Dumbing Down University

[Brian]

what source did you look for it in?

i tried deviant art

Bing is my default search engine.

[zerostao]

https://www.edx.org/

 

I know many of you do feel dumbed down because of your lack of current participation in higher learnings

found on american and worldwide campuses. and while edx may not offer the traditional partay social engagements,

you would encounter on campus, still, there is great opportunity for networking and gaining enlightenment, 

and you wont have feel like a troglodyte any longer 

Cheers!! and shake all of that dumbiness off yourself, it is Spring, a fine one too, 

so why not enter a class soon?!

last summer i took two classes at The Open University of UK, one at Yale, nice experiences

so nice, 

this summer i press on towards my first grad level degree. about 1/3 of the way there.

there will be more to follow  

 

edit>> and a current thread of ours here on TDB "the origins of man" is one of the current edx offerings!!

look sharp on a dao bums thread! study up

 

was gonna play a trogggs song.....

Edited March 21, 2016 by zerostao

[dawei]

I got the sense of it, I think, and amid the non-sarcasm and the sarcasm I also got the sense that you both think university students should be expected to know these things. And I neither agree nor disagree. I do think that it's worth questioning.

 

That's the point, you see -- we are actively teaching our children that there is no value in learning. 

 

To an extent, at least, I fear you're right that learning actual solid useful things is becoming less important.

 

My feeling is that it is not so much that children are taught there is no value in learning...  they are learning but what they are learning is changing.  And it may be that the value is coming more from social rather than educational pursuits. 

 

Maybe put another way, the social stimulation has changed over the years and that seems to be gathering 'value' in a sense.

[blue eyed snake]

well,

 

I find I agree with Brian, it's even worse imo.

 

we don't teach our kids the basics they need to be able to learn, the simple reading, writing and arithmetics.

 

In Holland ten percent of the 12 year-olds don't conform to the minimally expected level, this is about being able to read the captions on television. these children end up as functional an-alphabetics. The top of the children, those that make it to university. 10 years ago I had the ' pleasure' to have to read essays written by firstyears child-psychology. The majority can't spell, they can't formulate clearly even though they're smart enough. some of them catch up...

 

arithmetic, for about 20 to 25 years a method is in use that makes it hard for all children to grasp what is asked of them.... when they're twelve they still have difficulties with simple fractions.

 

Last year i was clearing out books and found my old books math and physics. I asked my son whether he would want them. he gives extra lessons to both dumb and extra smart youngsters to pay for his study. He wanted them and concluded that on average the gap between now and then is about one or two years. He also commented on the amount of  problems given for each topic which was decidedly larger than in modern books.

 

He was looking at my math-book sixt grade ( so for 17 years-old) and told me that it included a lot of stuff that he was taught as firstyear student physics.

 

you pushed my button....so much for modern education...

[zerostao]

You've raised an interesting point about the role of education. While we might think of education as being about the three r's (reading, writing, arithmetic), a predominant focus in the Enlightenment era was building character. This ideal repeats at certain intervals throughout history.

Edited March 21, 2016 by zerostao

[dawei]

we don't teach our kids the basics they need to be able to learn, the simple reading, writing and arithmetics.

 

But I'm wondering if the problem is that there isn't room for 'valued education' to get in and grow roots for some reason... meaning, other stuff now fills those part of their brain cells and keeps the more important stuff from getting in.

 

The fact that there are changes to be noted, like you mention, suggests there should be some explanation.  I am not so sure it is simply teaching has degraded.   At a time when we think we are all getting smarter, education appears to be moving in reverse.  But I'm not sure we can blame education.   It may be responding to the problem that kids don't seem to get it...

 

I think education has failed in a few different ways and it is not really seeing how or why on some level...  So while education may be failing kids, the kids may be failing education too but by the outside influences of social issues... which also might be to say that parents are failing them in this.  I think there is a blame to spread around.

 

So I am not so sure we can just re-introduce the material at a younger age, if there is just not room to pack it in...

[Karl]

You've raised an interesting point about the role of education. While we might thinking of education as being about the three r's (reading, writing, arithmetic), a predominant focus in the Enlightenment era was building character. This ideal repeats at certain intervals throughout history.

 

Once through the basics young adults should be taught how to educate themselves rather than being taught specific kinds of skills. If you can read a book enough to determine if it makes sense, then you can practically learn any skill you want. Every teacher is teaching from a book anyway. As the saying goes "teach a man history and he can trach history, but teach a man how to educate himself and he can do anything".

