Does education enhance life?

[pantodragon]

This is one of a series of pieces on aspects of the education system. The following is a transcription of handwritten notes taken during a brainstorming session. The ideas/thoughts are written down in the order that they came to me:

Does education enhance life?

In a word, NO. In fact, the very opposite. The education system crushes dreams, it imposes sensory deprivation.

All children are routinely thwarted in their dreams and ambitions. Talk to adults, and they will not remember their childhood dreams and ambitions, but if one talks to adults long enough, prods their memories, gets below the surface, they will remember that they did have childhood dreams and ambitions.

Schools are teaching children the mentality of conforming to the expectations of other people.

Some of my childhood dreams and ambitions were to be a vet, to be an air hostess, to be someone like David Attenborough and work with animals and so on and so forth.

Children’s dreams of no interest to school system. They are ignored.

Depriving children of their dreams kills them. Children are motivated to follow their dreams; they are NOT motivated to do something which is dictated by practical necessity e.g. earning money, getting a job, thinking about a pension.

School children increasingly involved in the GREY, colourless world of business and information handling. This creates world of sensory deprivation – and of autism.

There is less and less hands-on work in school. Children increasingly sitting in front of computers. So instead of writing up projects as if they are works of art, children are reduced to producing something more like a business report. Last school I worked in, boss actively discouraged use of colour – children’s jotters dull, grey, words, words, words in black or blue pen. Pencil diagrams. Ghastly. Children wanted to use colour pens. Discouraged as trivial. This is world of sensory deprivation.

Even last bastions of hands-on work, subjects such as art, are becoming business based. Learning how to use proprietary software. Producing a product -- advertising and design creeping in to art. Instead of technical drawing, have graphic design – focus is on business, a product. In computing, the curriculum changed from a computer science type of course and learning how a computer works, to one in which children spend much of their time looking at catalogues, learning how to buy computer equipment, using software found in any office, and which will use when they leave school. The last Home Economics class I was in had more computers than sewing machines. Less and less hands on sewing, handling fabrics etc., more and more working in the virtual world of the internet.

Pink Floyd: Just another brick in the wall. Wall there to serve business. Education dehumanises.

People are extremely complex, but by the end of their education, output is a “product” which has to meet specifications dictated by business.

Schoolchildren spend increasing amount of time at school compiling a CV for when they leave.

Children, living human beings with dreams and ambitions, turned into products --- and then they have to present themselves to employers as if they are products, with a CV giving their specifications, and then they are assessed by employer as of buying a piece of equipment.

Schools are rotten institutions.

[Ashotep]

Schools are just there to teach what you need to know to survive they aren't there to develop your talents or dreams.

[notoverrated]

ya i see where ur coming from, i agree kinda. always felt like they were holding me back in school.