Thread: What's an ideal education system?

Do you think a curriculum like that would work for, say, a medical school or engineering school?

I used to go to a big state school and I hated it. The lecture classes were like hearing someone explain the plot of a book, and the discussion based classes were just that - a discussion. I can read books and have discussions for free. I've learned a lot more since leaving college, and for a lot cheaper. I feel like you're not paying for an education, you're paying for a degree. And they are damn expensive, too.

Those degrees are inherently different from liberal arts degrees. The purpose of a liberal arts degree is to liberate the mind, and prove that one can read, write and think. Beyond that it doesn't show for much so the arduous workloads liberal arts majors typically come with is completely unnecessary and even inhibiting to the learning potential. However, medical, engineering, law and other degrees of that nature are not particularly helpful toward the occupations they're created for. There's a reason it's called the Medical Practice, because medicine is a practice, not an exact science. The degree should therefore involve as much practice as possible. A good doctor is not necessarily equal to a test score on anatomy.

I have to disagree (I think I'm disagreeing? I may just be misunderstanding you...) with you there. It's easy to learn to read, write, and think without going to school. You learn all of these things by doing them and talking to other people about them. Plenty of people find great success in these areas without ever going to college. However, you don't hear about many people who just get into something like biological engineering on their own and are able to make it without some kind of degree.

I don't see how you're disagreeing. While I find myself more burdened by school workloads than taught, and find myself more capable of learning outside of school for the things I'm interested in, I believe that if more schools changed to the system Brigid described then you could gain a considerable advantage through pursuing a degree. But the main purpose of a liberal arts degree is to prove you can read, write and think, not to actually learn how. It's proof that you're slightly smarter than a high school graduate that opens up a much wider job market.

I was disagreeing with the statement that medical, law, and engineering degrees aren't helpful to their respective occupations. I do think I misunderstand what you were saying about liberal arts degrees. I completely agree that for a liberal arts degree schools like Brigid's are the way to go. The main point I was trying to make in my initial post was that you shouldn't have to spend a good chunk of your life and massive sums of money to prove that you possess basic intellectual capabilities.

You also misunderstood what I said about medical, engineering and law degrees, apparently. A lot of knowledge is necessary for those occupations, but the best knowledge, at least for the medical and engineering occupations, is more hands on than simple memorization. There is, of course, already a lot of hands-on learning when pursuing those degrees, but like I said before, at least in regard to medicine, it's called the medical practice for a reason. That's why MDs are required to get so much experience in actual hospitals.

"medical, engineering, law and other degrees of that nature are not particularly helpful toward the occupations they're created for."
I'm sorry if I misunderstood. You can see how I might take that to mean you don't think the work required to get a degree in those areas is helpful to someone trying to be a doctor or whatever. I also thought you were using this as a contrast to liberal arts degrees, which as you later said actually aren't particularly helpful other than the fact that you're more likely to get a job if you have one. Again, sorry for the misunderstanding. The left half of my head is killing me and I'm going to shut up now.

It is a liberal arts school, so I can't really say whether or not it would work in a different setting. For some people or with different areas of study the whole test/grade system may work better. I have friends at other schools who can't imagine not getting grades and they feel tests/grades are what motivate them to do well. I guess my point was just to say that it's different for everyone, and it would be nice to somehow give students the option of not having grades. I also forgot to mention this, but we get detailed evaluations from our professors rather than letter grades. So it's not really any "easier" although it may initially sound that way. Of course, I can't really expect middle and high school teachers to start writing long evaluations for all their students ... but if that were possible, it would be cool.

Yeah some people need that. For me, I am most motivated by the feeling as though I am learning, and more often than not the hurdles to earn good grades have little to do with learning.

Originally Posted by Original Poster

Yeah some people need that. For me, I am most motivated by the feeling as though I am learning, and more often than not the hurdles to earn good grades have little to do with learning.

Geez. What a nerd!
(joke)

I think you guys are pointing to a distinction here that should be made, though it's kind of vague. How much someone should focus on set curriculum really depends on what career they're working toward and what they're good at. Careers like accounting or technology maintenance could do without creativity or further personal involvement in the field all together. Assuming there isn't any unnecessary information in the curriculum, a degree with good grades is obviously of high importance in these fields.

