Friday 18 May 2018

QotD: "I think the blind passion of political discussions makes it very clear how desperately uninformed and uneducated most of us are today


"But also, one of my phrases to capture the problem in education today is that children are being taught to look around them and think, 'This is all here, and now our job is just to form opinions about it,' rather than, 'This is all here -- and here is how we got here, and here is where it comes from, and here is what it depends on.' Even just understanding that this world that they know hasn't existed forever is important...    "I think the [blind passion of political discussions] makes it very clear how desperately uninformed and uneducated most of us are today, because we should be bringing to bear on our opinions of politics a vast knowledge of everything that has been tried in the past and whether it succeeded or failed. And most children today are coming into such discussions blind, but also having been told that it's very important to have strong opinions. So they've maybe memorised some floating, disconnected facts and they've been taught to have impassioned convictions about things -- which means their impassioned convictions are based on nothing, ultimately on substance. So, we are trying to give them meaningful, systematic, real knowledge on which to ground judgements in every realm of their life."~ Lisa Van Damme, founder/director of VanDamme Academy
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4 comments:

paul scott said...

This business of indoctrinating 17 year old students who then know everything >>
Jordan Peterson paraphrase [at the risk of PC wrath]
" Five years ago you were twelve, you haven't done anything in your life yet, you have achieved little,you are in a wishy washy University system, in fact you know very little about anything ""

Dinwar said...

When I got to college I took a course, Introduction to Critical Thinking. It was about how to break arguments down and see the pieces of them, so that you can evaluate each piece and the argument as a whole. One of the easiest classes I took--because my parents emphasized this sort of thinking my entire life. I had to learn the professor's preferred terminology, but the concepts I had already mastered.

Most people thought it was the hardest class they had ever taken. They had never been exposed to this sort of analysis before, and had no understanding of the concepts involved. Even the basics like "What is issue at hand?" eluded them.

That 18 year olds can enter a university and not know how to make an argument tells you everything you need to know about our educational system and how well grounded their opinions are.

Anonymous said...

Today such a confrontation with reality would see hurty feelings so it will eventually be classified as hate speech and banned.

3:16

Dinwar said...

Nah, it'd be sexual harassment. I mean, I'm polite, not dead--if the person I hold the door open for is an attractive woman, I appreciate the view as she walks away. When I pointed that out, at least one friend of mine began holding doors for his girlfriend.

In a sane world such a thing would be viewed as harmless. We both get something out of the exchange. But ours is not a sane world, sadly.