I find it unbelievable that this even needs to be said, but here goes:
The point of education is not to fill your head with facts, dates, numbers, names, words, and grammar constructions that you will never forget and will be able to reproduce, like a perky little parrot, 30 years later. Educators are not in the business of training parrots or creating competition for the Google search engine. Surprise!
The actual purpose of education is to develop your capacity to think, read critically, form logical connections, construct arguments, reason, and experience the need to grow intellectually for as long as possible. Educators are not always successful in this project but that’s the goal.
Everything else can be done by Google. Or trained parrots.
This is why asking “But what was the point of taking that class on math / history / politics of medieval Spain / Japanese grammar, etc if today I remember nothing from the material?” is a very stupid thing to do.
And to finish up the post with something less self-evident: today is Friday.
Clarissa's Blog 
\ The point of education is not to fill your head with facts, dates, numbers, names, words, and grammar constructions
I thought the point of school education is to create loyal citizens who will contribute to the nation state by
A. participating in the economy (math and English required)
B. serving in IDF
Since Arab students won’t do B, a state is less interested to invest in their education, as you mentioned in the previous post.
\ And to finish up the post with something less self-evident: today is Friday.
According to the Jewish tradition, it’s already Saturday. 🙂
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Well, I did say it was less self-evident. 🙂
This is not a post about Israel, by the way, Private Ivanov (the one from the joke who always thinks about broads.) It’s about education at large.
I was in a vile mood but your comment made me smile, so I’m grateful.
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\ It’s about education at large.
To be fair, the discussion began regarding school education in a nation state (of Israel), so I expressed an opinion about it. I don’t think people promoting this law thought about education in most general way.
\ I was in a vile mood but your comment made me smile, so I’m grateful.
Always glad to help. 🙂
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It’s already Saturday in Australia, too. (I’m trying to be totally noncontroversial in this thread.) 🙂
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Some places in Russia are on Saturday, too. Which brings me to the noncontroversial fact that Putin sucks. 🙂
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Are your sure? I thought he blew. 🙂
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I got accepted! I got accepted!
On a more related note–I’ve come to the realization now that this is partly why physics just wasn’t for me. I had an insanely difficult time making connections to the material. It seemed so far away. I’m much happier in a place where I can make connections all over the place.
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Congratulations! Where?
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Thanks! It’s a state university near my home. I’m transferring from another uni and also sort of my local community college–where exactly I’m transferring from is kind of complicated.
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I knew it!!!!!!! Congratulations! And they knew you were a great choice from the start, given how fast they made the decision.
What is your new discipline, if I may ask?
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Thank you! I want to major in Math and take a bunch of courses in Biology so I can eventually do something with biological modeling. That’s the long-term goal, anyway. The short-term goal is to take math and bio and see where it takes me. 😀
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Cool! That sounds like a great plan. It’s always best to move away from things that don’t make you entirely happy.
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I too get fed up with people complaining about foreign language requirements (especially) as if ‘forgettin’g the language (once everyday contact ceases) renders the effort meaningless.
Learning foreign languages has a lot of knock on beneficial effects that are very hard to achieve any other way including meta-language awareness (becoming aware of one’s own language in a new way) and increasing communicative competence (in Europe monolingual British people are the worst at actually communicating with non-native speakers).
To be able to pass courses in foreign languages requires sustained effort and learning time management and pacing skills (cramming for an exam is less effective than with any other subject). There’s more, but that’s a start.
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Great points. And it’s absolutely true that cramming is useful, so students have to come up with different studying strategies.
Another benefit of foreign language classes is that students’ native language improves. When we study the if – clauses, students find out how to form them correctly in English. For many it’s a revelation.
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