educations

A facebook friend posted this..



www.ted.com

I'm on and off interested in education, I began to embark on a career in art education before I turned ranger. I stopped because I didn't like working with people who were so caught up in the idea of spectacular education projects that they weren't really thinking about what the people were actually learning. Or at least a kind of difference between what it looked like everyone was doing and what thinking was really being done. It's that thing where its so great when an artist comes into a class and gets the kids all whipped up, using the materials in a way they don't usually and everyone has a great time. The artist ends up with some spectacular photos of kids with paint all over their faces, the kids had fun.

But no one continued a conversation about what was being done. No one challenged decisions. No one asked any why questions. People didn't learn that much. A teacher should do more than just let stuff happen. Lyndsay hates fun again.


Anyway. So I think about education. Ralph is a teacher, I try to teach the children in the park things.

I like what is said in the presentation above but I was mostly interested in the comments. It was a while ago now that I watched the video and read through the comments so they may have changed by now. But the thing that struck me most was the ideas surrounding who would clean our toilets if every child had been educated to know that they should follow their own interests and not feel compelled to fit the current job market setup. I just checked back now and I can't see the conversation so maybe the comment has been removed. But there was lots of talk about how the world would grind to halt if people had the where withall to not work in a factory or as a cleaner, you know all the jobs you wouldn't want to do.

Obviously, this disussion in itself has become a joke because the people arguing this issue placed themselves outside. Well if no one wanted to clean the toilets for money then you would have to make some decisions. Do I make this toilet dirty, do I clean up my mess? Do I clean up that selfish persons mess now I have seen there is some mess? Do I try and give a fiver to that guy over there to clean the toilet for me? This toilet is messy, do I still use it? Do I not rely on the fact that public toilets have been provided for me, now they are most likely dirty? Do I consider, before I leave the house, what I would do, should I need the toilet? Do I have to take responsibilty for the fact I might, at some point, need to wee?

If no one was there to clean the toilet then you would have to think about it. You.