Good job Arx, when the fate of the world is somehow decided through a fencing battle, I'll atleast know we stand a chance.
I was reading today, and I got an idea for what might be a practical way to change the education system for the better: a change in the fundamental culture, a change in the timing in one's formative years, and a pulling back in perspective as the accumulation of knowledge becomes too much for conventional education.
Basically, I've been thinking that forcing children to spend the first 18+ years of their life in school, and then increasingly mandatorily spending 4+ years in college, is an increasingly bad idea, as the industries that qualify as being a 'success' become ever more reliant on having a heavy educational background; meaning staying in school and staying on your rear end for all of your formative years. I think this has the drawback of placing far too much emphasis on deciding one's future in the earliest portion of a person's life, forcing those same children to spend their formative years chasing after grades which *I believe* is increasing the amount of mental illness and despair in society cumulatively, and as the amount of knowledge increases just as a simple fact that we're progressing into the future and knowledge aggregates over time then more and more winds up having to get packed into that same period of schooling, making it harder for each generation's student body.
The idea is that the school system stays the same up until the age of 14, enough to give children some basic literacy in reading and math while at the same time those children are budding into young adults. Children's working laws are changed so those 14 yr olds are allowed to enter the workforce, presumably in low education and low physical requirement jobs, and encouraged to go to work. School still exists, but becomes optional, and from this point the curricula becomes harder than it is currently by virtue of being optional. By this age, young people that have a profession in mind, like doctor or lawyer, already know that that is what they want to do and have the opportunity to continue sitting on their rear, working towards it. Meanwhile, the working 14 yr olds, who are not viewed as failures or dropouts, have the opportunity to gain experience in the working world, be held to realistic (read: not scholastic) standards, obtain a sense of achievement and reward that only putting yourself out there and doing something can get, and get a head start on their own independence.
Meanwhile, "schooling" as a concept is changed to be something that occurs over an individual's entire lifetime, rather than frontloaded into all their formative years. The working young people, upon working for several years and building up their own sense of identity and self-respect, have the option to re-enter the academic world and continue their education, this time with a sense of direction and purpose. This would require a separate facilities from the one which was available to the studious 14 yr olds, one that is catered to the needs of the 18+ yr olds that have been working or perhaps just goofing off and finding themselves.
Even more schooling services are available for 30+ yr olds to allow changing careers in the middle of one's life, with government financial support to help with one's expenses and give the person breathing room to study and educate themselves; presuming they succeed at their re-education. All this is meant to be government funded btw, but I don't think that'd be a problem, as the productivity, motivation, and hopefulness of citizens would presumably be so much higher as to recoup the entire cost many times over.
And for those that decide from age 14 on that schooling just isn't for them, and either become low-class workers for their whole lives, or just decide to be permanently unemployed (for example to be a housewife/husband), atleast society didn't waste effort trying to educate them, and the individual wasn't being forced to attend a school they didn't care to attend anyway for those years of their childhoods'.
This is a rough idea, I'm just thoughtlessly vomiting it into words as soon as I'm thinking of it, and it's hopelessly idealistic to boot. I'm just under the impression that the globalist world we live in that so strongly demands that our young people be highly educated when just entering the work force is becoming unsustainable and unhealthy, and it needs to be reformed sooner rather than later.
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Topic: [MILK] There were 12 eggs here what did you do with them? (Happy thread?!) (Read 16307178 times)