ED CHANGES
Education has changed radically.
But, not enough to suit everyone, it seems.
When I went to school we went, primarily, to seek fulfillment of our thirst for knowledge. Oh, yes, that feeling was there and genuine one for most of us. Our parents, very much aware of their own limited schooling experiences, stressed the need to learn and we saw it as a way to better our lot as adults. We were, for the most part eager students, admittedly some more than others.
The system itself must have been harsher in those days. Any boy or girl who did not attend, or who fell behind in schoolwork, were simply dropped. Laws compelling children to attend school were lax or poorly enforced. And, too, there were parents who saw schooling as colossal waste of both time and money. Children entered the job market at an earlier age, and some did well at it.
The intent of schooling in those days was to set facts and figures before a child and for them to absorb all they could from such a wealth of provender. Various methods were developed to encourage them to drink of the fount of knowledge, or to force them to do so. Some did, some did not, and at the end of the school year the lower achievers were weeded out. There was no social promotion in those days. Do the work, or repeat the grade. If you don't like that arrangement. Goodbye.
The general idea was for a person seeking to be educated to absorb as much of the factual content available as he might possibly hold, and to parrot much of it back at test times. The human mind was packed with information.
Eduction today is structured in a totally different way. The change has been brought about by the arrival of the computer in our daily lives. Education now, during this present era, has a totally different objective. No longer is a student expected to know all there is to know about a subject. Mankind's supply of knowledge - now said to double in volume every ninety days - has become so prodigious, so fantastically complex and involved, that no human mind can possibly contain it all.
We no longer educate youth to know things, but, rather, to know where to find that fact, figure or process they need to know as the need arises for it to be essential to their lives.
Just in time, too.
Some old timers will scoff at the idea, of course, but I think we will see a crop of better educated young people in the future with this plan in place. The “college” student now has time for social pursuits and other elements of living to achieve and ever-widening range of goals in life.
Education has been simplified. Knowing where to find that which our need to know what you need is the guiding element.
It is rapidly re-defining who can be rightfully be said to be said to be “educated”. Existing school systems are having difficulty keeping up with the many subtle changes now in progress at all levels.
A.L.M. June 23, 2003 [c523wds]
