Gel Pen Learning

If you haven’t caught on to the theme for March, here is where we start putting things together. Two weeks ago, I discussed how the claim that “parents are too dumb” to teach their kids is a ridiculous argument when you consider that many parents graduated from public school. Last week, we discussed how homeschooling parents calling grocery shopping “math class” have hurt our credibility as genuine educators, opening us up to further ridicule.

Rethinking the Goal of Educaton

I’ve been reading a lot this month, which is why everything is behind schedule. This month I’ve been reading “Dumbing Us Down,” by John Taylor Gatto. As I read this small book that should be essential reading for anyone contemplating homeschooling or sending their kids back to public school, the question I keep pondering is if the point is to keep us dependent on the system, what does it mean to be educated?

This question is one that has been widely debated among great thinkers, but one thing that rarely comes up is the ability to do well on a standardized test. I haven’t seen “graduate with honors from a public university,” on any list either. The list-makers are in agreement that an educated person has mastered a body of knowledge or acquired skills, but they diverge on whether there is a set list or if it’s individual or values-based.

Interestingly, I’ve always heard that the goal of education is to prepare for the workforce, but that’s even growing more difficult with emerging technologies, especially with AI. We don’t even know what jobs will require humans in the next four years, meaning that students could be going into colleges with a degree plan that will be obsolete by the time they graduate.

The Critical Thinking Contradiction

One thing that keeps coming up on the lists is critical thinking and the ability to change opinions with new information, which is interestingly counterproductive to the standardization of education. Personally, asking questions was routinely what I was in trouble for in school, except for the one class that encouraged it: Forensic Debate.

Critical thinking is antithesis to standardized education because standardized education depends on correct answers that yield consistent outcomes and measurable performance. Critical thinking is messy. It requires pulling from a wide body of internal knowledge, vetting it against claims, asking more questions, forming more opinions, vetting those opinions against more internal knowledge, before hitting a reasonable conclusion that is open to changing later.

Asking the Right Question

If critical thinking isn’t the point, there’s no standardized body of knowledge that we can agree every single person needs to know, nor can we predictably prepare people for the current job market. What is the point of education?

Maybe we’ve been asking the wrong question, and the point isn’t a fixed destination at all. Maybe the real question is: Why do we all believe that we are “dumb,” and why don’t we feel empowered to learn on our own?