What does the 19th century school give to the 21st century students?

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

The modern education system socializes children for the social machinery of the nineteenth century with 80% manual labor. Despite the fact that this mechanism has almost completely collapsed, she continues to make cogs out of people.

1786 the German city of Braunschweig. There is an arithmetic lesson at the local school. A math teacher, a certain Buettner, gives the children a task that keeps them busy for the next half hour, or even an hour. He asks the children to add up all the numbers from 1 to 100. When the result is obtained, it should be written on a small wooden board and given to the teacher.

Büttner went to his table. But now, literally two minutes later, a newcomer to the class, 9-year-old Karl Friedrich Gauss, stands up in the middle of the audience and brings his board to the teacher. And on the edge of that figure - 5050.

- What is it? Buettner asks.

- Answer, Herr teacher - says the kid.

I must say that the teacher himself did not know the correct answer. Buettner came up with a problem on the fly to keep the class busy. He could not believe that such a task could be completed in 1-2 minutes. The teacher started counting on his own. It took Buettner much longer than 9-year-old Karl. The total is 5050.

- How so? - the teacher is amazed.

“It's very simple,” Karl replied. - You add up all the numbers in a row 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 … + 57, etc. I decided to summarize the extreme numbers. What is 1 + 100?

- 101 - the teacher answers.

- And 2 + 99?

- 101

- 3+98?

- 101

- 4+97?

- 101

- 5+96?

- 101!

- Well, if 50 pairs give the same result - 101, you just need to multiply 50 by 101 and you get 5050.

At that moment, Buettner realized that he was a genius. No, not because Karl solved the problem faster than anyone, and even faster than a teacher. Because geniuses do not think like everyone else. The genius is free from the patterns into which the environment tries to squeeze him. Why did Alexander Pushkin think that "genius is a friend of paradoxes"? Because he himself was a genius, from the so-called first non-whipped generation of Russia. Geniuses are, first of all, a product of inner freedom.

Karl Frederick Gauss became a great German scientist who revolutionized the field of geometry, algebra, astronomy, geodesy, mechanics, etc. When he died in 1855 at the age of 77, on his gravestone was carved: "Karl Friedrich Gauss - the king of mathematicians."

But now the conversation is not about how to raise a genius. And that the modern school is doing everything to kill him. Here is a rating of 10 such actions that make children, like plasticine, a comfortable mass of people. Well, those who do not mold - those are broken.

This rating was written by 11-year-old boy Timofey Drogin.

So, 10 points, how modern school is killing education and what we should do about it.

1

When you first come to school, they try to instill fear in you. One of them is the fear of the teacher.

2

After the first fear, the fear of evaluation develops. And then the fear of punishment by the parents, the headmaster. At school, they don't look at who you are, they judge you only by your grades.

3

Another fear is the fear of making a mistake. School does not teach that you can and should be wrong, because this is the only way you can learn something.

4

Another reason is the ridicule of classmates. And it is often the fault of the teachers who ridicule the children by telling them that they are not doing as well as their classmates. For them, the assessment is more important than the student. I went to the kids' creativity club, I learned to weave from beads, sculpt from dough, make bracelets from leather and much more. And when a teacher from my circle came to my school to offer a master class and talked about my achievements, the head teacher was surprised: “Timofey? This cannot be!"

5

These tests that are given in the classroom are incredibly stupid, because they do not have a variant of their answer. A child, in order to get a good grade, tries to guess one answer from the proposed ones, but he may have his own opinion that he cannot write. I do not think that the time will come when everyone will remember all the capitals of the world, everything that Taras Shevchenko wrote, the square root of five. It seems to me that if a person is interested in something, he will learn more than a child in 10 years of school. And if he needs knowledge from other areas, he can easily get it.

6

I read that there is no evidence that homework affects children's academic performance and education. Once I was given so many English assignments that after three hours of writing, I got up and couldn't straighten my neck. I was taken to the emergency room, and for a whole week I was wearing a neck brace.

7

Schools do not like it very much if someone is different from others. It starts with the teacher, is passed on to the students and stays with them for life.

8

I read that when John Lennon of The Beatles was five years old, my mother told him that the most important thing in life is to be happy. Then he went to school and was asked there: "What do you dream of becoming in life?" He replied: "Happy." He was told: "You do not understand the task." To which he replied: "You do not understand life."

9

For example, I watch a YouTube channel where a physics teacher tells the material in an easy and engaging way. Reading or browsing such resources can replace dozens of boring lessons.

10

School is preparation for adulthood. But she does not teach how to maintain and increase income, nor how to get it, nor, in general, how to earn. I believe that the main subject at school could be a subject on which we would be taught to understand each other. After all, the ability to communicate is the most important thing.

About 10 years ago, Sir Ken Robinson, head of the National Commission on Creativity, Education and Economics in the UK Government Committee, speaking at the annual international TEDx conference, said: “The current education system in industrialized countries was implemented in the 19th century. It was tailored to the needs of the era when manual labor was 80%. That is, when the economy needed a big box with small screws.

- Towards the end of the XX century, - noted Robinson, - about 30% of all labor reserves employed in the economy were involved in production, and at the beginning of the XXI century - 12%.

That is, the time "when robots work, and not a man" is inexorably approaching.

Businesses related to intellectual work, software development, and the development of science and technology are actively developing in the world. Human capital is getting more expensive, natural resources are getting cheaper. Economists of the 19th century, for example, Briton Thomas Malthus, believed that everything would be the other way around. With the rapid growth of the population, labor reserves will become cheaper, and resources (due to their shortage) will rise in price. Thomas was wrong. We need geniuses more than ever, not resources. (Although, of course, both are better).

What will a programmer or writer eat? The President of Israel, Shimon Peres, answered this question relatively recently: “In 25 years, Israel has increased agricultural production 17 times. Agriculture is 95% science and 5% work."

Where we find ourselves, and whether we will end up, depends on whether we are able to organize the mass production of geniuses. And they breed only in a free environment. The family and the school are responsible for this product of civilization.

By the way, have you forgotten that the ancient Greek word school (scole) literally translates - leisure (a place for conversation)?

Children of the Hellenes rested at school, spent their free time, argued about various phenomena, manifestations, sciences. They listened to the wise men versed in this or that matter, whether they agreed or not. They looked for arguments, drew conclusions, presented arguments and counterarguments. In other words, they had fun like free people.

The ancient world, even in the pre-Christian era, gave its contemporaries philosophy, drama theaters, high literature, mathematics, astronomy, history, poetry, democracy and, ultimately, formed a new post-medieval civilization - the Renaissance. The Renaissance is the revival of the ancient world. Because school is not only a "thin feather in a notebook" or "add two to four".

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