Friday, October 06, 2017

Thoughts on Education - Louis L'Amour

The idea of education has been so tied to schools, universities, and professors that many assume there is no other way, but education is available to anyone within reach of a library.”

If I were asked what education should give, I would say it should offer breadth of view, ease of understanding, tolerance for others, and a background from which the mind can explore in any direction. Education should provide the tools for a widening and deepening of life, for increased appreciation of all one sees or experiences. It should equip a person to live life well, to understand what is happening about him.”



4 comments:

  1. If I had my way public education would end tomorrow, and the whole shooting match would be privatized. Every second 'teacher' would be taken out and shot at random as a warning to the others.

    I don't think people realize how much damage public schools are doing to their kids. The curriculum has been dumbed down past the point of relevance, and your kid will be exposed to the worst society has to offer: drugs, premarital sex, deviant sex, socialism, atheism, etc. Up here in Canada people are pushing to eliminate private and home schooling, and make new age gender theory mandatory. If that isn't evidence in favour of burning public schools to the ground with the teachers trapped inside - I dunno what is!

    Errr... sorry for the rant. If you'll excuse me - I have some clouds to go shout at...

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  2. Mike Rowe would agree with Louie L'Amour.
    Not many places of education teach original thinking any more, from what I read...

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  3. This is always an area of personal conflict for me, Glen. My mother was a public school teacher for almost 40 years. My sister is a public school teacher now, as are my friends. At the same time, for K-8 we made the decision to send out children to private school, a decision I do not regret purely for the educational and personality aspects that have manifested in our children's lives.

    You are right - at least here in the U.S., it seems somewhat remarkable to me that we pour the amount of money we do into education yet we do not seem to be making any progress. In fact, in California I believe it is now possible to "graduate" from high school without passing.

    My older two have made a point of taking accelerated classes whenever possible. When I asked them about they said that even though it was hard, it was better because at least all the other students in the class were interested in learning, instead of regular classes, where at least some of the kids were obviously there because it is required.

    The sad reality, of course, is that now our kids have to compete with the world. Sadly enough, we are seemingly more concerned with socially making them think "correctly" than with actually educating them. Oddly enough, in the end I think this blows up in the faces of those who are pushing it.

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  4. Mike Rowe Would indeed Linda.

    If memory serves, the root Latin for education is educare, which meant "to draw out" - as in drawing out of the student. Sadly, we seem far more interested in programming in.

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