Makes you think. Watch the video and then discuss the proposed change in thinking. [video=youtube;zDZFcDGpL4U]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U[/video]
First of all great video, I love the illustrations along with the message. I firmly believe that Idiocracy is happening. I don't know if you've ever seen the movie but it's about less educated people reproducing so much faster than educated people that the educated people end up dieing off. Sort of the reverse Darwinism approach, lol. The movie sucks but the first 5-6 minutes are a classic. I think the one main correlation behind educated youth and uneducated youth is simple... parents. I went to a private college and almost every parent I met was a doctor, lawyer, or in the financial industry. I can't even think of a parent that wasn't. Most of the kids came from private schools and it was just a bunch of intelligent kids. But from my own experience... school always came first before fun. I always had to finish my homework before going outside or watching tv. I had to go to ridiculous math camps in the summer. Going to college wasn't an option, it was mandatory. And it was really easy to do because when you have to do it you end up learning it. http://vimeo.com/30937219 [video=vimeo;30937219]http://vimeo.com/30937219[/video]
As a high school student diagnosed with ADHD, I appreciate this analysis of the education system. Basically, there is too much reliance upon absolutist cognition. However, as humans, we understand the world around us from different perspectives with different preconceptions, and so on and so forth. Therefore, in general, humans' views of the word are relative in nature. This is why the concept of divergent thinking bears so much relevance to attaining greater knowledge. It is constant thought about phenomena, man-made or natural, which has greater propensity to truth, as opposed to absolutism, which will yield which will more often than not yield untruth.
This is what liberal education is about. Getting out of the old methods of education and looking at new methods to get people to think critically, to come up with news way to educate, etc, to not rely on something just because that's how our parents and their parents were educated so they could spend 40 years working in a factory.
Yeah the pictures definitely help you stay interested in his discussion, very good visual aid. Hahaha I have seen Idiocracy! Great intro, plausible in a really weird/extreme way.
I agree. I think history is the most obvious subject in which we see absolute "facts" thrown at us. If you read the book "Lies My Teacher Told Me" you'll see what I mean. All textbooks whitewash controversial issues and lie by omission for various reasons. The book opens your eyes to much of it. Obviously that's found in a lot of other areas as well.
I would learn a few years ago that history is inherently subjective. Few subjects are absolute in nature. In addition, one must remember that 'absolute' studies come from relative beings. Therefore, to some degree, even the most stringent subjects have relative characteristics.
Of course we run the risk in this post modern world of no right answers of actually convincing people that every answer is just as valid as another. We see this with, "Well that's my opinion, ergo the world is not 4.5 billion years old," etc.
This should not be the case. Absolute relativism means collective questioning is endless. Knowledge would bear no legitimacy. Chaos would be the wordily norm. There is a balancing act between absolutism and relativism. The former is currently winning the cognitive battle by a landslide, which must change, but not to the other extreme.
