What Should We Teach The Next Generation?

BobQ

pqrdef wrote: »

Clearly it was the time spent on maths at school that was a waste of time.

Skip the 2-year A level and do a 4-year degree course requiring only GCSE-standard prerequisites, and you've actually saved a year (and a large amount of public money).

Maybe we should just give degrees away with cornflakes?

zagubov

BobQ wrote: »

Maybe we should just give degrees away with cornflakes?

This article should give food for thought.

I was asking originally about school kids being prepared for the world, but if we see school as preparation for HE, then we may lose sight of it as also preparation for active citizenship. In Ireland and Scotland there's more of an emphasis on producing a generally-educated all-rounder and let the universities provide most of the more advanced specialist education.

Not easy to combine with a cheap three-year degree system which does look financially attractive to outsiders because of potential cost savings.

Perhaps we need to re-examine what schools are actually for.

BobQ

pqrdef wrote: »

Well I used to think I had a good grammar school education in traditional academic subjects. It took me a long time to realise how bad it was and how much of my precious youth it stole from me.

All those afternoons in the chemistry lab, refluxing this and titrating that, might possibly have been of some small value to the one member of the class who went on to study chemistry (though I wouldn't bet on it), but they were no use at all to anybody else. (And the chemistry student went into retail management.)

Trouble was, there was no course in as much chemistry as a non-chemist needs to know. There was only chemistry for chemists.

So why did we do it? Because the universities demanded 3 A levels, and the school made us stay on the premises all day, and nobody thought to call it wrongful imprisonment.

.

I have never found the need to use what I leaned at school about the French Revolution or metamorphic rocks or the use of Taylor Series, but I am glad that I had the opportunity to learn what they are.

Could it be that you were being taught about the scientific method, how to design experiements, practical calulations based on real data, how to draw conclusions from the world in which you live, how to evaluate knowledge, how errors can influence outcomes and affect conclusions, and how to systematically document what you have learned?

Obviously if you thought it was about titration and reflux you might have missed the point, and maybe your teacher was equally disapppointed as you?:)

pqrdef

BobQ wrote: »

Maybe we should just give degrees away with cornflakes?

I didn't say anything about reducing the standard. Four years is more than enough to get from GCSE level to degree level.

Teenagers are too old to teach like infants and too young to teach like adults. You can't run through a topic in a lecture and expect them to get the gist. You have to do one point at a time and labour every point, and it's all so slow and tedious. Universities will cover the same ground much quicker.

pqrdef

BobQ wrote: »

Could it be that you were being taught about the scientific method, how to design experiements, practical calulations based on real data, how to draw conclusions from the world in which you live, how to evaluate knowledge, how errors can influence outcomes and affect conclusions, and how to systematically document what you have learned?

No I wasn't being taught any of that. I was practising the things that might come up in the A level practical. I was learning how to assemble the apparatus and how to fiddle the results to get the right answer.

Perhaps you were lucky enough to have had the kind of education that Gove wants to put a stop to. Or perhaps you're listing a set of objectives which is never achieved and which schools never will achieve, but which was concocted by somebody as an excuse for shrinking the syllabus.

BobQ

pqrdef wrote: »

No I wasn't being taught any of that. I was practising the things that might come up in the A level practical. I was learning how to assemble the apparatus and how to fiddle the results to get the right answer.

Perhaps you were lucky enough to have had the kind of education that Gove wants to put a stop to. Or perhaps you're listing a set of objectives which is never achieved and which schools never will achieve, but which was concocted by somebody as an excuse for shrinking the syllabus.

I do not know enough of Gove's plans to comment, I was just speculating based on my educational experience in the 1970s as to what you might have been doing titration experiments for. If it was to help you pass an exam, maybe that explains a lot!

BobQ

zagubov wrote: »

This article should give food for thought.

I was asking originally about school kids being prepared for the world, but if we see school as preparation for HE, then we may lose sight of it as also preparation for active citizenship. In Ireland and Scotland there's more of an emphasis on producing a generally-educated all-rounder and let the universities provide most of the more advanced specialist education.

Not easy to combine with a cheap three-year degree system which does look financially attractive to outsiders because of potential cost savings.

Perhaps we need to re-examine what schools are actually for.

Does your expertise extend to understanding how different systems compare? Is it suggested that 80% of students in the UK will attend universities and be credible candidates for achieving degrees? Or is it suggested that universities will undertake all tertiary education from academic degrees to vocational training?

zagubov

BobQ wrote: »

Does your expertise extend to understanding how different systems compare? Is it suggested that 80% of students in the UK will attend universities and be credible candidates for achieving degrees? Or is it suggested that universities will undertake all tertiary education from academic degrees to vocational training?

1. No- I've only got direct experience of the secondary and higher education sectors in Scotland and England.
2.Very much doubt it, unless we're thinking of Foundation Degrees which seem like American Associate degrees . I suspect they'll be like the old DipHE and HND qualifictaions which weren't amazingly popular IIRC. But now re-branded as degrees, maybe they'll take off. Could this de-value degrees in general? Maybe so.
3. Probably yes, or they won't all survive.

Let's be honest, a government can look good by boosting higher education, and financing it by quietly closing down further education in the background.

pqrdef

BobQ wrote: »

Is it suggested that 80% of students in the UK will attend universities and be credible candidates for achieving degrees?

Well a degree isn't supposed to be a fixed bar, and never has been. Oxbridge used to routinely hand out Thirds to rich young men who did little more than sleep within the boundaries for the required number of nights (with lower grades available for those particularly idle or moronic).

Then Robbins took us to a point where 5% went to university. Now it's more like 40%. The extra 35% may be fulfilling some educational potential that previously went unfulfilled, but they aren't being raised to the level of the 5%. Nor is that the objective.

Trouble is though, the universities would like to be unashamedly academic, and they struggle to reconcile that with the needs of their intakes. Meanwhile, employers insist on recruiting graduates and then complain bitterly that the graduates don't have the skills needed for the job, and they don't seem to see the contradiction.

An academic education isn't supposed to be about job skills.
The point of an academic education is to produce academics - those who will (later if not immediately) take on the transmission of knowledge to the next generation.

So there is a battle going on over what a degree should signify.

IveSeenTheLight

pqrdef wrote: »

But you can't. This is unavoidable. Even if you could rely on the students all having passed an A level which includes a certain topic in the syllabus, you couldn't rely on them all actually having absorbed anything and retained it through their gap year. Anything you need them to know, you would still have to cover it at the point where you need it.

Got to dissagree here, this mindset teaches young that they don;t need to apply themselves and they'll get another opportunity at University.

Set the expectations, work to them.
Those attending university have to either have done the pre-requisits before attending the module / course, else have to do extra study to catch up during.

These are young adults and if you make them responsible for ensuring they have that required knowledge, then they learn that it's they themselves that are the only ones accountable.