Reading, Writing and Arithmetic
Illiteracy sucks.
As of about 8 hours ago I'm back in Canada. However, yesterday I was in Japan and it was a beautiful country but awfully rough to get around. You see I do not understand how to read Japanese nor do I speak the language. So yesterday I was walking through the pathway to the subway station thinking...being illiterate must suck. I mean never knowing if a sign is important like "Beware of live electrical wires" or mundane like "Parking $150 / month". Now I'm not truly illiterate as I am fluent in English but in Japan I feel lost and out of place.
An image from my travels. Prepared meals at a local grocery store. They look yummy but without being able to read the labels I have no idea what they are or how much they cost. Thank goodness for Google lens.
A couple of days earlier I was reading a Filipino news article high rates of functional illiteracy in the Philippines. Of course I had heard about illiteracy both in language and mathematics but I'd never heard of functional illiteracy before this article. Of course I had to find the difference. Illiteracy is when you cannot read or write whereas functional illiteracy is when you can read or write but have no idea what it means. In my case when I was in Japan sometimes I could read some items I saw because I understand part of their written language. However, just because I can read "Arimasu" on a sign doesn't mean I understand what that actually means. Or in the case of my mom I can tell her about her finances and what she has invested in but when I get into the technical details her eyes glaze over...she understands the individual words but not what I'm talking about.
Looking at it now I believe I've run into functional at my work:
Don't know the alphabet.
In one case I had my technician ask where the prescription for "Mr Brown" was located. I told them it was in the pickup area filed alphabetically under "B". They looked through the pick up area but weren't successful in finding it and came back to me asking where it was. I was puzzled but was more explicit this time "On the top shelf alphabetical after 'A' and before 'C' then she understood. In time I learned that she truly did not know her alphabet. Yes she could sing the alphabet song but when it came to actually using that to find things filed alphabetically she was unable to do it.
Don't know mathematics
A similar problem happened with a different worker. I asked them to help me count tablets. In this case I asked them to count 90 tablets out of a bottle with 100. They were going to count up to 90 by 5s. Now I count up all the time but I usually find it faster to take the stock bottle and remove a small quantity. Why bother counting by 18 sets of five tablets when you can just pour out the bottle and remove two sets of 5. Much less work to count twice rather than eighteen times. I mentioned that to the helper and they looked at me blankly. My words were "you can count up to 90 but its way faster to count down from 100. She asked "How do you do that" and I said, well, how many do you have to take out from 100 to get 90 Her response "It's too early to do math. Maybe 50?" and that's when I knew that she totally didn't know how subtraction works. Or I should rephrase that. My helper showed "functionally illiteracy" when they couldn't perform the most basic functions in math even if she was taught how subtraction works, If she was told what is 100-10 she might be able to do it but when a real world 100-10 problem came up she couldn't figure it out
Which makes me wonder what our schools are for?
If asked I'm sure that most people would say "To Educate our Children". However, that is very vague and maybe not actually accurate. I'm going to say that there are a few reasons that schools exist and perhaps its not always related to education.
- It gives parents somewhere to leave their children while they go to work.
- It gives the state a way to promote their social values to keep society in line
- It provides routine where children get up every morning and go to "work" every day so they think it is normal to just do what they are supposed to every day
- It educates children about the world, how it works, and their place in it.
- It gives children literacy and numeracy so they can understand the world around them.
- It provides skills so that children know how to learn so that when they are adults they can satisfy their curiosity about any number of things they may wish to know.
I would say that schools do all of those things to some degree with some focused on one area more than others. However what their focus is can make a big difference in how the school functions. As a simple initial example if a school wants the children to know about the world and everything in it they may give lots of homework so they can fill their brain with facts. However, if the school is more about routine then it may very well be more 9am - 3pm and do what we can during that time.
But how about I look a little more at each possible outcome.
Just doing their time
Let's look back at those two helpers I talked about earlier. I happen to know that each of them graduated from High School. I was kind of shocked at their illiteracy because I thought that Grade 12 students should have a basic understanding of math and language? I understand there are modified curriculum for some people, that some students may just be bumped ahead for non-academic reasons. Or perhaps their parents "donate" a bunch of the money to the school for a grade so their child doesn't get a failing grade in school. However, if the school is just somewhere that kids go so parents can work...then it makes sense that the school may not care as much if minimum standards aren't met and the child is just "doing their time".
There is an Adam Sandler movie called "Back to School" where a wealthy father pays the school to pass his child along. The movie is about a man who thinks he is a high school graduate but in all honesty he is unprepared and uneducated. He decides he wants to have a real education and then goes "back to school" starting with kindergarten as a full grown adult. Very funny show. However, it is sad that there are real world examples of students who are just passed along up and graduate unready for the world.
