On Education, part 2: Middle School

(previous part: Elementary School)

There is an unspoken grievance bothering all us kids for the entierty of schooling. It feels like an earworm with a forgotten title, you hear it in your heead, but you can not articulate it no matter how hard you try. And it lasts for years. Here it is: «Why on Earth I must learn the disciplines that my teachers have failed to learn?! — If they are more stupid than I, why on Earth they are teachers in the first place?! — If it is just normal to be ignorant about the majority of the school curriculum, why do they teach me all the shit they themselves do not want to know and still have their jobs and live normal lives?!»

Yes, I am talking about the specialization of teachers, this ultimate manifest of ignorance! The very existence of your English literature teacher cries silently: «I don't give a damn about all your maths!». «I spit on your Shakespeare!» — is written all over the face of your maths teacher. An your biology teacher is completely happy being ignorant about maths, literature, geography, phisics, and the rest.

When you attend to all these compulsory courses you see the big picture: all these courses are in fact optional — the school lies to you at the very core of its doctrine. Every day the teachers as a whole demostrate you practically that every individual teacher preaches lies to you. This is how the school finishes your motivation off (if there was any remaining after the primary school). I can not concieve a more devastating impact on one's motivation that that.

And again the solution is way simpler than you might expect. It does not require any new institution, it requires a romoval job again. We must abolish the specialization of teachers. All compulsory courses must be taught by a single teacher from the very beginning of the school to the very end. One teacher for the complete curicullum — a role model of an educated person. Teachers must comply to the standards they impose on their pupils.

On Education

Although the ideas I am about to formulate here predate this brilliant lecture by Doctor Russell Ackoff, the lecture formulates a challenge to which I am about to respond.

How shall we alter the educational system in order to preserve and nurture the natural curiosity in children, encourage creativity, and stop demotivating them to learn and explore? (Setting aside the fact that no government on Earth is interested in this cause.)
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