Towards
a More Effective/Sound
World
Basic Education System (1)
Update Note (March 5, 2016): It would not be an overstatement that the all-pervasive and destructive problem
outlined in the articles on this blog can be considered to be arguably the
world’s worst education-related problem – and yet the majority of the
world’s educators are blissfully ignorant of it.
It had not occurred to me earlier to verbalize the problem in exactly those
terms; it was the mental agitation prompted by the request of a UK professor of
education (whose specialty is educational
policy) to remove his name from my mailing list that led me to that outcome. Humanity's future would continue to be gloomy given our current sorry state of affairs – devastating nature of that problem which
in fact would lend to a significant reduction with the right kind of educational
policy coupled with a total lack of
awareness of that vital and critical problem by a majority of the world’s educators. (See also footnote to article # 12)
A Clarification: It should be clear from my writings, particularly this article, that the problem originates in the way the human mind works – the way we make sense of the world – and that world education only exacerbates an already existing problem, by: i) not being aware of even its existence, and as a consequence, ii) not taking action to counter its ill effects while inadvertently exacerbating them. It should also be clear from the writings that any solution, however effective / efficient, can be only partial since we don’t have control over the way the human mind works.
A Clarification: It should be clear from my writings, particularly this article, that the problem originates in the way the human mind works – the way we make sense of the world – and that world education only exacerbates an already existing problem, by: i) not being aware of even its existence, and as a consequence, ii) not taking action to counter its ill effects while inadvertently exacerbating them. It should also be clear from the writings that any solution, however effective / efficient, can be only partial since we don’t have control over the way the human mind works.
The purpose of this article is to outline elements of a more effective/sound world basic education system that can contribute to human wellbeing to a far greater extent than the current one. In fact, it can be seen from my earlier writings that the current system contributes significantly to the detriment of human wellbeing, thus it can be considered to be a flawed system. It can also be inferred from the writings that the source of this ill effect lies at its basic level rather than higher levels. Additionally, they show that educators are largely unaware of these flaws and thus are indifferent to their ill-effects and the havoc they are responsible for creating unwittingly by not doing what they should be doing.
There are two central aspects that lend to these problems: i) the failure of the current system to take account of the nature of the way human mind works and ill effects arising thereof, and ii) its failure to cater for the most basic areas which an effective/sound basic education system should address.
Regarding the latter, or the constituent areas of a good basic education system, a most fundamental question is, “What is the
purpose of a basic education?”
The answer would be manifold, among them: i) endowing children with a
basic understanding of the natural and social worlds around them; ii)
instilling in them the basics of knowledge and skills needed to live in and
interact with both groups harmoniously; and iii) helping to
draw out talents latent in them by providing the right environments and guiding
them to help develop those potentials. To my limited knowledge, few, if any, of these vital and indispensable goals are met by the
current world education system – and much of the world’s current troubles
can be easily traced to precisely that deficiency.
Regarding the former, or the way the human mind works (which
is in fact more fundamental than the second one; it touches the core of our
being), three interrelated areas can be identified, each cascading into the next
level: i) the way we make sense of the world around us since the earliest days
of our existence; ii) the way we prepare for life ahead of us while growing up
and the way we interact with others; and iii) the way we function – or rather,
don’t function – in societal decision making milieus. We shall expand on these three areas first and
return to address the central areas which a good basic education system should address, given that the former helps shape the latter.
Making Sense of the World: This is a vital area that underlies most of the problems mentioned in my writings; it also underlies the two factors that follow. From the time we were in our mothers’ wombs we begin to make sense of the world based on the information we receive through our senses – that is, we process it by attributing meaning to it. On being born, we are subject to a much more intense barrage of new information, and we have to make sense of them as well in order to survive. Given that what each person experiences by his/her encounter with the world will be specific to each, it is simple common sense that there cannot be much commonality among what each of us attributes to a given stimulus, and we would continue to become increasingly unique in our mental makeup. This is despite socialization processes to which we are subject to from the toddler years on, which work to even out those differences – for they would have limited success, and the differences in meanings we attach to our experiences can never be fully evened out. The process would continue throughout our lives, and we would become increasingly unique by the day. The implication of this process relevant to our topic is that it would create extreme difficulties for meaningful communication among people, which mandates sufficient commonalities (common language) among people but which the above processes render largely non-existent.