 

A lot of building character was built on the Trivium. A man had to have the ability to read, reason and argue effectively. It was important to be physically able, but a man without the same craft of mind was considered an ignorant buffoon. Sadly those days are gone and 'ignorant buffoon' is pretty much standard currency.

[zerostao]

i agreed with your post until your final sentence karl,

my wednesday this week will be spent listening to naomi klein

as she pays our campus a visit

[Karl]

i agreed with your post until your final sentence karl,

my wednesday this week will be spent listening to naomi klein

as she pays our campus a visit

 

You do like your communist indoctrination at the state institutions. You should ask for Bob Murphy or Tom Woods. That would be really funny to see how that went down.

 

Mises blew Kleins facile work out of the park 60 years ago.

 

I keep suggesting you read Hazlitt as a primer, but I suppose it's banned in your head :-)

[Apech]

You do like your communist indoctrination at the state institutions. You should ask for Bob Murphy or Tom Woods. That would be really funny to see how that went down. Mises blew Kleins facile work out of the park 60 years ago. I keep suggesting you read Hazlitt as a primer, but I suppose it's banned in your head :-)

 

 

Klein was born in 1970 ... so 60 years ago she would be  -14 yrs.  

[zerostao]

i doubt karl has ever listened to or read klein either.

as she takes a few of the same positions that he does 

especially against global neoliberalism, state institutionalism, clintonism, and crony corporatists,

its strange how karl seemingly attacks every single critic of crony corporatism 

by calling them communists

Edited March 21, 2016 by zerostao

[Apech]

i doubt karl has ever listened to or read klein either.

as she takes a few of the same positions that he does 

especially against global neoliberalism, state institutionalism, clintonism, and crony corporatists,

its strange how karl seemingly attacks every single critic of crony corporatism 

by calling them communists

 

 

takes a commie to know one ... I say

[Karl]

i doubt karl has ever listened to or read klein either.

as she takes a few of the same positions that he does 

especially against global neoliberalism, state institutionalism, clintonism, and crony corporatists,

its strange how karl seemingly attacks every single critic of crony corporatism 

by calling them communists

 

She doesn't. Ive read some of her work in short form.

 

I don't attack every critic of crony corporatism, the problem is that because we have crony corporatism it's easy for the left to tell us that capitalism is dead and that we must follow some version of the Neo Marxist model towards socialist utopia. To pick points of agreement-even amongst thick libertarians-I no longer do. The reason is that they all follow a subjectivist fantasy which makes for the pragmatic approach. I can read a few lines, or listen to half a dozen sentences and I know instantaneously what the economic model is and the philosophy that underscores it. I'm always intrigued by the economist/politician/philosopher who honey coats and hides their philosophies in order that they seem new, or attractive to those seeking change, it's sometimes fun to unpick their rhetoric from the underlying strategy.

 

I worked backwards from socialism to libertarianism and finally anarchist. I've studied the economic models of Friedman, Mises and Marx. This gives a certain kind of objective view, but coupled with philosophy it's the equivalent of a bug under a very large microscope.

 

 

[Karl]

takes a commie to know one ... I say

 

I agree with that. It's those that don't know communism that are attracted to its revolution, worker liberation, capitalist fat cat extinction, social utopia of like minded beautiful people living in socialist Harmony with plenty for everyone.

 

If you point out the USSR they cannot conceive that it was socialism, they make excuses that it was wrongly imposed, Marx was misunderstood, it was the capitalist countries that caused it's failure and anyway, they say without a hint of irony, this is a different kind of social justice.

[Apech]

I agree with that. It's those that don't know communism that are attracted to its revolution, worker liberation, capitalist fat cat extinction, social utopia of like minded beautiful people living in socialist Harmony with plenty for everyone. If you point out the USSR they cannot conceive that it was socialism, they make excuses that it was wrongly imposed, Marx was misunderstood, it was the capitalist countries that caused it's failure and anyway, they say without a hint of irony, this is a different kind of social justice.

 

DaoBums should be nationalised and run for the benefit of the commentariat.  Let's form an action committee.

[Karl]

DaoBums should be nationalised and run for the benefit of the commentariat.  Let's form an action committee.

 

Don't some already think it is comrade ?

