speech on the topic is today's education really educating us
Answers
Answer:
Education is the process of facilitating learning, or the acquisition of knowledge, skills, values, beliefs, and habits. Educational methods include storytelling, discussion, teaching, training, and directed research. (Wikipedia). By this definition the school is not the only place for education. I do a lot of learning at negative cost. In fact I get paid to learn. So do most people who are trained in the workplace.The knowledge which I got by paying did little to help me learn much except when I was compelled to pass exams. They meant very little to me beyond. However what the school does is give you a passport which will open many avenues. Real education begins after you leave school and interact with the real world for survival. Brilliant people like Bill Gates , Steve Jobs and Srinivasa Ramanujam succeeded without this passport. But the vast majority of us can’t except those learnt from their parents some particular skill for several generations which created the caste system in India. So the idea of having academic institutions is to give you the freedom to master any skill irrespective of your family and economic environment. My anecdotal experience is despite the rotten education system we have here, people who went to school were more likely to enhance their status that those who did not. People who learnt by rote did manage to apply logic and reason in later life and did get into elite institutions. I don’t understand how rote learning discourages you from thinking. It relieves you from thinking when you don’t have to. It provides you the skills for doing routine work. Not all of us have exceptional reasoning skills, but that doesn’t mean we have no right to seek gainful employment. It is being realized that human skills are more complex than mere logical reasoning. For example in Big Data it is much more useful to know what happens than why it happens. Being snobbish and critical of the system is not likely to help unless you make some contribution to improve it within the constraints imposed on you.(I am sure there is a lot to complain about). It is true that in India a teacher who helps you to improve your exam scores by researching on the exams is more likely to be gainfully employed than another who spends all the time acquiring new knowledge and imparting them to his pupils. In spite of all this ISRO managed several successful launches without employing a single IIT or NIT graduate. (As per press reports). There are people criticizing the educational system in the most powerful countries in Quora itself. My point is learning is a very complex activity and nobody has even many of the right answers. I learnt this over 2 decades of teaching and counseling after having graduated from some of the most elite institutions which existed then. Finally to answer your question education however dubious the quality does educate.