Making Sense of the World: This is a vital area that underlies most of the problems mentioned in my writings; it also underlies the two factors that follow. From the time we were in our mothers’ wombs we begin to make sense of the world based on the information we receive through our senses – that is, we process it by attributing meaning to it. On being born, we are subject to a much more intense barrage of new information, and we have to make sense of them as well in order to survive. Given that what each person experiences by his/her encounter with the world will be specific to each, it is simple common sense that there cannot be much commonality among what each of us attributes to a given stimulus, and we would continue to become increasingly unique in our mental makeup. This is despite socialization processes to which we are subject to from the toddler years on, which work to even out those differences – for they would have limited success, and the differences in meanings we attach to our experiences can never be fully evened out. The process would continue throughout our lives, and we would become increasingly unique by the day. The implication of this process relevant to our topic is that it would create extreme difficulties for meaningful communication among people, which mandates sufficient commonalities (common language) among people but which the above processes render largely non-existent.
Specialization: Adding to above difficulties of getting across to others are the complexities arising from specialization, which is the primary driver of human advancement. But with regard to the topic of human communication, it forms a huge impediment. Thus specialization is a double-edged sword – while it constitutes the bedrock on which modern societies are built, it also exacerbates downsides arising from the processes described in the previous paragraph beyond comprehension. This again is an area simple common sense can be of much help in understanding. Given that we make sense of and understand the world relying on the information bases in our brains (paragraph above) we can also infer that while those specialized in a given area (that is, their heads will be full of information in their specialized areas but not much of other areas) can engage in meaningful high-level dialogue with those in that area, it would be virtually impossible to have such dialogue with those in another area, since they would not have a common background of shared meaning. And real-life problems are complex and entwined and are not ordered into neat packages that lend to easy scrutiny by the specialized in the respective areas, and we can clearly see what the state of interaction/communication and decision making in modern democratic societies would be like.
Public Policy Making: Much debate is abound in forums and the media as to how to tackle complex societal problems, and some have fertile imaginations as to how they can be solved. (2) But except for a few problems of limited scope, few can come up with relevant solutions to them. The reason is obvious: complex problems cannot be solved or future planning carried out when people specialized in required fields but with no overlaps in their specializations are gathered together; to succeed, they have to acquire that overlap (without which they cannot communicate meaningfully with those in a different area), which is a laborious and time consuming process and which today’s fast-moving societies are ill-equipped to handle. Although such overlap is not uncommon in the private sector and a few public institutions that manage to provide necessary continuity and staying power (the problems they can handle successfully are also limited in scope), public policy making (which in practice is highly complex) in modern democratic nations is not so endowed, especially given that those at high levels of the system who can mobilize the necessary forces and get the situation moving in the right direction are replaced with every turn of the political wheel, and no one in reality can be responsible, even if their nation goes under, and what is expedient for the next election carries the day.(3) It is thus unlikely that there would be many people in the governments of democratic nations who can actually take responsibility for reforming any of their public systems. This in turn will spawn a multitude of societal ills and associated dissatisfactions. The suggestions of my writings, if adopted, will lead to a significant reduction of the drawbacks arising from the currently ineffective public policy making process and thus reduce the plethora of damages arising thereof, and as a result vastly improve human wellbeing.
We can now turn to address the central areas which a good basic education system should address. Focus on “basic” education is for two reasons: i) it is in early, formative years that a child’s basic characteristics – values, beliefs, habits, etc, are formed; and ii) beginning from middle school years, children begin to specialize into increasingly limited domains. This is apart from that, as stated at the outset, it is at this level that roots of our problems lie. Hence it is of utmost importance that a broad, solid foundation be laid in the early years on which specialized education can be built later.
