Education is not a Production Line (1 Viewer)

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Golmona

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In this article Sadhguru looks at how formal education today focuses on only one aspect of human intelligence, and why this needs to change immediately.

"Today, the world is no longer about people, it is about the economic engine we have built. It has become bigger than us and we are afraid to stop it even for a moment, so we have to keep the engine going all the time. Unfortunately, education has mostly become about manufacturing cogs for this machine. We can’t let the machine fail, so our children have become the spare parts and fuel needed to keep it running.

There are studies which say that if a child goes through twenty years of formal education and comes out with a Ph.D, seventy percent of his intelligence is irrevocably destroyed. Essentially, we have mistaken information for education. If you deaden the brain with too much information, the possibility of intelligence is definitely lost. What we accumulate and who we are should remain separate. Who I am should not be influenced by what I have accumulated – whether it is material objects, information or impressions."

Read more: http://isha.sadhguru.org/blog/social-impact/education/education-not-production-line/
 

Linda

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Great info - I agree 110%.

Personally, I prefer the Socratic method where the teacher asks questions that lead students along the road of self-discovery. In the US, we've sunk into teaching to the test. Teacher's are rewarded for how many students do well on standardized tests, which certainly does not give them any incentive to actually teach.

I used to teach seminars about real estate to junior and senior level young women in the U of Texas business school. You have to be fairly smart to get into that school, much less make it to the last 2 years. I was floored to discover that few of them could think their way through a problem / question. Most wanted only to know what the requirements were for the assignments. Some found me very frustrating because I just asked questions.

The last great educational initiative from our government was called "No child left behind". The corollary could have been - no child gets ahead, either.
 

June

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Aug 3, 2016
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Great info - I agree 110%.

Personally, I prefer the Socratic method where the teacher asks questions that lead students along the road of self-discovery. In the US, we've sunk into teaching to the test. Teacher's are rewarded for how many students do well on standardized tests, which certainly does not give them any incentive to actually teach.

I used to teach seminars about real estate to junior and senior level young women in the U of Texas business school. You have to be fairly smart to get into that school, much less make it to the last 2 years. I was floored to discover that few of them could think their way through a problem / question. Most wanted only to know what the requirements were for the assignments. Some found me very frustrating because I just asked questions.

The last great educational initiative from our government was called "No child left behind". The corollary could have been - no child gets ahead, either.
Just shows how well they have been dumbed down doesn't it, they are quite happy to accept everything they are told, and were frustrated with you for making them think. Seems to me they don't know how to think for themselves, so many people are already like automatons, thank goodness for the shift, I suspect many will find waking up quite traumatic. Interesting times we live in.
 

Lai Jumoke

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Great info - I agree 110%.

Personally, I prefer the Socratic method where the teacher asks questions that lead students along the road of self-discovery.


The last great educational initiative from our government was called "No child left behind". The corollary could have been - no child gets ahead, either.
Love your reply tooo Linda. Thank you.
 
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Golmona

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Aug 2, 2016
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Am so glad you brought this up Linda. As I was reading the article, especially this paragraph

"Intelligence need not be influenced, it needs to be inflamed. The purpose of education is to decondition intelligence, so that it becomes active, adapting to situations and doing what is appropriate. That is the essence of intelligence."

I kept thinking to myself 'HOW'? How do we as parents, teachers, society inflame intelligence? How do we decondition intelligence? How does that education system look like?

I think you hit the nail on the head with the Socratic method. Indeed, what is more powerful than asking the right questions and letting the imagination run wild?

I found this article, which goes to explain how adults and educators can slip into this belief that it is our job to make sure children know “the right answer”. But like Sadhguru also mentioned in his article, this is based on the wrong assumption that we as adults are actually more intelligent than our children.

I particularly love this paragraph:

"Why do I need to correct them? Why do I need to make sure they have it “right”?

Letting a child’s answer stand makes room for their imagination to make sense of their world. It adds to the story they are writing in their heads. It nurtures the relationship they are building with the land. Showing interest and support for a child’s narrative also nurtures their relationship with me. A child who knows I will listen to their original ideas is much more likely to take a chance to share those ideas. It’s important to support a child’s willingness to share original ideas and to help them see that it’s okay to speak up without knowing that they are right or wrong. At Forest School, I get to do that."

Here is the article: http://www.forestschoolcanada.ca/uncategorized/letting-a-wrong-answer-stand
 

Snowmelt

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Aug 15, 2016
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I don't have experience with systematic education - but I do have my own experience as a child. The touchstones I have always reached back for were epiphanies or gleanings of my very own - something I stumbled on or rediscovered in memory. For example, when I was six, I became very taken with the idea of reincarnation and circular motion of spiritual lives (I guess we call that spiritual evolution now). I wrote poems about it, and I discussed it with my parents, teachers and even Sunday School teachers. I left Sunday School as a result of this discussion. Nobody gave the young me the concept of reincarnation. It was something I remembered from past lives. I retained the memory and it popped up in this life.

I have a twin, and once he explained to me his idea of time which is the accepted societal idea of linear time - everything progressing on a straight line from A to B. I didn't tell him, but stubbornly I held on to the concept it was spiral. There is a new concept for me to think about now - toroidal.

A strong memory I have is sitting on my father's knee (so must have been no more than 5 or 6) and him explaining that if I didn't want to accept what the Sunday School was teaching, I would need to do a search of religions (he mean a comparative search but wouldn't have used that word) by reading their important texts and delving into their ideas. He told me there were a lot of religions about!

I started leading a small group of children around the perimeter of the school oval at play lunch and lunch time - discussing philosophy and spiritual ideas (as far as we had any grasp of it), what I now realise were metaphysical ideas. This was when I was 7, 8 and 9. Only when I was about 14 did I think there was any merit in hitting a ball with my hand into a painted square on the playground.

I feel I am still doing that research all these years on - but my intelligence was inflamed on the subject, and that fire/passion has never dimmed for searching for true meaning amid the shards of ancient culture and tradition and what has come down to us today as byword. I guess I am just someone that cannot be told.
 

Linda

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You were quite an interesting child - so many ideas and questions. (Not that you are uninteresting now - lol.)

I started leading a small group of children around the perimeter of the school oval at play lunch and lunch time - discussing philosophy and spiritual ideas (as far as we had any grasp of it), what I now realise were metaphysical ideas.
 
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