[zerostao]

we do enjoy a certain camaraderie here

not unlike that which can be found on an american university campus wonderland

but in the online course section

Edited March 22, 2016 by zerostao

[zerostao]

[WisteriaWinds]

Made me laugh ...

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjN8xP0i6Ak

 

... think about people who say things you don't like on DaoBums and apply ...

I was on a Dao Bums thread occupied by these types just the other day. I left quickly.

[redcairo]

Earlier in thread - thanks for the ref to

The Sherlock Holmes School of Thought

http://sherlockspy.blogspot.co.uk/p...and-skills.html

 

An interesting idea. Although I do think memory is vast and expandable, maybe in general there really is something to not learning for learning's sake -- perhaps not because there is limited storage, but because there is limited server time for searching (what I mean is, our memory might be infinite for all I know but our attention is certainly limited). I always liked learning just to learn, like some people ski just to ski.

 

This got me thinking about how I educated myself for the most part, 'around' mostly useless schooling.

 

But then this got me thinking that such a thing is really a natural event and anybody who pays attention to life will naturally find everything educational and most things of at least passing interest, at least once.

 

This led to considering information. Information is not education or even educationAL, but I think we blur those lines.

 

The point of "all the crap I learned in high school" as songwriter Paul Simon once put it, might be the same point as the current memes in the media: to supply so many "information units flooding the brain" that we are rendered relatively inert. We don't seek more. We don't really seek anything. Like the brain's response to television we just sort of sit there, the TV taking care of the stimulus and the response/feedback, and a good couch potato state of mind is a lot like being in depth hypnosis without a guide and you could just sort of sit there in trance forever.

 

So maybe (yes I'm getting to the point finally), maybe the overwhelming, exponential rise in the sheer quantity of information in our culture -- so many orders of magnitude more than people likely encountered 50 years ago, thanks to visual and global techs -- might literally be "crowding the mind" -- the attention, if not the memory -- of people today, so that there is simply not as much 'room' for paying attention to much else.

 

*

 

People remember what they find interesting. I think it isn't merely that we teach people to memorize instead of think (although that's a huge part of it). It's that schooling makes even the most fascinating things and people absolutely bloody BORING.

 

I hated science in school. I hated history. They are my two favorite subjects now. They would have been my favorite subjects THEN if someone had actually presented them to me in any kind of interesting fashion. The moment I met a teacher who finally did (in history, which I was repeating for the second time -- my third time in class, each with a different teacher), I was all about it, read every book in the library on the eras we went through, loved it. But when it was "Read chapter 17 and answer questions at the back of the chapter" -- even though I read well (I'd usually read the textbook the first day or two and read scifi/fan the rest of the year) it did zip for me. But this guy "told stories" -- he would learn of something and then tell us, orally, and made it INTERESTING. That made all the difference in the world.

 

My daughter was once telling me how she was reading about Marie Antoinette but it was so boring. I told her of Marie being from a convent, and being very polite, and the story (not sure if it's true) of how she stepped on the foot of a man when climbing to the guillotine -- he was her executioner -- and apologized ever so sincerely for doing so. I did tell her I wasn't sure if it was a true story. But she said that story alone made the topic vastly more interesting than everything else she'd heard. I thought it was because it humanized it. Finding out that someone lived in year X and died in year Y is enough to put anybody to sleep.

 

RC

Edited October 27, 2016 by redcairo

[TheWhiteRabbit]

[dust]

Earlier in thread - thanks for the ref to

The Sherlock Holmes School of Thought

http://sherlockspy.blogspot.co.uk/p...and-skills.html

 

An interesting idea. Although I do think memory is vast and expandable, maybe in general there really is something to not learning for learning's sake -- perhaps not because there is limited storage, but because there is limited server time for searching (what I mean is, our memory might be infinite for all I know but our attention is certainly limited). I always liked learning just to learn, like some people ski just to ski.

 

This got me thinking about how I educated myself for the most part, 'around' mostly useless schooling.

 

But then this got me thinking that such a thing is really a natural event and anybody who pays attention to life will naturally find everything educational and most things of at least passing interest, at least once.

 

I like the computer metaphor

 

Agreed that basically anything is or can be educational if one pays attention and the mind is expanded somehow. Knowledge, understanding, wisdom, whatever.

 

 

 

This led to considering information. Information is not education or even educationAL, but I think we blur those lines.