Understanding the Nature of the World: As mentioned in the third paragraph, helping youngsters to understand the nature of the world they live in should be among the first areas that an effective basic education system should address. This necessity arises from our very human nature – apart from any practical concerns. We are not only endowed with a curiosity about how the world works and the cause-effect relations involved, we also have a deep foreboding about any uncertainties associated with it – for not only our ultimate fate but our daily survival is dependent on it. (An enlightening example is the intense fear young children have about never seeing their parents again if they leave them and go out, hence the tantrums they throw whenever parents go out.) And given that people in general have very sparse knowledge of how the world works (understanding of those with specialized knowledge is limited largely to their specific speciality, and even that only over a brief historical period), we are compelled to compensate by attributing what we don’t understand to higher powers to maintain our peace of mind and ultimately our sanity and by begging for help in fulfilling our needs and guarding our wellbeing both at present and hereafter. This in fact has been the dominant theme of human beings for the last ten thousand years of their known history, and it is true for the vast majority, if not all, of humanity even at present. The tendency for this theme to manifest in its various radicalized guises in the Middle East and US Bible Belt, for example, and in more benign forms everywhere is a sobering reminder of the failure of the world’s current basic education system to address this fundamental area of human needs: to enable us understand the nature of the world. (Given the demand, supply means emerge in multiple forms – shamans, priests and mullahs of all stripes, psychics, fortune-tellers, horoscope writers, etc, etc, all claiming to know how the world works, and based on that, influence outcomes; the intermediary role they take also gives them much latitude for creative expression.) The above is besides practical necessities for which we need to understand the world and its intricacies – including our interactions with it so that we can be better stewards of it instead of mindlessly destroying it in pursuit of material gain and endangering in the process the fragile setting we call home and depend on for our very survival.
Understanding the Social World and Interactions Thereof: We live in societies and yet do not seem to have the sense to endow our young with the basic knowledge and skill necessary for interacting and communicating with the other members of the society in a harmonious way. (Higher animals, on the other hand, do teach their young about their world and how to survive in them.) This is especially deplorable since, as we saw in the paragraph on making sense of the world above, our very make-up poses significant natural barriers to smooth interaction among people, and as if this is not enough, the specialization process further exacerbates those barriers enormously, which in turn leads to most ineffective and inefficient societal processes. And yet when we so proudly boast endlessly about our achievements, we don’t seem to understand a most elementary aspect of human nature that is central to our wellbeing. My writings have suggested a partial but simple and effective solution to this complex problem – they pointed out that the current defects can be reduced significantly by instilling the right attitudes in children in earlier years, followed by teaching them in later years the essentials of communication and related psychology. (For details, see the short piece titled “Reason for Sending My Articles” and the first paragraph of “12 – Empathy and Fundamentalism,” which laid emphasis on creating in children “an attitude to listen.”) Supplementary to this is “an attitude to learn,” the lack of which is acutely felt in institutional settings, judging by the large amount of literature on the topic, which is echoed in the concept of “life-long learning”; this is especially crucial given the fast-changing nature of today's world which renders that much of what we meet on a daily basis would be new. Another aspect integral to human interaction, apart from attitudes, is the values we hold about various issues. This topic also had been given some thought in my writings. (For details, see the end of “Last Explanation.”) Still another area that can smoothen societal interaction processes and help lead to high levels of human wellbeing is the sense of cooperation or non-cooperation that we hold. Although not touched upon in the paragraph referred to – which focuses on communication, this would be part of “attitudes” we hold, and will affect our wellbeing. And numerous current occasions, not to mention abundant past ones, show that a sense of cooperation can be of so much benefit to all parties concerned. A final area that should be part of a good basic education system is logical thinking – ability to follow up on the logic of arguments one encounters and build conclusions on them rather than preconceived notions, and to organize one’s thinking along the same lines. This would be effective as a habit, not rote-learnt knowledge – see the paragraph referred to above. In general, the right attitudes have to be instilled in children, who adopt what they observe – right or wrong – as they grow up, and right attitudes don’t just “happen” – see “entropy,” below. I believe that much of people’s irrational behaviour, including their inability to face reality and general adult immaturity, are ramifications of their not having acquired the right skills – much like our inability to relieve unrelenting socio-psychological pressures oftentimes leads, gradually and over time, to full-blown psychos. And I’m not suggesting “social engineering” – whatever that means, as an emeritus professor of philosophy commented on my writings some time back. In the same way we currently impart to the young our hard-won knowledge as formal education, we ought to do the same for the right kind of values and attitudes and other intangibles that humanity found valuable, which are just as important, instead of leaving them abandoned to start from scratch to reinvent the wheel. (We can get an actual feel for the difficulties/hazards of this tedious process if we reflect on the torturous/turbulent histories of the various branches of knowledge and technological conveniences that we now take for granted.) And without doing so, it will be futile to complain about societal ills that are direct outcomes of this lack, as is currently the case. A critical point to keep in mind in this regard is that the foundation of our behaviour is laid when we are children and that as adults we only sail by autopilot guiding systems we acquire then (in the Maldives, we have an old phrase expressive of such permanency, "stuck to the bone"; an equivalent English expression being "in the blood") – with a helping hand from our evolutionary past; our conscious and rational minds more often than not merely affirm and justify what our unconscious minds had already decided upon, hence the critical and decisive role played by our values, attitudes, and habits in our everyday behaviours, and thus the utmost need to instill the right kind of values, attitudes, and habits in children if we want a better world, since they don't just "happen." (Readers unfamiliar with this line of thinking/reasoning might want to consult an experienced psychologist instead of jumping to erroneous/unwarranted conclusions.)
