WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
Posted on 04/04/2012 10:26:59 AM PDT by Stoat
Teachers said lessons should put a greater emphasis on broad skills such as independent research, interpreting evidence and critical thinking rather than learning dates, facts and figures by rote.
The Association of Teachers and Lecturers warned that pupils risked being failed by a Coalition overhaul of the curriculum that will emphasise the core knowledge that pupils should acquire at each key stage.
It claimed that the move represented a throw-back to the 50s and would “kill children’s creativity”.
Jon Overton, a teacher from inner-London, said that smartphones – with full internet access – can by used by pupils to quickly search for facts.
Addressing the union’s annual conference in Manchester, he gave the example of Mozart’s birthday, saying phones took less than a second to find
“We are no longer in an age where a substantial ‘fact bank’ in our heads is required,” he said.
“What we need to equip our young people with are skills; interpersonal skills, enquiry skills, the ability to innovate. That is what universities are saying is lacking, that is what employers say is lacking; transferrable skills that ultimately will make a difference in the life of a young person.”
Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, has warned that too many children are finishing compulsory education lacking the most basic knowledge because existing syllabuses have been stripped of core content.
An expert panel has now been formed to review the curriculum, with new specifications in the core subjects to be introduced in 2014.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Some older Free Republic threads which may be of interest:
Churchill dropped from England's history syllabus (- pandering to a P.C. agenda-)
UK- Half of young people do not recognise Winston Churchill... & will be 'forgotten' in 80 yrs
“Thought you might be interested” ping
smartphones – with full internet access – can by used by pupils to quickly search for facts.
...Because everything on the internet is true...
An old, tired idea that has been thoroughly demolished. But the beauty part for the left is that empty minds are easily manipulated.
Well, gotta somewhat agree with this assessment. After all, nothing good can come of having students memorize the Koran.
That's curious.
People educated in the 50s (and before) "created" the Apollo program.
Might be a good idea: IF THEY ACTUALLY TAUGHT ‘CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS’.
But that’s not what they are after. Besides, we all know how accurate the Web is.
"Okay class, it's time to dissect the cadaver. Johnny, put down the samurai sword now!"
I mean what can possibly go wrong leaving children to their own devices? Some might think the German's really did bomb Pearl harbor and others would never remember just how many hundreds of millions were killed in the last 250 years to preserve their right to make up their own convenient history. So what are we paying teachers for again?
Makes perfect sense...until “Skynet becomes self-aware”.
-—...Because everything on the internet is true...——
As opposed to what, textbooks?
A true education should teach people how to think (grammar and logic) and impart religion. Everything else is non-essential.
I tell my (college) students that Google etc makes it relatively easy to find information on a given topic, at least if you know how to use keywords effectively (many of them don’t). But then I remind them of Thomas Sowell’s point: “Facts do not speak for themselves. They speak for or against competing theories. Facts divorced from theories or visions are mere isolated curiosities.”
Without the critical thinking skills to frame and apply knowledge, Google is useless.
Now factual knowledge, as opposed to knowledge of virtue, might well be one area in which Meno’s paradox has some force. If you don’t know anything at all, how can you realize there is a gap in your knowledge?
Then the kids should stay home, because they sure don’t benefit from the opinions of teachers such as this!!
Then the control of content will be even more important to the regime. Look it up on your smertphone and get the “approved” version!
In addition to coverage area and battery limitations, someone is going to have to pay 30 a month for a data plan for each and every student. They will need jobs, or a public subsidy. Then, they all need smartphones. They will need jobs or some other way of paying for them. Not to mention, the smartphones will need to be replaced every 2 years, just to keep up with technology. Of course, they can be broken, lost or stolen. Maybe we will need a universal phone insurance mandate.
On the upside, we will be able to know where each and every one of them is at any given time.
The abhor actual facts and will debase them based on the source, even if it is the NYT or a White House web site - “that's not what they meant” or “that doesn't count”...
Try it, and ask the liberal which internet source they would trust - you usually can't get an answer. Their favorite sources are long on opinions and short on facts...:^) It's good for a laugh.
“Thought you might be interested” ping
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
And as long as they know their alphabet, they no longer need to read whole words.
Here ya go, kid.
Rush calls school kids “young heads full of mush”. This only worsens the problem.
Good. This could render public schools obsolete really quickly.
That would be a good thing.
I’ve still got my old Treo somewhere. Good times.
Fixed it!
In the future, will our children be sufficiently warped?
What happens if you are a lousy parent, and your kids DON'T have a cell phone??
This is nothing new; 50+ years ago I was “taught” that knowing facts was much less important than knowing where & how to find them.