 

The point of "all the crap I learned in high school" as songwriter Paul Simon once put it, might be the same point as the current memes in the media: to supply so many "information units flooding the brain" that we are rendered relatively inert. We don't seek more. We don't really seek anything. Like the brain's response to television we just sort of sit there, the TV taking care of the stimulus and the response/feedback, and a good couch potato state of mind is a lot like being in depth hypnosis without a guide and you could just sort of sit there in trance forever.

 

So maybe (yes I'm getting to the point finally), maybe the overwhelming, exponential rise in the sheer quantity of information in our culture -- so many orders of magnitude more than people likely encountered 50 years ago, thanks to visual and global techs -- might literally be "crowding the mind" -- the attention, if not the memory -- of people today, so that there is simply not as much 'room' for paying attention to much else.

 

Yes, exactly.

 

Another problem from the internet and all this information is that people are, because of "likes" and "subscriptions" and "recommendations" and such, fed daily a load of information about things they already know or believe, with the result that many of us actually have narrower horizons than we might have otherwise, and that confirmation bias increases exponentially (we believe the things we believe even stronger because it's so easy to find more information 'proving' us right).

 

 

 

 

People remember what they find interesting. I think it isn't merely that we teach people to memorize instead of think (although that's a huge part of it). It's that schooling makes even the most fascinating things and people absolutely bloody BORING.

 

I hated science in school. I hated history. They are my two favorite subjects now. They would have been my favorite subjects THEN if someone had actually presented them to me in any kind of interesting fashion. The moment I met a teacher who finally did (in history, which I was repeating for the second time -- my third time in class, each with a different teacher), I was all about it, read every book in the library on the eras we went through, loved it. But when it was "Read chapter 17 and answer questions at the back of the chapter" -- even though I read well (I'd usually read the textbook the first day or two and read scifi/fan the rest of the year) it did zip for me. But this guy "told stories" -- he would learn of something and then tell us, orally, and made it INTERESTING. That made all the difference in the world.

 

My daughter was once telling me how she was reading about Marie Antoinette but it was so boring. I told her of Marie being from a convent, and being very polite, and the story (not sure if it's true) of how she stepped on the foot of a man when climbing to the guillotine -- he was her executioner -- and apologized ever so sincerely for doing so. I did tell her I wasn't sure if it was a true story. But she said that story alone made the topic vastly more interesting than everything else she'd heard. I thought it was because it humanized it. Finding out that someone lived in year X and died in year Y is enough to put anybody to sleep.

 

RC

 

Ah yes.. my first history lesson in high school was a fascinating account of the Battle of Hastings and the controversy surrounding Harold, and I thought I was hooked, but after that things got more and more stale and rote and I ended up with a terrible grade by the end of that first year.

[redcairo]

I suppose there is a middle ground, you know.

 

My father for example was the sort who would slicingly insult someone he loved, with no particular malice, because in his mind this was true, so why pretend about it.

 

I'm all for honesty, but first, perspective is subjective so he is always part of those evaluations which may not be as objectively true as he thinks;

 

and second, most of the time it is simply unnecessary to for example tell someone they will never succeed in something because of X or Y, because maybe they didn't ask, so why be a brutal asshole by volunteering;

 

and third, many times people try to do X, and in the process start doing Y, fail at both and end up doing Z, and that works for them, but if they'd been beaten down socially so they never even attempted X, none of that would have come about.

 

There IS such thing as keeping your own counsel; and there is such thing as diplomacy. Some of the "politically correct" stuff -- such as how we label people -- might fall into that category.

 

Although, realistically, most of the politically correct BS about what labels we give things, only come about because the existing labels have a negative vibe. And usually that vibe is not about the label, it's about culture, and culture is only going to attach that vibe to the new label.

 

I absolutely agree, though, that any speech which is essentially either mandated or punished by government (or social fora {I think I just made that word up. All forms of forum of social gathering} based on government-enforced norms) is fascism.

 

It's one thing to say you have free speech, and if you carry swastika signs through a jewish neighborhood and tell innocent passing strangers they're ugly you're an asshole. It's another thing to say you cannot even refer to a process of doing something being 'retarded' -- quite literally, something which retards the development or growth of something -- without getting your case jumped by a gigantic coalition of people who will ruin your career and reputation because you were insufficiently sensitive to the fact that someone, somewhere, has Down Syndrome.

 

RC