If they can’t do well on tests designed to measure skills the students have been failed. They have not learned skills. The US education system is quite good at teaching skills. A large majority of countries do worse. The skills that PISA tests are a prerequisite for almost any more rarefied learning that is often held up as the real purpose of education.
Being able to read for meaning, extract information, combine knowledge from two texts, distinguish between what is stated and what’s implied, even to figure out something is implied, all of those are the kinds of things we expect an educated person to be able to do. PISA tests them. Trying to make people care about academic subject matter is very difficult because most people do not care and do not find it useful. Thus they forget most of what they learn in school. Insofar as education is forcing the tastes of one class on everyone else it can burn. Most people don’t care, just like most academics don’t care about sports. Forcing sports on them would also be an injustice.
> Trying to make people care about academic subject matter is very difficult because most people do not care and do not find it useful. Thus they forget most of what they learn in school. Insofar as education is forcing the tastes of one class on everyone else it can burn. Most people don’t care, just like most academics don’t care about sports. Forcing sports on them would also be an injustice.
Ah, yes, we should teach less science to everyone because that would be like forcing every academic to play sports. Perhaps physical and science education should be provided for every student? Education does not come at the expense of sports. If anything, the opposite is often true.
People are naturally curious. Shuffling them into the confines of some narrow and often purposeless maze fucks that up. That's a considerable portion of TFA, the institutional curricula stunted their interest in biology.
My curiosity was drugs, drugs lead me to biology, lead me to chemistry, physics - but it was independent study. Political challenges from my partner got me interested in history and anthropology, but it was all independently structured.
I think if the institution gave all these little knobheads enough autonomy to actually derive, from themselves, some real interest, they would ultimately end up intersecting with all the sciences, it's actually inevitable. Instead they're just forcefed a bunch of information they don't have a relationship with.
Sports is biology and mechanics is molecular biology and kinesiology and so on. It doesn't matter where you start, you track into that shit. Passion the latitude it lends to the people possessed by it is what allows us to push deeper and deeper. Not stunting intellectual growth by conditioning people into a state of repulsion at the premise of learning.
Being able to read for meaning, extract information, combine knowledge from two texts, distinguish between what is stated and what’s implied, even to figure out something is implied, all of those are the kinds of things we expect an educated person to be able to do. PISA tests them. Trying to make people care about academic subject matter is very difficult because most people do not care and do not find it useful. Thus they forget most of what they learn in school. Insofar as education is forcing the tastes of one class on everyone else it can burn. Most people don’t care, just like most academics don’t care about sports. Forcing sports on them would also be an injustice.