Drawing Out Talents Latent in the Young: The primary purpose of a basic education (in fact formal education systems in general) is to help children to grow and develop both physically and mentally, and to impart to them the wisdom of our foreparents and help them to be capable of contributing to society and themselves, and also the world at large. Thus a central part of a basic education system should be to help systematically develop the potential of each of us. And given that we all have the potential to develop in more than one area and that such development can be enhanced significantly by the right kind of opportunity – just as a muscle can develop by weight training, facilitating this process by providing measures aimed at maximizing the human potential has to be a central part of a good basic education system, particularly since the windows of opportunity for such growth are open only when we are children. And this should be supplemented with the right kind of career guidance. Currently, the most we are able to get, if we get, is a one-time aptitude assessment. The cost of the mismatch between potential and career path is enormous; we see people realizing the existence of a mismatch only after having wasted years pursuing the wrong path, at which point they would also be burdened with many responsibilities of life, thus making a switch not only costly in money terms but psychologically painful. Thus streamlining this process and providing the means for maximizing the human potential has to be an important and vital part of any good basic education system.
An obvious observation regarding the suggestions of my writings, including this one, is that they are generic and not age-specific, thus what should be included at what stage has to be decided by those qualified to make that decision. Given that a theory component is integral to the suggestions and since young children are not equipped to handle theory, it is only logical that these parts of the program would naturally spill into levels higher than the realm of “basic education”; in my view, they should be spread over a number of years, with increasing complexity as one goes higher.
It is abundantly clear from the above arguments that humanity has so much to gain by a thorough overhaul of its currently faulty basic education system. The above are core areas that I find should be incorporated into the world’s basic education system and are relevant to humanity at large and will increase societal wellbeing beyond our most fertile imaginations, although different nations would likely add to their curriculums other areas they feel would cater for their specific needs.
Many people hold the implicit belief that the world functions well on a laissez-faire basis and thus that all reforms, including those in the education sector, would happen spontaneously through a multitude of continued societal interactions, with everyone pursuing their own interests. In reality, however, the world works in exactly the opposite way, and obeys a fundamental universal law of nature – entropy, or disorder in everyday language. Simply expressed, it implies that in the absence of an overarching guiding force, events (in the universe) would tend to disorder – and chaos.(4) Thus the more people involved, the more ideas and the more diversified they will be, and while this is valuable for generating new ideas and creativity and innovation at earlier stages of public policy formulation, the process by itself will not lead to coherent policy; spontaneous synthesis by sporadic interactions of the multitude does not happen.(5) (This latter expression shares the central theme of the saying, “A monkey pounding at a keyboard likely cannot produce a Shakespearean play.”) Coherent synthesis can be achieved by ironing out differences of opinions as to what goals should be aimed for and by delving into details of the process through which they can be reached.
