Education should be oriented toward whatever is important in the students particular culture and environment
Children learn by actively using their own prior knowledge to understand new experiences, thus many cross-cultural psychologists argue that we should view school as a cultural phenomenon. Schools should teach culturally specific skills, which are then tested in culturally specific tests. People’s thinking and learning is always closely related to their cultural experience. We could see cognition and learning as something which develops as people learn how to participate and thrive in their particular culture, rather than as something separate which can be abstracted and tested, as the cognitive scientists would see it: cognitive scientists measured learning through observation of natural learning or through tests in controlled settings. Also, we can use our stress as a navigational tool to help guide our lives. The stress of not being able to partake in certain activities do to deficiencies in knowledge or skills is what should motivate people to learn things. This about as far from the information processing model of cognitive science as it is possible to get. The cognitive science approach to learning strips it of it’s context and meaning to the student.
Schools are carefully constructed learning environments which aim to deliver a particular type of learning. As such they take learning out of the context of life. Schooling involves an adult delivering specific actions towards a group of children with the aim of the children learning a particular set of knowledge or skills. This knowledge can in theory be used later but, right now, it’s being learnt because the school chooses to teach it, rather than because a child needs to know it now in order to live their lives. The school, not the child, decides what is important.
Take the example of reading. Schools decide that children need to learn to read around the age of five. They teach reading as a technical skill. The child learns to read words such as ‘cat’ and ‘hat’ so that, in the future, they will be able to read books. Most of them don’t learn to read through reading books of their choice, and they don’t learn to read because they want to understand the books. The skill of reading is separated from its purpose. This separation of learning from purpose is not based on science. Nowhere do the studies show that people learn best when what they are learning is not meaningful for them.
- There is a good reason, however, as to why schools do not teach meaningful and useful infirmation, and that is because public schools serve to manufacture a manageable population and to put down dissent and originality.
- we should begin the organization of production around the needs of the people, rather than beginning with production
References
- Fisher, Naomi. (2021). Changing Our Minds Chapter 2. Learning – Scientists, Processors and Rats (p. 54). London, UK: Robinson Publishing.
Metadata
Type:🔴 Tags: Politics / Education / Psychology / Cognitive Science Status:⛅️