While grades are a good indicator of necessary knowledge for some occupations, there are other fields where they aren't enough or even of no actual importance. Medical treatment, for example, is an occupation where they aren't enough. The skill of getting the most accurate diagnosis and treatment possible goes way beyond doing it by the (a) book. There's too much of a complexity, variety, and progress of information and opinion to not be personally involved beyond a single curriculum. While proof of a general base of knowledge is obviously necessary to treat people medically, personal ambitions in the field should be of importance. They could serve as good indicators of how passionate doctors actually are about the progress and accuracy of medical treatment. A case where grades aren't of real importance would be research. If someone is interested in a research job, their focus should be on just that, research. In this case, grades aren't a necessary point of focus, depending on how much you already know or need to know. Research is a creative process which obviously goes beyond lectures and tests, so a school's resources should be given to the students with the right ideas and not necessarily the 'right' grades.

So really, the focus on curriculum really depends on how predictable and open to personalization your occupation is going to be. Although, I couldn't really imagine any that couldn't benefit from creative personal involvement.

A good point there, Wayfaerer. But I feel it rests too heavily on the assumption that children already know what they want to be and the direction they want their lives to take before they've been exposed to all the possible options. Many people go through school not knowing exactly which occupation they'd like to pursue and some even leave school altogether without ever figuring out what they want to do in their adult years. There may be some instances in which a student receives a fantastic, in-depth education in business that spans the entire course of their school life, only to find out later that it's not really something they want to devote themselves to.

It's all very easy looking back on everything and carving out the ideal path you could have taken to end up in your desired career. But at the time, it's not so much about working towards a specific occupation, and more about discovering things about the world you didn't know before and plotting the course you'd like to take in life with that firm foundation of experience at your back. In my opinion, that foundation must be as broad as possible in order to ensure that people don't make massive choices that they later regret.

I think it's important that whatever face the overall framework takes, there's an element of balance. It shouldn't necessarily be all about what the children feel like doing there and then, but instead giving focus to all of the areas in which they may take an interest in the future. I'm sure you didn't mean to suggest that children should be stuck with a single discipline of their choosing and heavily subjected to it, to the exclusion of other fields. I just feel the need to point out that the future isn't clear for many students and so an education system shouldn't focus too much on career aspirations.

Originally Posted by Heavy Sleeper

A good point there, Wayfaerer. But I feel it rests too heavily on the assumption that children already know what they want to be and the direction they want their lives to take before they've been exposed to all the possible options. Many people go through school not knowing exactly which occupation they'd like to pursue and some even leave school altogether without ever figuring out what they want to do in their adult years. There may be some instances in which a student receives a fantastic, in-depth education in business that spans the entire course of their school life, only to find out later that it's not really something they want to devote themselves to. It's all very easy looking back on everything and carving out the ideal path you could have taken to end up in your desired career. But at the time, it's not so much about working towards a specific occupation, and more about discovering things about the world you didn't know before and plotting the course you'd like to take in life with that firm foundation of experience at your back. In my opinion, that foundation must be as broad as possible in order to ensure that people don't make massive choices that they later regret. I think it's important that whatever face the overall framework takes, there's an element of balance. It shouldn't necessarily be all about what the children feel like doing there and then, but instead giving focus to all of the areas in which they may take an interest in the future. I'm sure you didn't mean to suggest that children should be stuck with a single discipline of their choosing and heavily subjected to it, to the exclusion of other fields. I just feel the need to point out that the future isn't clear for many students and so an education system shouldn't focus too much on career aspirations.

I was referring to college in my last post up there. I agree that preschool-high school is about gaining a basic familiarity with all areas of modern knowledge and their potential applications. Though, I think that while exploring all these subjects here, encouragement and support of independent directions of interest would only help children achieve a better sense of what they would like to do with their lives. For example, giving a clever balance of freedom to project topics as opposed to having everyone write about the same thing would be a good way of getting students to discover what personally moves them to want to learn more.

Ah, I see. In a college or university setting, what you said makes perfect sense. And I'm with you on that other point. Anything that gets children more interested and involved in their own learning process is a good thing.

All trait/trade (not sure what the actual word is) schools.

We should be preparing people for the job they want, not for every possible job they might want.