What is education?

I saw a pretty disturbing thing today as I was waiting at the bus station. Two geeky schoolgirls were at an ATM machine (GG-A and GG-B). Another geeky girl (GG-C) walks by, crossing into their field of view. She thinks they're giving her a dirty look and starts asking them about it. It pretty quickly escalates into a screaming match. GG-C is going crazy yelling about dirty looks, GG-A/B have no idea what's going on and are trying to deflate the situation. GG-C suddenly grabs GG-A and they get into a short catfight before GG-C walks away.

It's pretty common knowledge nowadays that it's actually girls who can be bigger bullies than guys could ever dream of being. What surprised me is that the aggressive bullying behaviour has seeped into the 'geek' character class. Back when I was a kid (when I walked to school uphill both ways) geeks were usually the ones picked on, and they never fought back. But here I just saw two geeks going at it (and it was NOT a turnon surprisingly). What was more interesting is that all three geeky girls (GG^3) were wearing school uniforms. To see well mannered people in nice uniforms suddenly acting in such low-income behaviour piqued my interest.

Aren't a sub-effect of school uniforms to teach some form of refined civility? What kind of upraising causes a person to: a) assume someone looking at them in a funny way is giving them a 'dirty' look, and b) to verbally call them out on it? Is this a failure of parenting, of the education system, or society as a whole?

Given the amount of time that we spend within an educational system in our early lives, a large part can be pointed back directly, or indirectly, to the educational system. That brings me to today's random collection of thoughts and topics of discussion.

Many people believe that a solid education enhances one's well-being and ability to 'succeed' later in life. That is to say that if someone receives a poor education (or none at all), they are near-doomed to a life of failure and regret. Though this has been proven to be false by a number of studies (success is *majority of the time* deemed by genetics), many people still lean on the education system to raise their children to be the best that they can be.

Over the years our educational methodologies haven't really changed drastically. At the core it's still a system where children are critiqued, ranked, and given direct opportunities based on their ranking. This is how it was during my childhood, during my father's childhood, during my other father's childhood, and so on and so forth. To change this would infringe on 99% of the world's population's understanding of 'what works'. But to really know if it's the right path, we do need to consider the alternatives.

During my high school years, I went to school with a particularly high-acheiving student. He was incredibly intelligent, got great grades, and was very active on the school clubbing scene. However, all is not what it appears to be. To plump his university applications, he created a few fancily-named clubs with names designed to attract the eye of recruiters. These false clubs rarely had meetings other than the initial, thus they often fell by the wayside. However, as club founder he was able to dictate to the 'educational powers that be' of the hours that he committed to the facilitating of such clubs, and list them under his volunteer contributions to the community. Thus come graduation time, not only did he graduate with a rediculously high average, he also acquired a rediculous amount of community awards for his so-called 'volunteerism'.

For some reason (I'll discuss more later), universities love high-scoring pupils with a volunteer spirit, so he also got a ton of scholarship offers. Some had small print that they were essentially cash prizes. He got so many that if he went to one particularly low-end university, they would essentially be *paying* for him to go, as he would be able to pocket the left over scholarship cash money. He got accepted into a higher-end university and still had to make some tuition payments out of his own pockets. But that was of no concern since he came from an extremely well-off family.

So let's look at the above scenario. Though we have someone who is intelligent, he knowingly manipulated the educational system for his benefit and the post-secondary system REWARDED such deceitful behaviour with scholarships. What will become of him in the future? I wonder if the CEOs of A.I.G. have a similar background. And to make matters worse, though he could easily pay the tuition of 20 students, he was awarded scholarship money anyways. Where's the logic in any of this?

As you can see there are small gaps in logic in the most established routines of the educational system. Here are a few other small gaps in logic:

1) http://www.techlearning.com/blog/2008/08/this_is_why_we_have_so_few_lap.php
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D937U9BO1&show_article=1
Back in my younger years, there was a huge push for computer technology. It was the way of the future they said, any kid without computer experience will immediately be an invalid in the workforce and be sentenced to the mining camps they said. What a load of crap. Admist all the focus on getting computer knowledge into kids at an early age, there was zero consideration on what possible side effects there could be. Let's take a step away from this and look at another issue that's affecting today's kids. Childhood obesity. Is there a connection between the two? Admist all the hoopla of childhood obesity, and despite the DIRECT references to computer usage, it's absolutely bewildering that the educational system is still making such a huge push for kids to use computers. Stat from the 2nd article: 97% of kids consider themselves to be 'gamers'. How frightening is that.

2) http://cbs4denver.com/local/palin.essay.denver.2.820285.html
http://www.statesman.com/opinion/content/editorial/stories/09/0918mincher_edit.html
What kids experience in schools DOES have a subtle effect on their adulthood. Lack of financial education is pointed out as a plausible reason for the modern economic crisis. Who knows what else? Could the requirement of the Pledge of Allegiance lead to the maniacal American patriotism after 9/11? How can we ensure that our kids receive a fair and balanced education? How can we spot what problems are present if they've been present for generations?

3) http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/education/stories/082608dnmetsat2010.153ec19e.html
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/080923/national/lakehead_free_tuition
What's in a number? With the overwhelming focus of marks within the educational system, are we ignoring other plausible benefits that we could be taking advantage of? What about the focus on simply learning new things? How much learning really goes on? If a child achieves a high average, are they truely being challenge or being given a free ride? Will the popularity of low-achieving schools skyrocket with kids looking to be given a free ride? What effect will that have on future society?

All food for thought. I for one am getting my moon colony ready.