What is primary education really saying to our kids? It’s saying, because you are young, you must go and work for 8 hours a day, plus nights and weekends(for homework) without pay for twelve years of your life. If you don’t do this, the state will do bad things to you and/or your parents. Now, can you think of any other institution that resembles this? I can. It’s called slavery.
Fear of punishment might get your child going through the motions, but in the arena of the mind, if the child isn't interested in Shakespeare, he probably won't remember very far past test time. Paying the child would be much better; you'd still get poorer performance on subjects the child doesn't like, but he'd be much more likely to make the effort to actually learn, rather than merely endure.
Funny how completely backwards modern schooling techniques are; when people wanted to learn about something they would go and pay the teacher directly! A student who wants to learn is willing to put up with all sorts of stuff to gain knowledge of his subject. We hardly even hear about apprentices anymore, but that was a time tested way of working and learning.
1 comment:
Too true. We should bring back apprenticeships.
Back in school we read about Nathaniel Bowditch and such and wow, that man had a drive to learn. All he needed was a a couple of books. Of course, we read about him in "Carry On Mr. Bowditch" and I remember way more about him than if I'd read a textbook and taken a test.
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