Why don't people value their education?

I've been reflecting on these questions for some time now, which has caused me to question my own education, and whether I've also been taught correctly.

I find that the methods taught back in the 1950's which developed better all-rounded individuals.

What would you consider important subjects for students to learn during primary school, and secondary school?

What would you say to people (like myself) who would like to rediscover themselves?

Would they move towards more logic, critical thinking, assertiveness, and introspective thought?

a reply to: EvieWyatt

What is that link, it seems to be to a site that offers fake work for students to pay for, are you not an advocate for education and someone learning for themselves?

I always say I am an information sponge and will be learning for the rest of my life, if you have children you have to ensure that they get as educated as they can, its one of many parental duties but should be one that is high on the list

a reply to: Frankidealist35

When you send your children to school in this day of age the teachers plainly tell you that they cannot prepare the children nor teach them whats required to function in tomorrow's world.

So there is reason enough right there to dought the validity of our educational establishment.

It's not even there fault per-say, it's just the speed and direction in which we are headed.

The future is simply coming on to fast and outpacing our ability to instill any meaningful form of education into the next generation.

Education used to mean something back in the day when a smaller percentage of people could actually read and write. Imagine those old "scholars" with their personal libraries that took them a lifetime to accumulate (with books chock full of wrong information). Now everybody and their dog has a blog and if you want to know about something you don't find a smart guy to tell you, you just look it up. Math and history, two of the biggest subjects in the old style "schools" that used to be so popular, can now be done with a few clicks.

I got a couple of college degrees. So does everybody else.

In the end, everybody educates themselves. Some people will go through the motions and get certificates from universities. Basically buying your credentials, even though you could learn the subject all by yourself. Getting a degree from a collage basically proves that you know how to jump through all the appropriate hoops and write enough checks to get a degree from a college. Isn't the most important thing that you be able to do the job, not where your fancy-ass degree comes from?

The school system is becoming archaic and needs to be replaced with something else. Private skill assessment companies, possibly. Somebody get on that.

a reply to: Blue Shift

Part of the hiring process where I work involves a technical test. I have never seen a single person pass it who has less than 6 years of college education and at least two degrees.

That's not to say it's impossible, but no one has done it yet.

People shouldn't put such a high value on education. Graduate high school and read and study for certifications. That's all you need.

People place a high value on college education and although I have some college credits, I never graduated nor will I ever at this point. I've had great jobs in Sales, IT, Telecommunications, got in the Army, Own my own business, was an elected official etc. Not needed unless.. your going for a specific job that requires it like law degree, becoming a doctor etc. Otherwise it's a waste of time and money.

a reply to: Frankidealist35

Education from learning institutions is not the be all and end all to fulfillment. Now experience can provide learning and an education as well. When we learn and experience with our body first we can then learn with our heart and soul, once we have learned patience and understanding and mastered our physical senses and emotions, then we are free to turn our attention to intellectual learning if desired. But, free will and clarity of mind should guide one as to what really draws them in, or to follow their learned passions of life, that may not necessarily be rote learning into a stream that may prove unfulfilling to the heart and soul.

Another problem:

No one seems to know how best to teach reading. For decades, going back to John Dewey, there has been a debate between those who believe phonics (letters make sounds, you put the sounds of letters together to make words, you put words together to make sentences, etc.) is the best approach and those who believe in whole language where kids just naturally learn from the word level on by being exposed to print.

Funny that those who believe in phonics have been branded "conservative" while the whole language tribe are called "progressive."

At any rate, recent research shows that phonics is the best approach, and the kicker is that it's also the only approach that works for kids who have issues like dyslexia which is estimated to be about 10% of the classroom population. Those kids are left behind in any school that favors either whole language or the new Frankenstein's monster of balanced literacy. And the thing is that if you can't read, then all your other learning gets that much harder. Reading is the absolute foundation for it all.

Another issue is that while schools have been specifically instructed to search for an identify kids who have learning disabilities as young as possible, most don't do a good job of this because it's expensive to do, both discovery and remediation and FAPE (free and appropriate education). In most cases, kids are discovered until they are failing and in crisis which could mean they're in the juvenile justice system or suspended, etc. And often, kids can compensate until junior high or older, and the older a kid is, the harder they fail and the harder it will be to remediate the problem.

By those ages, kids will often give up and not value education because they've been struggling for so long with no reward and often called lazy or worse by their teachers who are missing what's going on because they don't know what they're looking at.

My kid is lucky. I've worked with kids who had learning issues prior to us having him. I knew what I was seeing and I got him tested. The school sure wasn't moving on it, and his kindergarten teacher took him apart for a bad seed rather than seeing what was under her nose. That's what happens.

So you have that population to consider who don't value education because it ends up being much harder for them than it should through no fault of their own.

a reply to: andy06shake

That's bull.

Teachers may not know the specific skills like the programming languages kids will be using, but the same foundation skills will always be needed: reading and math and a modicum of writing ability.

a reply to: ketsuko

Nope, quite true, we were told pretty much a similar story from the teachers when both our children started school. There 11 and 5, so last year we were told such, and 6 years before that a similar retoric.

Point is core skills are changing just as fast as employment and society in general.