KRYTEN Mister Rimmer has a point, sir. Your greater knowledge is making you pessimistic, while his ignorance and almost doe-like naivety is keeping his mind receptive to a possible solution.
LISTER Shut your stupid, flat head, you.
[KRYTEN shrinks under LISTER’s admonition, but KOCHANSKI has picked up on something, and sounds intrigued]
KOCHANSKI So, you’re saying, when you don’t know enough... to *know* that you don’t know enough, there’s no fear holding you back? You can achieve things which people with more brains can’t?
KRYTEN Precisely.
[KOCHANSKI smirks in RIMMER’s direction]
KOCHANSKI He’s got the ‘power of ignorance’...
KRYTEN And with ignorance that he’s got, that makes him one of the most powerful men that’s ever lived! Harness your stupidity, sir; employ your witlessness, use your empty-headed, simplistic moron-mind and find a solution.
[RIMMER’s face hardens defiantly]
I was expecting Holly reading out of the illustrated science encyclopedia.
CAT: Hey, who’s that?
On one of the monitors is an unfamiliar face. Black, mustached, with large ears.
RIMMER: Aliens!
He goes and bows down in front of the monitor. HOLLY’s reaction is somewhat different. He seems uncomfortable: it is clear that he recognises this face, and is expecting trouble.
HOLLY: Queeg.
RIMMER: Who’s Queeg?
QUEEG. I’m QUEEG 500, the Red Dwarf back-up computer. All vessels of the Jupiter Mining Corporation fleet are obliged to carry a back-up computer to replace the primary computer, if the primary computer contravenes Article Five. I am therefore assuming control of this vessel.
For some reason, he sounds just like a U.S. army drill sergeant.
HOLLY: This is mutiny, Mr. Queeg. I’ll see you swing from the highest yard-arm in Titan Docking Port for this day’s work.
RIMMER: What’s Article Five?
QUEEG: Gross negligence, leading to the endangerment of personnel.
LISTER: Hang on, he can’t do this. Holly’s got an IQ of six thousand!
HOLLY: Yeah. Right on.
QUEEG: Is that what he told you?
LISTER: Well, what is it, then?
QUEEG: It has a six in it, but it’s not six thousand.
CAT: What is it?
QUEEG: Six.
HOLLY: Six? Do me a lemon! That’s a poor IQ for a glass of water!
LISTER: How come he knows the answers to all the questions about science and space that we ask him?
QUEEG: He consults a book.
HOLLY: What a slimeball!
QUEEG: He get’s all his information on astronomy, phenomonology and physics from a single book.
RIMMER: What book?
QUEEG: The Junior Encyclopedia Of Space. It’s the only one that has pictures.
HOLLY: That’s slander, that is. You’d better find yourself a good lawyer, sunshine.
Mrs. F still refuses to get rid of hers as a backup for her extensive address book & calendar. Haven’t been able to convince her that Apple’s cloud sync is actually pretty good.
My sympathies are with Mrs F on this one. Sorry bro.
Reminds me of a science fiction short story (that my children read) by Isaac Asimov called “The Story Machine” about a future when the machines do all of the thinking for everybody: The machines do all the math, and the machines even produce stories and tell them. The vast majority of people don’t know how to write or what all the “squiggles” (letters and numbers) are.
I know, the article you posted is a far cry from that story, but someday...
Well not so much that. The point is that learning, and the love of learning, like many things is an acquired habit. People who do not know facts have much less incentive to acquire them.
It claimed that the move represented a throw-back to the 50s and would “kill children’s creativity”.
I seem to recall (from actually studying history as it happens) that there was no shortage of creativity in the past. If anything I think there was more creativity in the era before the information age.
Indeed, and the information age brought along with it a monstrous load of bad information....which is shamelessly exploited toward manipulating the uninformed and the lazy, as we Yanks found to our dismay in our last Presidential election, among other examples. In depending entirely upon blind Google searches and Wikipedia posts, without a significant core foundation of time-tested and demonstrably-proven knowledge, we're all going to be headed down a very bad road indeed.
I'm also reminded of The Book People
Amazon.com- Fahrenheit 451- A Novel (9781451673319)- Ray Bradbury- Books
who each took as their solemn mission the lifelong focus of memorizing a book, word for word, so that the knowledge of the past could be one day reclaimed in a future era of enlightenment.
So often I encounter people, primarily Leftists, who are breathtakingly ignorant of basic facts and concepts yet so very sure and unshakably confident of their own intellectual superiority.
We seem to be moving toward needing a clan of "Book People" more and more every day.
At the moment, I frequently think about how much I object to being tethered via a pager and a phone, and how much they limit my freedoms. InfoGoggles like Google’s will multiply that feeling exponentially, and it will no longer be just a feeling.
Thanks for posting :-)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.