to newer, more innovative competitors that have a freer flow of communication up and down the pyramid.

No organization is better than the people who built it and keep it going.

 

So many "ideas" are subjective positions to hold. Trust empiricists for the most part, however--even check them out thoroughly. Debate should spark interest in a given subject

and then it's up to each individual to fact check for themselves. I think debating opposing points in school, even as young as 10 or 11, would be an excellent way to fire up critical thinking skills in students. It's not the be-all and end-all solution in the learning process, however I believe that starting that early would be very helpful and foster a keen
sense of objectivity in determining facts in evidence. The basics--language and math skills can be learned very early on, but objectively approaching whatever subject/problems comes ones way in school or life outside school, obviously would be enhanced by debating and testing ones ideas against opposing ideas.

A complicated subject these days due to political stances. Some say education is the key to our future--we need smart citizens who can compete. Others see education as a good place from which to cut money in order to balance state-federal budgets. First subjects usually cut are music, the arts and PE, which shows (to me), who has the power
to determine curriculum and where their fealty lies. And it's not in "turning out" well rounded, curious, talented, healthy students. it's become for creating fodder for ----

------------------THE MACHINE.

 

If I understand your analogy, no more so than debating.

As has already been mentioned, debaters can talk past each other or you can just as easily get a debate moderator with a biased view throwing up lollipops for one debater, while having the other face questions not related to their primary arguments, while controlling the time of each response.

I value philosophy because it allows for more comprehensive thoughts than a debate. There are instances of it being applied to real life interaction (i.e. Socratic Dialogues), there are views which provide justification for providing observation and evidence for aquiring knowledge, reasoning and understanding reality (empiricism) which by the way you have already conceded we should do, and philosophy allows one to change their mind pending new ideas, which I think is a precursor to thought in alot of scientific endeavors.

I do not understand the analogy you made relating to abstracts. Moreso than a debate or philosophy, the person putting forth an abstract is throwing themselves out to the wolves. Abstracts should be the most objective of the 3. The scientist is laying out a hypothesis, a method to test the hypothesis, the tools/techniques/measurements/etc to be used, a conclusion, and limitations of the study.

I stand by reading and analyzing Philosophy and Abstract/Journal papers as ways to improve reasoning skills, it goes without saying writing one's own philosophy papers and participating in research yielding abstracts would take abilities to to another level.

 

Meagain

Wurthering Heights was controversial when published and liked and disliked for that very reason – here is a review you might like “This is a strange book… as a whole, it is wild, confused, disjointed, and improbable; and the people who make up the drama…are savages ruder than those who lived before the days of Homer”

I prefer Kate Bush’s song and she admits that that was based on the 1939 film not the book.

Thing is about literature is that if it wasn’t once popular entertainment it probably wouldn’t have survived, but tastes and viewpoints move on and what was once a popular diversion become the ‘classics’ of academia, that are then deemed to educationally advantageous to read.

I say come on we’ve moved on, it was good for the 1840’s but…

Or it would be a bore fest of the greatest magnitude; it depends on your interest, and that’s great each to their own - BUT if a fan of Wurthering Heights wants to debate with me it’s merits say compared to Game of Thrones I’d be happy to do so even though I’ve only read a quarter of the book (that was enough), so I’m no expert but I’d be happy to give my opinion and defend my stance.
And I have done it in the past, there was a person that thought all comics ‘juvenile trash’ I fought my corner and with the help of Sandman by Neil Gaiman and the works of Alan Moore they did come around to ‘some comic have merit’.

Other times people have convinced me, including the worth of films that don’t have robots, spaceships and people with superpowers in them, British food can be good and so can some rap music.

Often these accepted artistic milestones are cultural memes that are seen as signifiers of cultural identity and education – of being cultured. So having a love of Shakespeare, classical music and recognizing the genius of certain painters and artist, marks you out as a person of culture, while been a fan of sci-fi, pop music and video games doesn’t get the same regard, and I say fuck that.

The strange thing is that many things that were once looked down on as having little cultural significance have in my life time become cultural - sci-fi and fantasy, comics, video games - the world has become a lot more ‘geek’.

My child’s year at school recently did a project about the ancient Greeks and Romans and were amazed to find a significant number of them knew a lot about it in many cases more than their teachers. This wasn’t because they had been reading Homer and Hesiod, no they had been reading the Percy Jackson books and watching Horrible Histories, and that had sparked many to find out more, knowledge can come from the strangest of places.

 

[SIZE=11pt]Sratcho [/SIZE]
[SIZE=11pt][/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]I agree but such teaching is possible in a class of say five pupils but is impossible in one of 20 or 30.[/SIZE]
[SIZE=11pt]I mean think of what it entails, for a start you would get the same behavior that we get here on these forums (but physically) that is controllable at five at 10 it’s problematic anymore than that and you are a world of shit.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]And fighting for an unpopular cause could get you beaten up after school. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]Also by ten years old some are going to be already advantaged or disadvantaged to the benefits of such teaching. I mean discussion and fact finding is something my wife and I do with our child, we discuss stuff, if there are things we don’t know we go and look for them in a book or increasingly on the web. But we are interested, educated and time rich parents and as I’ve said not every child has such guardians and that is where society needs to intervene to improve things, a few ideas would be to have Kindergartens staffed with early learner teachers that are free to the disadvantaged another thing that could help was adult educations centres that are again free to the poor, but as said a major step is about class sizes small classes are good for debate and one to one teaching while larger classes are more about keeping discipline and teaching by rote. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]And so as you say it all comes down to money and the political will to spend it. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]The right might talk of the ‘freedom’ of internet learning but it is the same kind of ‘freedom’ that they mean about having the freedom to die from want in a world without public assisted welfare. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]It’s about their freedom from taxation. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt][/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]The other problem for established political power is that an educated and questioning population are likely to seek reforms and changes that are against the interests of the established political power.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]Traditionally the educated and questioning often turn out to be progressive and left leaning in their thinking and established political power’s more conservative and supporting of the status quo that keeps them in power. [/SIZE]

 

 

 

When I was schooled parents were much more involved than they appear to be today. In addition I was taught that the learning process didn't end with the end of the school day, with teachers promoting public libraries and reading outside of the classroom as a means of learning and questioning when in the classroom. When I went to college, nearly 2 decades later, I found it much easier than my classmates that had just graduated from high school.

 

Too many kids seem like they were basically only taught how to be spoon fed information. Looking back a little bit, we WERE taught some useful skills: We were taught how to use the internet to find CREDIBLE sources (as well as other skills such as finding relevant books in libraries and such), and how to distinguish between a credible source and anecdotes. Is it really intellectual laziness that could be half the problem here? For example, one person came to me with a computer "problem" some time ago. After getting a vague description of the issue, I asked the simple question "did you google it?" The person replied with a "no," as if the thought to do such a thing had never crossed their mind at all. This left me somewhat puzzled, as this is probably the first thing I might do, even with my background. No matter how much you know about a subject, you will always be confronted with the unfamiliar; it's all about being resourceful, and using resources efficiently. That's one of my big secrets actually that I will never let my enemies in on. It's all about knowing the right questions to ask, and where; you gather some information, and then use the knowledge that you do have to formulate a concise, direct, and to the point question so that hopefully you can get the same type of answer, which is of course what you're looking for.