Things

[avevale_intelligencer]

So, the royal thing is happening this weekend, and will give a lot of folk pleasure, and make a lot of republicans angry. Personally, I can put up with the anger for the sake of the pleasure, and I don't have the slightest confidence that if we scrapped royalty we would then be able to invent something to replace it--invented pageantry is like invented languages or invented religions, a very good idea in the abstract, but in practise they end up being pursued with passion by a few and completely ignored by most. The tale of Higgins the Heathen seems to me a propos here. Besides, I'm told righteous anger can be a pleasure in itself, so by all means have at it.

I'm seeing a lot of righteous anger lately on FB and elsewhere about the idea that kids should not be taught science. "Science is the key to our future," says one William Nye, and goes on to say that it would be a disaster if we were to "raise a generation of people who don't believe in science." I hope he felt better after that. Obviously I agree. Science is very important, and it should be a part of every child's education.

But there was this filk in XKCD a while back, which had a line in it which gave me a genuine cold grue. "Why anyone who wants a job would study lit's a mystery," sang the stickman. This is not a joke. Real, three-dimensional people believe this. They it is who have shaped the educational systems in Britain and America all my life, making education into "training for jobs," and as the economy has worsened and Employment has become the new god, more and more it has been the non-technical areas of education that have been pared away and downsized. It's all very well (touching on another old sore) for people to say how they'd be perfectly happy for religion to be taught in comparative mythology classes, but what kind of job are you going to get studying that? And the result is that we are in very grave danger, if it isn't happening already, of raising a generation of people who don't believe in art, or literature, or poetry, or music, unless it's happening right now on their iThings. At best--at best--what will happen is that those subjects will be de facto reserved for those who don't need to get a job, because their families are rich. A new aristocracy who get the culture, while the rest of us get trained to be happy unthinking workers.

Science may be the key to our future, but art and culture are the hinges on the door. If they get rusted shut, door won't open even with the key.

This is why I hope and pray (as it were) to see the work-optional society appear on the horizon in my lifetime. Not, as some might think, because I hate work and want an excuse to laze around all day watching telly and being fed through a tube. Premise partly right, conclusion dead wrong. We need a society in which education can be--for EVERYONE--a way of equipping young people, not just with the skills to make money, but with the cultural and creative heritage of those who went before us, with the eyes that looked on a different world and the ears to hear its songs, with the treasure that is otherwise going to rot and gather cobwebs in the vaults of time because "there's no money in it," or "who wants to know about dead poets and stuff?" or "it's just not relevant in the modern world." Excuses like that make me tired.

So when people go on about how vital science is in education, I think "yes but." All I need to know about science I already know, which is that it is the best way to understand the physical universe around us and if I have a question about said universe a scientist will give me the best possible answer, even if that answer turns out to be "we don't know yet." I don't have to be a scientist myself, and I treasure that freedom as I do the freedom not to own a gun, and I want it safeguarded for future generations. I want them to be better educated than I am, not just about evolution, but about everything. Every single one of them. And if a Nicaraguan can be found who'll teach them how to catch a wild horse as well, so much the better.

And now I shall stop and do useful things. Sorry about that--it's been stewing all night.

Comments

[janewilliams20.livejournal.com]

A huge and complex subject, and no, I haven't given it the many hours of thought it probably deserves.
There's a lot to be said for the idea that you need to aim your education choices in the direction that will get you a job, because you'll need to survive after school, uni,and so on. But... I aimed my choices from O level onwards at a career in physics/engineering, and they still included two instruments, English Lit, and two languages. I've done OK.

Then there's the theory that what you need to learn in school isn't actual knowledge in any case. Junior school, it's the basic tools, the three Rs. Without those, you aren't going anywhere.
Senior school, a bit more of the same, and the "basic tools" expand, but it's really learning how to learn. Learn a language or two (one of them probably English), then if you want to pick up another as an adult, it's "just another language". More maths, especially if you want to go on into science. How to structure an argument, how to write an essay in a way that'll be understood, how to read and judge a textbook (or Wikipedia article).
At uni, you might expect to get more into learning the actual knowledge. But do you? I studied physics for the first two years, hoping for a career in astrophysics. I failed (maths not up to it, lack of basic tool-set), but I picked up a lot of relativity, quantum mechanics, and so on. Almost all of it has now been superseded, and if I was in fact working in the field, would be utterly useless to me. My last year was computer science, and I did go on to a career in computing. Computers have, as I'm sure will come as no surprise, moved on. Next to nothing of the "facts" I learnt there have been of use - but the people who designed that course had sense. What they did was teach us as wide a range of computing languages as they possibly could, knowing that many of them were useless even then, but wanting to give us the ability to pick up any other language we might meet in the future. Algorithms, too - generic, basic, tools, and the ability to think, so we could create our own as needed. That's been useful. Being able to learn new things, fast, has got me my last three jobs.

So, my conclusion would be that the purpose of education to to teach you how to learn, to think, and to communicate. What the subject is about which you are learning, thinking, and communicating is almost irrelevant. You need to be able to think, in as many ways as possible, to see as many sides of every question as possible.

