reflections on modern education

Studying in full swing: Thousands of schoolchildren and students shake the next year at the desks. Terms and loads are different depending on the severity of the regime. The children were soldered for 11 years, after which they would come to the universities where they would spend at least four more years under the threat of the army and their parents. After 15 years, the person will finally come free and will throw out most of the knowledge over which he has suffered all this time. Estimates that until recently were almost the meaning of life are devalued, like the ruble against the background of cheapening oil. And after all this, he himself will send the children first to school, then to a domestic university. Tribute to traditions, the price of which is 15 years of a child’s life.

Ask any adult how often he uses what he has been taught at school or university. Let him calculate the logarithm, take the derivative, multiply or divide at least a bar - even these operations cause difficulties for the majority of graduates. But after all taught, handed over. Where is it all?

Teaching a child to read, write and count is the task of parents, not of school. Even if only the school would do this, the process should not take so much time. We are told that the study of mathematics develops abstract and logical thinking. If so, then the geniuses of the exact sciences should be masters of oratory. After all, the smarter the person, the more compelling his arguments and the more he has listeners and admirers. So it is not far to the deputy mandate.

In the real world, the speech of some giants of thought, teaching the same mathematics, sounds incoherent and inexpressive. And rogues who did not shine in the sciences, become first-class masters of demagoguery, whose logical chains confuse the most advanced techie.

Why exactly exact sciences, according to the majority, supposedly develop abstract thinking? But what about music, literature, drawing? The artist real-time calculates a lot of parameters: proportions, distances, shadows, the force of pressure of the pencil, the depth of color, while not losing sight of the mental picture. The musician must simultaneously see with his inner eye chords, notes and pauses, control the force of pressure on the instrument, synchronize the melody with the text and maintain the style. Why do you think, why did the writer write his novel for so long, without fail, while drinking?

That is the difference between us: you train in gymnastics, and I train in everything.
- Socrates from the movie “Peaceful Warrior”

The same can be said not only about logic and abstract thinking, but also in principle about the ability to think. Exact sciences, no doubt, make the pot work. But not only they! In life there are a lot of problems that require analysis and search for solutions that are not related either to physics or to mathematics. It is possible to train in the flexibility of the mind without doing calculations. And at the same time achieve even greater results.

We're not looking for easy ways!

Suppose you want to learn how to push off from the floor 100 times. Your friend who can do this gives you advice: “Get up at seven in the morning. Eat more meat and eggs, drink more water. Try to run at least every other day. Buy dumbbells and do half an hour a day. Visualize push-ups before bedtime. ” With the same success, you can advise the future English translator to first learn Chinese and the future motorist to master the motorcycle. This phenomenon is called the halo effect. Nassim Taleb describes it like this:

The halo effect is when people mistakenly believe that one who is great at skiing will be just as great at leading a pottery workshop or a bank department, or that a good chess player even in life calculates all the moves ahead.

And this is what the writer Alexander Nikonov says about this: “A fool is a functional concept. In other words, you can be a good girl at one and a complete fool at another. ” To be brave in one and a coward in another. At the desk to be at ease, but at the blackboard burn with shame. In the ring, fighting is like a born wrestler, and in the club it is embarrassing to dance like shameful chicken. No wonder they say - if you want to overcome fear, do what you fear. No workarounds.

If you want to learn something, do it. Do you want to draw - draw. Play the guitar - play! Speaking Spanish is good. From this point of view, the vaunted abstract thinking and logic, which school mathematics supposedly develops, are suitable only for school mathematics. That is, we solve quadratic equations with parameters in order to solve quadratic equations with parameters — no more, no less. Like Porthos, who "fights simply because he fights."

Standing at the school board will not prepare for the presentation, solving the problem of algebra will not help to calculate the employee's KPI, and the task of the train leaving from point A to point B will not help much in logistics. The school does not prepare us for work, why do we go to it?

Why parents give the child to school

At school, we seem to be taught to solve problems that will be in the introductory. It is strange that after this, all odnoklassniki polls are enrolled in preparatory courses (faculty of pre-university training - ed.). But suppose you enrolled in a university, unlearned for 4-6 years, went to get a job. No experience? Get out, canal. At the same time, rare people go to work in their specialty. In a good way, it would be necessary to stay with their sciences at the institute and continue their study (or start teaching), as befits a research assistant. But we want the office.

As a result, even graduates of computer science departments draw on most of their knowledge on the side, starting to work in IT, not because of, but in spite of. The only advantage they get is the crust of technical universities and self-esteem for having gone through this hell.

Practically everything that a school and a university can give - tests, tests, tests, exams and abstract knowledge, are not applicable in real life (except for cases when a person goes to science).

“In school / university we are taught to learn” - a popular stupidity among the people, which serves to justify the spent time, don't understand what years of life it is. Our institutions never took upon themselves the function of “learning to learn.” Teach a student to think? May be. Making study? Perhaps. Give knowledge? Let's say. But do not teach to learn. Otherwise, in a school or university course there would be disciplines like “learning theory” or “applied logic”.

Houston, we have a problem

The school and the university, although they are a significant stage in the life of a person, do not perform the functions that are stated on the packaging. What can be expected from the system of children and poor teachers, who are regularly dragoned from the region, forcing them to conduct a theater called an “open lesson”, or arranging for anyone the necessary cuts of knowledge and re-certification of the staff? And how many tears and nerves are shed due to independent, control, examinations, which have nothing to do with real life. Or the nerves in the exams taught you not to be nervous at work?

Our schools and universities not only “equalize” the interests of children, but also waste human potential. How much more interesting it would be to go to school where problems from the real world would be solved!

For example:

- Labor - connect a new outlet, assemble a table for sale, learn how to weld pipes

- Math - learn how to count the volume of figures in mind, percents, change in the store

- Physics - to build an experimental model of the aircraft on the radio control

- Literature - to organize the release of the school weekly

- Music - come up with a song or write a cover of the song of your favorite band

- The right is to come up with a law or petition that would collect> 25,000 signatures

- Drawing - develop a corporate class style

In universities, crowds go to those who would need to go to vocational school or college. As a result, our universities - do not understand what. On the one hand, theorists are being trained with a broad outlook, on the other hand, these theorists on the very next day after receiving a diploma, everyone forgets and goes to knock around the thresholds of companies where people with completely different knowledge and skills are needed. And the companies themselves indulge inert conservatism, demanding a diploma of higher education.

What parents do not want to admit

The education system in our country is a duty of pumping out money. You cannot go to a university without a certificate. Therefore, parents are faced with a choice - either to completely integrate the child into this system, or to leave it behind, having become an outsider.

The school and the institute are not only sensitive objects, where they give doubtful freshness of knowledge, filled with endless tests for the sake of tests, but also a way to fuse a child out of the house. Throw into the world - let them brew in a group of random people and play in “get a rating” or “don't become an outcast”, if only they don't wander the streets.

As a result, all participants in the process from the Ministry of Education remain in business and receive their rations from the budget. Teachers dragon pupils, freeloaders from the region dragon teachers. Children learn to adapt and engage in unloved things. Insight comes only at the first interview, where it turns out that no one is interested in their assessment. Even about the specialty will not be asked. For what, then, this whole circus?