i certainly disagree with many of rousseau's views on education but there was a passage of émile that greatly resonated with me. a father and son are flying kites; and the child is able to accurately infer the position of the kite in the sky from its shadow, despite never having been specifically taught how to do this. the idea here is that the child's education has provided him with a foundation of logic and reason which he is able to build upon to form a complete understanding of the world.

so we must ask ourselves what this foundation of logic and reason is, and how it can be cultivated. literacy and numeracy, obviously, are crucial elements. i take issue with the the way these are taught in north american public schools: i.e. by unqualified teachers, very slowly, by rote, and compartmentalized into separate modules.

in an ideal educational system, all primary school teachers (excluding kindergarten teachers, i suppose) would have at least a bachelor's degree in whatever they wish to teach. so there would be a few teachers with math degrees who taught all the math classes from grades 1-8; a few english teachers; a few science teachers, etc. the reasoning behind this is that they would have a comprehensive and nuanced understanding of the subject & thus would be able to present it in varied ways so children can come to comprehend the material, its applications, and its relations to other disciplines. you won't get that from some lady whose highest level of mathematical education is grade 10 algebra.

the current education system (probably as a result of the lack of qualified teachers) greatly underestimates the average child's potential intelligence and their capacity for learning -- effectively stunting the intellectual growth of vast swathes of society. a child's mind needs to be challenged to develop... you cannot spend five or six years teaching children to add&subtract and construct simple sentences, as north american public schools do... i firmly believe that by the age of 8 the average child is capable of mastering all areas of basic arithmetic (including proportions, fractions, etc), comprehending the sort of literature that's generally taught to children around the ages of 12-13 (comprehending as in understanding what the plot is, what the sentences mean -- i don't expect young children would have the life experience and emotional intelligence needed to analyze literature on a deeper level but they are certainly able to parse it) and writing well-constructed paragraphs with correct spelling and grammar. i consider the deplorable standards of public education on this continent child abuse, pure and simple. a child who is raised in an orphanage and offered little human contact grows up to be emotionally crippled. a child raised in public school and given no opportunities to exercise their intelligence grows up to be intellectually crippled.

there is a particular philosophy that our education system slavishly adheres to in the teaching of the fundamental subjects (especially literacy), that they should be analyzed and broken down into as many component parts as possible and then the child should be taught these components one at a time. i suppose the reasoning here is that it makes things easier to understand. but it encourages a fractured view of the subject rather than a view of the subject as an integrated whole, such as is necessary for what i believe to be proper understanding. to speak more concretely i believe that children should not necessarily be taught e.g. reading, spelling, basic writing structure & rhetoric separately but be given examples of good writing which are appropriate to their age and then taught to model their work upon this. it is the student who should accomplish the analysis because it is from analysis that understanding is born.

those are my main complaints with education as it stands today. of course it is impossible to address issues with education without also addressing issues with society. of which there are many. the school system we have today does not accomplish the original goal of education which was to set man free from the constraints of society with knowledge. rather it aims to turn out labourers and civil servants to serve the purposes of the oligarchy. social stratification affects access to quality education and further disenfranchises the lower classes. there are more. but these issues are entrenched in the foundation of our culture and near impossible to challenge. for now, we should focus on what we can change. and i firmly believe that we can make great improvements to our educational system -- and thus, our society and our lives.

sorry for being long-winded and digressive -- that's how i tend to express my thoughts.