Will bringing education to the masses inevitably lead to its degradation?

[GePap]

I think there is far too much of a "parents and students as consumers of education" mindset in this country. The primary and secondary educational systems should have a rigorous and universal standard of skills and information that individual citizens need to be taught.

Now, I am not of the mindset that everyone should be educated beyond a secondary level - People should have a good enough education by the time they are 18 to be able to be competative in a job market. I think universal college or university education is unlikely and not even a worthy goal. If people want to move into careers where addition education is necessary, they should be able to, whether it be at universities or trade schools, but again, we should strive for a primary and secondary school system good enough to make anyone who got compulsory education capable of being a productive member of society.

[onodera]

Originally posted by Oncle Boris


Isn't Russia so corrupt that you get to pay for your As anyway?

There are some corrupt institutions, yes, but I didn't have to pay for anything, I'm just that smart.

[aneeshm]

Originally posted by Comrade Snuggles

My real question is why ansheem continues to troll here with his bigoted, elitist crap, when he gets no love here.

I know that the thread title sounds bigoted (I could have named it "Issues of declining educational standards", but then I wouldn't have received so many responses ), but the OP text isn't.

Now, I mentioned people deficient in some areas dragging the level down. If you institute universal education, there will always be some who will be deficient. This isn't bigotedness, this is plain common sense.

To take a personal example, when I was in school, we used to have compulsory art and music lessons. Well, in that case, I was the one who didn't "get" it, and so was the deficient person in that regard. It's not some judgement on the person as a person, it's merely the fact that everyone can't be good at everything, and will be spectacularly pathetic at at least one thing.

[aneeshm]

DP

[DaShi]

Dude, it's not just the title.

Anyway, go post in my thread about Hindu's gettin' all jihady on Christians in Injia. That thread had an awesome title, btw.

[Sandman]

Aneeshm's attitude is probably the number one reason why China is so far ahead of India. Has India's female literacy rate crawled above 50% yet?

[Dinner]

Originally posted by onodera
Schools and universities shouldn't be evaluated based on the grades of their graduates. That's the first thing that has to be done. Teachers should not be afraid to fail their students.
The second thing is getting rid of curved grading. This works when you're running away from a bear, but not when graduating from a class of numbnuts. Establish an absolute grading metric and stick to it.
The third thing is realizing that higher education is not for everybody and having the balls to say this outloud. Here in Russia it is estimated that about 20% of high school graduates are going to fail their Maths exam this spring. It is not a national tragedy or the failure of our education system (or maybe it is). It just shows that 20% of our youths don't understand what derivatives and antiderivatives are. They'll make good metalworkers or something.

And I don't think mass education will lead to degradation, it will lead to communism.

Where has it ever lead to communism? The only places to have communist revolutions (as opposed to communism forced on them by an outside power) have been relatively backwards and unindustrialized agrarian states which had not achieved universal higher education. Or even higher education for a significant minority. Examples Russia in 1917, China 1949, Cuba 1959, etc...

This is all opposite of Marxist theory that communism would only develop naturally after enough of society had developed into the petty bourgeoisie.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by CrONoS

The instrumental-reason that is mainly characterizing modernity, also characterize which kind of education we are giving to our children.

Someone has been reading Charles Taylor.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Sandman
Aneeshm's attitude is probably the number one reason why China is so far ahead of India. Has India's female literacy rate crawled above 50% yet?

Nope. His attitude is part of the problem but so is India's famous red tape. Excessive regulation is just as bad as no regulation the sweet spot is some where in the middle.

[aneeshm]

Originally posted by Sandman
Aneeshm's attitude is probably the number one reason why China is so far ahead of India. Has India's female literacy rate crawled above 50% yet?

Well, if you have to educate the people, I'd much rather it be done by market-based incentives.

The big problems we have in education are that the majority of adults are illiterates, and that the majority of children have no schools to go to.



I'd suggest a market-based incentive to remedy this, at least with regards to the adult side of it.

Anyone who can pass a standard literacy test (in whatever language) gets two thousand rupees.

Generally, the sort of people who are illiterate are also the sort to whom two thousand rupees is a significant amount of money.

What I see happening is that a number of one to three-month long "tutorial" classes will open up in all the crummy areas of cities and other places where illiterates tend to gravitate, as those few who have been educated up to the point of literacy will see in this a large opportunity to make money. Charge five hundred from a class of many people, and they'd happily pay, because they're getting two-thousand. A sort of voucher system, only much less centralised.

Within a year, we'd have a literate populace. The up-front costs will be very high, specially for the first few years, but then they'll taper off, we'll never have to worry about literacy ever again.

[Impaler[WrG]]

It think the largest problem with the US education system is that it's not designed to find and promote high potential geniuses. All focus and effort is currently directed at bringing the bottom up rather them making the top soar higher. And it is the top 1% of a nations population which produces virtually all science, innovation, and culture and these are the things which ultimately drive the economy and the advancement of civilization.

Primary and secondary school are framed to the student as a kind of day-prison for industrial and menial job indoctrination, which some would argue is the best policy for the masses. I wouldn't agree with that but its at least debatable if one is Orwellian but what is not debatable is that such a system destroys the minds of the gifted. All students and particularly the gifted need to see education as an enticing and fulfilling thing, indeed most gifted people teach themselves most of what they ever end up knowing.

I must still disagree with aneeshm that aiming for a universal minimum standard of education is bad. Because he presents a false dichotomy, he presumes the current system of 'bare minimum' precludes one or 'magnifying the maximum'. Naturally the most gifted are able to succeed on their own to some extent under any circumstance but with a system that seems designed to suppress them many will obviously fail to fulfill their potential. A system that promotes the gifted and everyone else for that matter will produce to greatest number of high productivity people.

[Perfection]

Yes, look what happened when we brought it to India...

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by Sandman
Aneeshm's attitude is probably the number one reason why China is so far ahead of India. Has India's female literacy rate crawled above 50% yet?

QFT

Education for the elite just leads to a society that cannot generate the wealth that societies that educate everyone produce.

[aneeshm]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui

Education for the elite

Apologies for the decontextualised quoting, but where exactly do I suggest anything remotely resembling this?