Stepping sideways a little here, communicating with people requires a shared background of knowledge. "Should the web page be the yellow of a lemon, or that of a banana?" is meaningless if someone has never seen either, to take a very simple and literal example. Growing up a little, one can get very complex concepts across by referring to shared experience, even or especially if that shared experience is fictional (and thus simplified/purified to make a concept clear). I think you and I have enough shared literary background that if I were to say "Fly, you fools!", you'd understand that I was referring to the idea of a leader sacrificing themselves to save the team. "Do we not bleed?" summons up the whole concept of racism, bias, and dehumanising the unknown. We need the literary arts in order to be able to communicate, it gives us the shorthand we need.

So, do us scientists and technicians need to be able to communicate about things like leadership roles and racism? Well, yes. Some of the most disastrous computing projects have failed because the "designers" failed to deal with the very basic questions of "what do the users need this system to do?" Communication. If you don't have that, you get chaos.

I'm not into the visual arts, so can't meaningfully comment on those, but there's a saying "a picture is worth a thousand words." Not having had any useful artistic training, I have to fall back on writing those thousand words instead.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Very well put.

And the part about literature giving us the shorthand to communicate complex ideas quickly is why so many people are trying to get women, people of color, and gay (and hopefully eventually trans) people included among the writers whose works are studied in school.

[artbeco.livejournal.com]

Stopping in for a moment to add my 2 cents...
To be fair, Bill Nye the Science Guy (William Nye) has a show over here about teaching kids science, making it fun and interesting. He's battling the US system of public schools which are cutting out not only music and art and literature, but science as well. The sorts of things he tries to teach the kids relate more to critical thinking, problem solving and curiosity rather than pushing the notion of science at the expense of other subjects. Rather, he uses science methodology as a gateway to investigating the world, trying to foster a genuine curiosity about the world and all the richness in it. His shows tend to be campy and funny and the kids outgrow them after a certain age, but they'll have Bill Nye the Science Guy's ideas about new ways to explore the world embedded in there somewhere. Who knows if it makes a difference in the end, but he's actually one of the people fighting against the 'churn out worker drones' mentality that has become so pervasive.

I agree with you that culture is the hinges on the door, or actually a much more crucial part of the overall structure. I do think that science is an integral part of that culture, though, and science and literature are inextricably entwined. If literature, music and art get devalued, critical thinking and reasoning and curiosity, or the best, most crucial elements in scientific thinking, follow and get devalued as well. It's all a part of the trend lately to devalue and dgrade the majority of the population in favor of an elite class structure. I believe that teaching the kids how to think is the most crucial element to pull ourselves out of this downward spiral, and opening them up to the world of ideas (literature etc.) as well as teaching them how to think for themselves (scientific training) are essential.

[pickledginger.livejournal.com]

There's a lot to be said in favor of disassociating pageantry from government.

There's a lot to be said against disassociating schooling from critical thinking, as in most teaching-to-test schemes. (Though worse fads have swept the schools.)

And a lot to be said against disassociating career training from cultural literacy, not least because the average career (last time I checked; and no, I don't mean job) now lasts less than 10 years. All other considerations aside, one needs the skills to select and self-train for the next.

[pickledginger.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes: happy extended weekend of pageantry!

[filkerdave.livejournal.com]

There was an SF story I read, many years ago, where shell-shocked patients in hospital in an America perpetually at war learned to travel to alternate realties, but only a poet could figure out how.

Ideally we'd all know science and music and literature and poetry and art.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

I know that one! "General Carpenter snapped up his intercom. 'Get me a poet,' he said." And he never understood why nobody came. It's in one of the Penguin anthologies. And that's exactly it. He co-opted everyone to defend the American Dream, and there was nobody left to dream it.

Ideally we would all get the chance.

[filkerdave.livejournal.com]

Indeed. I haven't read the story for years, possibly decades, and it's still stuck with me (which shows, I think, how successful and powerful it was).

A world without poets and artists would be as sad to me as a world without scientists and engineers.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

It's not an either-or situation, you realize. Schools can (and I think should) teach *both* science *and* the arts.

Actually I wrote a song that kind of touches on this, or maybe celebrates both, depending on how you look at it. I have been kind of letting the Alice Day posts slide on account of working on the album but I will try to get that up.

I hope the royal thing has been fun.

[joecoustic.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've notice we have a really bad habit of swinging from one extreme to another, like a pendulum. It wouldn't be so bad if people didn't often tend to toss out the things on the other side as bad or irrelevant during those times when swung to the other. And every few years we swing back again with seemingly no lasting memory that we ever did this before. There are some who keep the other sides alive despite unfair treatment during the extreme swings and they are a big reason why we don't need to start completely from scratch when we swing back again. I wish more people could see that it all helps and enriches us.

[rdmaughan.livejournal.com]

There is a theory that people have a hierarchy of needs running from physiological through safety, loving/belonging and esteem to self-actualisation. The idea is you have difficulty concentrating on higher needs until the lower ones are met. As I understand it the theory is not that some needs are more important than others but that they are more urgent. For example if you have no food then you are unlikely to spend time worrying about whether people respect you. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hierarchy_of_needs

I think society has a similar hierarchy of needs. We need enough people to raise food and keep the lights on before we worry if we have enough people writing plays. Not that plays are unimportant but that they are a higher level of need which means it only becomes an issue if the lower level needs are met first.