And for that to happen requires leadership – the guiding force that can help channel concordant and discordant voices towards coherent synthesis. As stated in my earlier writings, I’ve been hoping that such leadership would emerge from among the more experienced of world educators – those more aware of the nuances of the deplorable situation experienced by world’s populations, which situation would have been vastly improved had the more senior of the world’s educators paid heed.
In the short piece labelled “Cover Note” we saw a glimpse into the haphazard, directionless way the current world education system had evolved. But given the fast-changing, thus complex nature of our world, we are at a crossroads and do not have the luxury of leisurely tinkering around in the system hoping that things will improve; the world is changing too fast for that to be practical. And we now have an accurate understanding of many areas that contribute to the jeopardy of human wellbeing. In addition, I have suggested a feasible pathway towards achieving the ends we seek (see the account at the beginning of the second part of “Last Explanation” – article # 9 (2014)).
The time has come for the world educators to rally for action; they should no longer be indifferent to a situation for the exacerbated condition of which they are largely responsible – for not being aware of the existence of the problem and thus being ignorant of the dire outcomes of some of their actions and, as result, for not doing what they should be doing to offset them. There is no excuse for inaction. If clarification/elaboration of what was said in my writings is needed, please contact me; we could also establish real-time interaction via Skype.
[To respond to a legitimate and likely common concern about such contact, let me state that while numerous educators have been referred to in these articles, I have taken utmost care not to reveal their identities either directly or even by implication. I have done the referencing in the common interest of all readers – to share with them any relevant knowledge about the topic that I possess. And I offer no apologies if some of my phraseology had displeased some – for the simple reason that watered-down phraseology would in all likelihood destroy the very purpose of the referencing, and given this, make any apology hypocritical. To evaluate these claims, readers might ask two simple questions: i) Did the referencing add to their insight of the topic? and ii) Could any watered-down phraseology have achieved that objective as effectively? It would also be worth mentioning a satisfying aspect of referencing the way I had done, judging by a few very brief thank you notes I received from some senior educators – that those who "got" the point being made (see footnote to article # 12) had no problem with my phraseology, that is, they saw it appropriate to the occasion, while those who saw it a problem did not in all likelihood "get it," and thus most likely would not have the capability of contributing to the effort of this blog, at least not to any significant extent. A corroborating aspect is that I'm not running a "politically correct" campaign here; this is a desperate effort to search for underlying factors of a deplorable truth that is in effect chocking humanity, and pave the path for reversing the tide and raise the human kind to unprecedented heights, which calls for those who are not competent to get out of the way(6) so that a good job could get done. And it is only on a solid and unshakable foundation that meaningful participation of the crowd can happen.]
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(1) While some people, particularly those from the more technically and economically advanced nations, may object for their being lumped together with the much less advanced nations, the reality is that today the world is being integrated virtually in every sphere. Notwithstanding that Western education was based on Greek philosophy, as was the case with Moslem theological philosophy – after Arab conquest of Egypt and gaining access to the contents of the Great Library of Alexandria, and that the revival of Greek philosophy in the West during the Renaissance happened through accessing its depositories in both Egypt and the then Moslem Spain, integration in the sphere of knowledge had started long before the recent phenomenon of “globalization” and mass movement of people, goods, and services (outcomes of improved air and sea transport with the advent of wide-bodied jets and containerized superships; the process having been much accelerated by the advent of the Internet and the computerization of services, which enabled swift global communication and money transfers), for beginning from the days of steam-driven ships and railways, people (though limited in earlier years of the era to societal elites) have been enabled increasingly to cross lands and oceans to gain knowledge, do business, and meet to exchange ideas – not to mention simply in search of a better life, as evidenced by the mass migrations of Europeans to the New World . Consequently, there is hardly a nation the education system of which can be called “pure”; they are all “mixed.” This is particularly true given the legacy of imperialism; prior to the Second World War, most of the now “developing” nations were under the yoke of Europeans and the various systems of those nations were modelled largely on their legacy. Also, while different cultures may have retained elements of their uniqueness, they are limited largely to specific areas; religion, for example, is limited to only related fields and does not venture into the spheres of science and medicine. Thus it would make better sense to talk of one world education system rather than many systems of individual nations or even groups of nations. This position is further enhance by the fact that here we are attempting to formulate a basic system relevant to humanity at large in our fast-changing and thus complex world and transcends culture and creed.
