I was enjoying the irony of the two statements together :-)
IMHO quality education is the only cure for stupidity.
That is to say: I don’t think anyone anywhere is inherently stupid. I my experience, the stupid people I’ve met are all just lacking critical thinking skills, those skills can be learned.
The problem is many people live where those skills are not taught, or other factors prevent them being taught.
I feel like a lot is being swept under the rug of “quality”, there.
To make an analogy, I am reminded of when chirstians say a “true babtism” saves the soul, and then you look into their theology and it turns out they only believe 0.5% of babtisms to be genuine.
A quality education could be a panacea for all things, that still wouldn’t be a good argument for paying for an extra three years schooling, unless you can actually guarentee those years will be a “quality education”.
There’s a serious case of deminishing returns to education. I know plenty of people who’ve gone through a good high school and 4+ years of university only to come out of it with not a shred of curiosity or critical thinking skills. I couldn’t tell you why, sure it’s quite possible their teachers just weren’t passionate enough, or their class rooms small enough. It’s also possible they just don’t value ‘not being stupid’ enough to even try.
I should have been more specific! I was referring to early or basic schooling education: years 1 to 13 in my country. These are the formative years and are the most important for everybody universally. The quality of this education is paramount.
Higher-education wasn’t even on my mind! I’d call that quantity of education for the purposes of this discussion.
I couldn’t tell you why, sure it’s quite possible their teachers just weren’t passionate enough, or their class rooms small enough.
This is what I meant by “quality”, though I’d add the expertise of their teachers. Anecdotally, I often suspect that kids find maths hard because their teacher doesn’t understand the maths they’re teaching.
It’s also possible they just don’t value ‘not being stupid’ enough to even try.
Some people I know wear their ignorance as a badge, I just don’t get it. I assume there was some fundamental lesson not learned very early on, but can’t even guess what that lesson was.
I was enjoying the irony of the two statements together :-)
IMHO quality education is the only cure for stupidity.
That is to say: I don’t think anyone anywhere is inherently stupid. I my experience, the stupid people I’ve met are all just lacking critical thinking skills, those skills can be learned.
The problem is many people live where those skills are not taught, or other factors prevent them being taught.
I feel like a lot is being swept under the rug of “quality”, there.
To make an analogy, I am reminded of when chirstians say a “true babtism” saves the soul, and then you look into their theology and it turns out they only believe 0.5% of babtisms to be genuine.
A quality education could be a panacea for all things, that still wouldn’t be a good argument for paying for an extra three years schooling, unless you can actually guarentee those years will be a “quality education”.
There’s a serious case of deminishing returns to education. I know plenty of people who’ve gone through a good high school and 4+ years of university only to come out of it with not a shred of curiosity or critical thinking skills. I couldn’t tell you why, sure it’s quite possible their teachers just weren’t passionate enough, or their class rooms small enough. It’s also possible they just don’t value ‘not being stupid’ enough to even try.
I should have been more specific! I was referring to early or basic schooling education: years 1 to 13 in my country. These are the formative years and are the most important for everybody universally. The quality of this education is paramount.
Higher-education wasn’t even on my mind! I’d call that quantity of education for the purposes of this discussion.
This is what I meant by “quality”, though I’d add the expertise of their teachers. Anecdotally, I often suspect that kids find maths hard because their teacher doesn’t understand the maths they’re teaching.
Some people I know wear their ignorance as a badge, I just don’t get it. I assume there was some fundamental lesson not learned very early on, but can’t even guess what that lesson was.