There are many aspects of education that could be debated here, but I'll try to keep this post relatively small. Anyway, the video is right in the sense that something is wrong, but I believe it is wrong at about anything else. I have done a great number of standardized tests to many universities in my country, considered the possibility of applying* to some good US/ England/ australian institutions and tried as best I could to compare different schools, admission requirements (grades, etc) and methodologies used in schools, results, etc. I can now conclude a few interesting things about education that seems to be ignored. No matter if it is an Ivy League school or my university,most classes everywhere seems to be taught in the same fashion (seminars). With the coming of cheap fast internet, those seminars can be broadcast to very large audiences, so everyone could theoretically get a good chunck of what that, say, Harvard has to offer for cheap prices. Why then, do we not see a trend of a mass of "Harvard" level graduates worldwide? Anyone could watch effectively the same classes (and from a better spot!) as students from top universities, should they be available (and this is not uncommon as some may think). One could argue that watching classes online is not "the same thing", but really, it is not that different. One could get a bunch of friends and watch them in a group if that is what he finds important and get a pretty similar experience from those students (I've done/ seen some of those courses myself, honestly I didn't see a big difference). Now one may think that those students that the selectivity of admissions is key here, that those students from top universities are "gifted" or something. I have my own arguments against this, but I want to talk about the video right now. So, I agree when the guy in the video says that the epidemy ADHD a "fictitious" problem (very few people actually have psychiatric problems that can be so disastrous to their lives as the ones we are led to believe that people with ADHD have). But I also disagree with the "divergent thinking" and lack of "collective thinking" problems. As for the "divergent thinking", that part is more like a "magical box", it is neither well defined, nor the consequences of "increasing" it somehow are even abstractly imagined. It is like those people who think that dumping money into education will make the money multiply itself somehow, no it won't, it will be mostly lost because education does not produce anything magically, it is bound by "physical laws" just like anything else in the world, it *has* its limits no matter how hard people try to deny that. What I want to say with this is that: until tested, this is nothing but a possibility of improvement without any strong theory behind it other than the: "I think a genius is a person like that, so if we get everyone to be like that, we'll get a better society" (whatever he thinks a better society is like), among many, many others. I, for one, believe that there a some much more simple things that could be worked out that would make education more effecient (it would result in more "development"), but discussing that would make this post way too long. As for the "collective learning" part, that is pretty much a delusion, studying the same thing together is not fun, neither that effecient. Sure it is easy to say that people can learn a lot from each other and that , but that "appearance" of effeciency results from poorly writen texts, poorly taught classes, the awful seminar style of classes used worldwide and the inefficient way education handled worldwide. About this inefficiency of education, I won't get into more details, but in my opinion, that happens due to the lack of competitiveness, not only in education, but also in the whole economy of pretty much every country. The market gives education "a meaning", not the other way around, people don't seem to get that. * I came to the conclusion that getting my MD in 6 years for free was a little bit better than trying to apply as an undergraduate for some Ivy League or other good schools and probably end up with a pile of debt and no MD at all)
I believe the speaker in the video is talking about education in the general sense. You seem to focus upon the post-secondary or tertiary education level. In regards to online courses, I consider the invention a revolutionary step in education. I use free online programs such as Khan Academy to keep up on my basic skills. I am registered on the free online college course site Coursera to see if I could take some of the classes to receive extra college credit. Such innovation will expand education opportunities to people everywhere, which is necessary to maintain national competitiveness. As one who suffers from ADHD (and yes, I exhibit many symptoms of such), I wholeheartedly disagree with your opinion on divergent thinking. The greatest asset of mine is not material in nature, but cognitive. It is my ability to concoct ideas based upon countless solutions. A prime example of such is my latest research on financial derivatives taxation. I am able to come up with new concepts to improve my proposal very quickly. In one hour, I may add on two to three complex ideas, all of which have some logical, factual, or theoretical evidence backing them. This is not to say that divergent and convergent thinking cannot co-exist. They certainly can. However, based upon my understanding of my thought process, and application to the broader discussion of learning styles, I can attest to divergent thinking.
The main difference between the 2 is what people learn, the teaching methods remains the same But anyway, I wasn't focusing on either one, those divisions of education are arbitrary. It is no revolution, books have always been out there, anyone can learn "if they wish" (of course it is not that simple). I believe online courses (not coursera specifically, they are good and all, but also very superficial) are going to be good to show people that education does not work magically, if the economy is sick, no amount of education will fix it, you will just have "well educated" prostitutes, like in Cuba. I do not see such a division of thinking "convergent thinking" vs "divergent thinking", to me that is an oversimplification of the way the brain works, and as such, people will invent methods of testing that and methods for increasing scores on such tests. Smoking weed will probably be found to be the best method of getting "smarter" because that will be just an abstract way of evaluating the mind with little real value. But then again, maybe that gets someone some good results (will that be because of that or in spite of that?), maybe that doesn't, it should be up to each person to put his money where his heart lies.
