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conventional education vs self education
Former Member
Posts: 1,875,648 The Mix Honorary Guru
I keep thinking about this lately, mostly because I'm at university. One of my friends is extreeemely smart and it all seems to be self taught and he reads a lot. I know education varies and is not all about books or academic success but I really admire people who go out and look for the sources to educate themselves. Ahh I hope what I am saying is clear-ish and I hope I posted in the right forum.
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I mean without any kind of guide apart from yourself.
There should be a way for someone to simply go in a uni's exams and try to pass, without having necessarily been there for lessons.
Think that's bad? My year at school was the first to receive a split final exam in maths; a calculator paper and a non-calculator paper. We were told if we ever got a maths related job we would need it. Er, not likely. Accounting, engineering, whatever... all are going to require exact figures you check and tripple check with computers and calculators. There's no room for mental arithmetic or guess work in any math related field.
EDIT: Although I was more meaning other things. For example, I physically couldn't make myself take in things like French as I didn't care, even although a whole lot of other people had no problem with the subject. The same people (and a whole load more) struggled with things like computing however, when I self taught myself a shitload (including a few programming languages etc.) before we were even able to take computing as a subject. Even in computing as a subject, I didn't retain knowledge of the stuff I didn't care about. Seriously, why teach us how to use Claris Works on a Mac from 1993? What the fuck kind of self-respecting company used that software then, nevermind by the time any of us would actually get a job related to computing? Why teach us TrueBASIC? Hell, they even had us drawing some stuff for our unit grades in Paint. "Oh hay big media design firm... guess what I can do? Free-hand circles, fuck yeah!"
the point of algebra is that you can spot systematic errors, rather than one offs - and change them all in one fail swoop
it's also good as a training skill for actually thinking through problems logically, not all problems are human-human problems so to speak
my numeracy = great, so i know when i do a sum on a calculator whether it is reasonable or not, that's what's handy with numeracy skills. My algebra is good, found maths a level straightforward, and could do it in chemistry degree, but not maths degree level which is just scary
my grammar skills =
I'm like that as well, my mental artmetic isnt great but I was always a whizz at algerbra etc. I still know certain things off by heart that I havent used since AS/A Level maths.
I work in accounting and you do need a good head for figures, and not just the basics. Working in tax or management accounting can invlove quite complex calculations and you need to be able to pick on when something doesnt look right or is under/over stated.
In the supermarket when working out what's better value.
I've had jobs where they do test your mental arithmetic before hand, but it's pretty easy
In class, too much time is wasted on useless topics. The quality of education has been sacrificed for quantity, and as a result, academic inflation and the devaluation of information has turned intellectual ambition into apathy and bright minds into gray mush.
In an effort to be multicultural and ecclectic curriculi have become shallow and disorganized in their effort to teach students a global viewpoint. Topics are taught piecemeal, and rarely do teachers spend time to help students integrate the pieces into a coherent picture that can be used or built upon. And even if within a class the ideas are put together, between classes the grand education still remains compartmentalized.
For example, both geometry and physics can be mastered by the average student, but the connection and communication between the two often are not. When physics is taught in a secondary school it involves only the most elementary of geometry concepts, and vice versa. Without synthesis of the two, each remains without purpose or effectiveness.
Such synthesis between topics is neglected in the school curriculum, and consequently the experience in the education system becomes a vague memory of random, meaningless and useless facts, just as a disassembled engine is just a junk heap of random metal parts.
Some school subjects themselves aren't even real knowledge. History books are full of purposely engineered inaccuracies and distortions for the sake of corporate gain and political correctness.
In school you spend more time learning how to obey and what to think, instead of how to think and think for yourself. Almost everything important I ever learned, I learned on my own time.