Math, science, and reading will always be required, but take for instance the art of writing or general knowledge, even history. Not quite as relevant in today's world as in days gone by when you can just google the required information on a keyboard.

originally posted by: Aazadan
a reply to: Blue Shift

Part of the hiring process where I work involves a technical test. I have never seen a single person pass it who has less than 6 years of college education and at least two degrees.

That's not to say it's impossible, but no one has done it yet.

You don't count because you indicated "technical." Which means you have a degree (or many) that has specifically trained you to do something useful. However, there used to be value in learning things other than engineering, computer science, and accounting. If you want to get a job, it doesn't hurt to know those things.

Of course, that doesn't mean you can't be successful if you're a poet or an author or a painter. You can be a rapper (a poet) and make millions. But those things, which are still taught as part of the archaic school system, don't require a formal education. Having a degree in poetry is laughable, even though billions of dollars are spent on poems set to phat beats every year.

Maybe it would be smart to really select a point in a person's education and determine whether or not that person should really need to go to college for that they want to do, and if it isn't necessary, cut them loose. Give them some pointers on how to run their passion as a business, but otherwise keep them out of the whole educational track which is essentially designed to funnel people into college, whether they need to go there or not.

I think that at one point in my life, I should have been encouraged to go to a trade school and learn electronics, which was what I was interested in when I was in high school. Instead, I went to college and came out with no practical skills. Including writing.

a reply to: andy06shake

Those core skills are still necessary to some degree. Try keyboarding if you can't spell. Try even using a spell check if you can't. Trust me. There are people with spelling skills impaired enough that spell check doesn't work for them.

originally posted by: Blue Shift
You don't count because you indicated "technical." Which means you have a degree (or many) that has specifically trained you to do something useful. However, there used to be value in learning things other than engineering, computer science, and accounting. If you want to get a job, it doesn't hurt to know those things.

You claimed people can self teach. I shot back with an example of where it didn't work.

What you just listed are precisely the types of things people generally advocate that one should self teach.

Maybe it would be smart to really select a point in a person's education and determine whether or not that person should really need to go to college for that they want to do, and if it isn't necessary, cut them loose. Give them some pointers on how to run their passion as a business, but otherwise keep them out of the whole educational track which is essentially designed to funnel people into college, whether they need to go there or not.

We do. No one has to further their education past 12th grade, and some don't even get that far.

If employers demand certain qualifications to do what you want to do though, then it's on you to get them. If you want to run a business? Get an education in doing so or figure it out as you go.

I think that at one point in my life, I should have been encouraged to go to a trade school and learn electronics, which was what I was interested in when I was in high school. Instead, I went to college and came out with no practical skills. Including writing.

Whose fault is that though? Did you goto the right college? Pick the right major? Pick the right professors? Practice enough on your own time?

You seem to have an unrealistic expectation of what college is supposed to do for you. It gives you a place to learn and network, but college is not meant to teach job skills. It never has been, and when people use it as such it tends to not do all that well.

The problem is that there's not really any alternative. No business wants to take on the overhead of running a training program, and the liability of keeping a bunch of novices around when they can move all of the risk to the individual instead.

a reply to: ketsuko

I'm Dyslexic myself Ketsuko.

Don't get me wrong i understand and agree with the importance of the basic core skills, certainly would not allow my children to leave secondary without acquiring mathematics, English and one of the sciences, possibly two.

But the world is moving in a different direction and trust me when i tell you teachers simply cannot keep up with the pace, hence what they tell you when your children start primary.

Consider this speech to text works pretty much perfectly these days, might not be the demand for keyboards and literacy skills is the same manner they are required in this day of age 20 years down the line, and a dumb population is rather easy to manipulate and control.

Education has become an industry where businessmen, bureaucrats and institutions care about minting money. And most students are running behind good grades without even understanding what they are learning. The rat race for grades has reached to such a level where students are resorting to all sorts of plagiarism to get ahead. There is a difference between looking for homework help and copying homework. I guess no one cares about ethics anymore as long as they are earning money, degrees

originally posted by: LisaMc
Education has become an industry where businessmen, bureaucrats and institutions care about minting money. And most students are running behind good grades without even understanding what they are learning. The rat race for grades has reached to such a level where students are resorting to all sorts of plagiarism to get ahead. There is a difference between looking for homework help and copying homework. I guess no one cares about ethics anymore as long as they are earning money, degrees

When I went to college, we were forbidden from using any outside sources other than the class book. Our projects for the in major stuff was all information that's not on google anyways. It could only be solved with a lot of thinking.

I still say for most people and 80 percent of jobs you don't need a college education. Get your high school diploma or GED. If you need a skill learn it. If you need experience, get it. If you don't know, read about it.

originally posted by: amazing
I still say for most people and 80 percent of jobs you don't need a college education. Get your high school diploma or GED. If you need a skill learn it. If you need experience, get it. If you don't know, read about it.

I'm still batting a solid 0% pass rate for our companies technical test for anyone with less than 4 years education and then some on top of that. And, the test is too easy in my opinion (in fact, I'm currently revising it to make it harder).

Education is undoubtedly important! Do not you graduate from university or college, but at the same time, strange as it may sound, you can be educated. Studying at home. Honestly, not even imagine. about what you can talk with an uneducated person.