It’s times like these (exams) that I wonder what all this work was for. Like, on a whole, were the people who advanced society (philosophers, mathematicians, scientists, some politicians & rulers, etc) thinking “ah yes, one day my descendants will be able to sit in fluorescent-lit rooms and fill in bubbles on a piece of paper that will be judged by a machine to determine if they’re intelligent enough to not have to take a class in the special school they’ll go to after 12 years of schooling” or “ah yes, one day my decedents will be staying up late researching things they don’t give a damn about because the government decided it was important. Will they ever be genuinely interested in pursuing the topic after associating it with exhaustion, back pain, lack of control over their own lives, and a lack of self worth? Ha, probably not, isn’t that great?”
And then did pioneers from what are less privileged groups today go, “oh, oh, and my decedents will struggle to get an education instead! They’ll also have dirty water and be starving and their economy will be failing and their government will be corrupt! Wouldn’t that be so fun?”
And did the pioneers from what are privileged groups today go, “That’s genius! And the young people from our countries will learn, like, Calculus, while not being encouraged to help those less fortunate than them. I mean, they’ll do ‘service hours,’ I guess, but that won’t be nearly as rewarded as working to be accepted to a highly respected college, which they’ll also pay to attend, even though we’ll eventually create a resource (the internet) where literally all the knowledge of the human race can be recorded and communicated.”
I was told by people much smarter than me that the school system and much of our culture is meant, first and foremost, to benefit the economy. And personally, I believe it. We’re taught about productivity and how to maximize output, with only a small amount of time being dedicated to exploring what is valuable to us as individuals and to the world as a whole. Or the way that we, as individuals, function best, both alone and in a group. (And when I say in a group, I don’t mean group projects where you just want to get it done and get a decent grade, I mean group projects that you actually care about contributing to.) We’re basically taught how to do a simple job. Get instructions, follow instructions, improve at task. And even then, the skills are only really applicable to jobs that don’t require actual independent thought.
Critical thinking skills? Unheard of. Comprehension skills? What are you even talking about.
We aren’t taught thinking skills; we’re taught patterns. It’s no wonder that most young people seem unoriginal and dependent. Society took the human feature that allows us to improve as a whole and made it so extreme that we don’t grow as individuals. (Or learn to actively consider the actual whole, including those outside our social group and more.)
TLDR: Is measurable academic success, (and later economic success, especially through traditional means) really what we should be shaping children to value and achieve?
