From: Arlo J. Bensinger (ajb102@psu.edu)
Date: Sat Jul 30 2005 - 17:49:37 BST
Hi Platt,
I'm restating my initial comments at length for clarity.
[Arlo had asked]
Should we rethink the purpose of high school, and what is taught, to make a
high-school diploma capable of providing "meaningful employment"? The
"apprenticeship" model of Germany I mentioned could be one solution. But, is
this in line with the MOQ? In ZMM, Pirsig talks about letting students "drop
out", get a hard-knocks education, and potentially return to the school
motivated by Quality, rather than money, grades or degrees.
Can/should all education be like this? Should we abolish "compulsory"
altogether?
This gets back to "purpose". One of the original "purposes" was to turn out
"good citizens", and teach life skills, hygiene, etc. If it is to teach a basic
set of skills, what goal does that basic set serve? Health and hygiene?
Vocation? Art? Literacy? Informed citizenry for voting purposes?
[Platt]
IMO the purpose of education is to develop intellectual skills, beginning
with the fundamentals of reading, writing and arithmetic. That "serves" to
bring more individuals into upper quality realms of the intellectual
level, the highest level next to DQ itself. Without a thorough grounding
in basic intellectual skills, not much more can be accomplished in an MOQ moral
society. Set high standards for attaining intellectual proficiency
and the rest -- careers, life skills, good citizenships, etc. will pretty
much take care of themselves.
Does that fit your concept of an MOQ education?
[Arlo]
I'm not sure I have a concept of that worked out yet. But, your answer that
publically supported education has the purpose of skills beginning with
reading, writing and arithmetic, gets me back to the question of "when" we drop
public support. By most accounts, these basic skills can be learned by around
6th grade, or maybe earlier. Should we drop public funding at that point?
Also, do you think the MOQ supports compulsory attendance? Public and compulsory
have been historically developed as synonyms (at the K12 levels), but do they
have to be? Should we offer a community supported education in these basic
skills, but leave attendance optional? Or should we continue to force
attendance? Why?
Finally, you seem to support the idea of "intellectual" over "vocational". That
is, publically funded education should focus exclusively on academic or
intellectual areas, and leave job skills, life skills (balancing a checkbook)
out. That is, MOQ public schools would have no connection with "getting a job"
(other than a tangental one). Is that right?
You see, what I am trying to do is establish first what educational goals a MOQ
society would have, then draw funding and attendance from that. If the goals
would be basic skills, we can make the cut-off say around 12 years of age.
There is no point to continue to 18. If the goal is an informed citizenry to
vote (for example), then we'd likely continue longer and offer a great deal of
history (as opposed to vocational education, hygiene, etc.)
I'll try to flesh out ideas I have in a subsequent post. Sorry that all I have
right now are questions.
Arlo
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