(2)
This Newsweek cover story and other
such articles highlight the complexities of public policy making; the topic (US
Government’s policy making process and downsides thereof) was also covered in
an article I wrote in May 2009 which, among other things, sketched out the
broader outlines of measures that the US could adopt to overcome a significant
part of current downsides – this was the “first article” mentioned at
the outset of “2 – Education and Fundamentalism” (2012) and was meant to be published
on my complementary blog www.rifatafeefuspolicy.blogspot.com
(created concurrently with this blog) but was postponed lest it diverts focus
from the topic of this blog, but hopefully I’ll be able to upload it before Mr
Obama becomes practically dysfunctional in office, particularly since the
article was addressed to him and was sent to him along with the then top officers
of his administration. A few months
apart from this Newsweek article, Time magazine also ran an article on the same
theme; its cover picture showed “We the People …” coming out of a shredder – naturally,
that act wouldn’t solve the problems of an archaic policy making system; the
solution lies in understanding that the world has changed since the days of the
Founding Fathers and is changing at an accelerated pace, and adapting to the
realities of the times by modifying the present system to accommodate current
necessities, including realities of the way the human mind works as discussed in this article. The first article
mentioned above had tried to incorporate these concerns.
(3) Plato proclaimed that democracy was “the rule of the mob”; given the lapse of two-and-a-half
millennia and the transformations that had occurred in human societies in the
intervening eras, I’d opt for “the rule of the media circus.”
(5) The usual format for expressing such diverse views is international conferences on a given topic, but sadly their results don’t go very far beyond collated proceedings, and while valuable by themselves, such diversified views left in that form could be considered worse than useless in terms of policy – given that such conferences could effectively block alternate measures to address the problem in question in view of public hopes in conference mission, while the problem continues in its unabated rampage, creating more misery to humanity; for ideas of conferences don’t get translated into policy by themselves, and improvements that might result from them are likely to be incremental and marginal at best, making their influence on public policy to be minimal. These statements might be easier to swallow if we distinguish conferences on natural sciences from those on social sciences – their natures are different. For while concepts/ideas in natural sciences published in conference proceedings could become input for colleagues who could turn them into tangible form and thus provide their benefits to the millions, those in social sciences will be hard put to see practical light this way; they could become public policy only through concerted efforts that usually don’t exist; of course, they can get incorporated into academic texts and enlighten generations, but that enlightenment doesn’t automatically turn into policy that could better the human condition. (Perhaps I misunderstood: that such conferences are not about solving problems; suggestions in my writings, however, are very definitely about solving a problem: that of a faulty world education system and ramifications thereof, hence my aversion to scholarly papers given my belief in the ineffectiveness of the prevalent variety of international conferences based on such papers in solving pressing global problems – see second paragraph of the second part of the piece referred to above: “9 – Last Explanation.”)
(6) This last phrase was inspired by an utterance of Lee Iacocca during the peak crisis days of the US auto industry in the 1990s, the full version of which was, "Lead, Follow, or Get out of the way" – though an Internet search revealed the quote attributed to a number of other people as well. The problem of unequal ability was dramatically emphasized by Guy Benveniste in Mastering Politics of Planning, which divided those in any organizational setting into three broad categories: "idea people," "climbers," and "dead wood"; the vast majority in any given setting being "dead wood." The problem as relates to education has also been dealt with by many people, two of who I found shed significant light on related aspects were Paul Goodman in Compulsory Miseducation, a slim 1960s paperback, and Professor Will Durant in the preface of The Story of Philosophy, a long quote from which is at the end of "2 – Education & Fundamentalism." The problem of differential ability and the role of education in the outcome had been the topic of discussion and debate over decades but to-date no one seems to have arrived at a convincing and viable answer, most likely due to the enigma it presented which inevitably arose from the complexity of the topic. Nevertheless, the writings on this blog had helped to decipher aspects of that enigma in a broader context. What is required now for a significant release of pressures due to the multitude of education-related problems is to accelerate the momentum of the blog's effort and fortify it with the complementary logical process tentatively outlined in the second part of "9 – Last Explanation."