No kid left behind
Unfortunately in some schools children are automatically just moved up to the next grade regardless of academic performance. The reason: It is hurtful to a child's sense of worth if they feel like a failure. Of course no-one wants to feel left out or a failure and if your friends and classmates all move up a grade and you don't that's hurtful? In Canada today the focus is on everyone moving up the ladder at the same pace so everyone feels included. Unfortunately that means the brightest get bored because things move so slowly. They are forced to do things at the speed of the slowest in class limiting their progress. This also doesn't take into account the fact that some children don't care and others do. If you slow the class down to the speed of those who don't care you are limiting the teaching that happens for those who do.
Facts or Indoctrination
An image of my son in the catacombs under Intramuros. A place where Japanese "interrogated" and killed many Filipino during World War 2.
"Train up a child in the way they should live and when they are old they will not depart from it". A quote from the Bible and I believe that it does have some merit behind it. Teachers are in charge of young minds and can have a huge influence on the world views of the children. Indeed when I was in the Philippines the museums talk about the Filipino dead at the hands of Japanese in World War 2. In Japan they talk about neighborhoods razed to the ground by bombing. Guess what. Both of those stories are true but the Filipino get a negative view of the Japanese while the Japanese get a negative view of the people who bomb them. The government gets to set the curriculum and the narrative that is given. Those standards can influence views for the rest of someone's life. If you start the kids off with a strong national pride when young it sticks. If you start the kids off with a strong desire to save the planet when older it sticks. If you promote the arts, science or even athletics it again sticks when they are older. LGBTQ views and bias start early so if you want to have a more accepting (or less accepting) viewpoint you can shape it far more easily in children.
But should school be about training children to be a cohesive in national or ethical views after they graduate? Should school just teach people basic education skills so they can function in society? Should the school have a much broader focus to give children a strong base of facts on which they can base their future world views and ideas? Or should it be something different?
What's the point of a school
So far I've taken a cursory glance at the role of schools: Babysitter? Indoctrinator? Workplace conditioner? Most people want "Education" though because the idea is that is what schools are for. However, how do you define education?
Is education:
- Giving children basic skills in reading, writing and arithmetic?
- Giving children facts about the world and a view of history to know their place in space and time?
- Do we use the platform to shape world views or make it objective to the individual
- Do we teach children skills on how to learn so they can decide for themselves what is important to know?
- Or perhaps its just a competition to figure out who can recite facts back to the teacher so they can prove they are smartest
Parents views on what children should be taught is divisive. Some parents want students to have a standard "learn facts", "recite facts", get recognized for memory work with strong grades. Other parents don't want school to be competitive. They want children to learn skills so they can function in the world and make it non-competitive so they feel happy and worthwhile regardless of their mental capacity. Of course, employers want adults who are bright enough to do the tasks they ask of them.
Promote Curiosity or Memorization
I believe that at its core it comes down to a decision of either "teaching students facts" or "giving students tools". If you give them facts they "know things" if you give them tools they can "figure things out" on their own. Both have merits.
This is actually pretty important. Go back to a time before the internet and it was pretty important to children in school to learn the facts. Learn geography, learn history and learn about different types of sciences and arts. Why? Because people didn't have the entire knowledge of human history and research on their computer through internet or increasingly through AI. So it actually made a difference if someone know those facts from memory.
With the advent of the Internet and AI? Finding facts that would take a long time before is just a trivial task now. For example in 1970 if I wanted to know the most current census data for wages in the Philippines finding out would have been a daunting task. Now it is a simple sentence typed into Google or sending a verbal question to ChatGPT. Memorizing facts takes a lot of time but does it actually make people smarter. I suppose you could say yes learning facts does make someone have more knowledge but the information in this world is growing at a fast pace and what is known toady may be obsolete tomorrow. In that way learning facts is a never ending and always changing feat that uses an awful lot of energy for little return.
But knowing how to vet sources? Knowing how to look for information. Knowing how to go down rabbit holes and learn about useful things of interest to the individual? That seems to be more useful to me. A student trained this way a student may have no idea where Nigeria is in correlation to Kenya but at least they could figure it out with just a voice command to Google or other search engine/AI. Knowing how to learn and where to look for quality information seems more useful to me than just taking a big pile of data and committing it to memory.
Preparation for real life
At the end of the day I believe that school should teach children how to be functioning adults. Being illiterate just yesterday tells me that the most basic human feats--Communication and Mathematics are vitally important. I think every person should be able to read signs added to save their life. Should be able to read how much something costs and figure out if they have enough money to afford it. Be able to read instructions and follow them...like how to get on the train and get where they are going.
Learning the basics on how the world works and the nature of things is also really useful. In that way the children have a wider world of how things work so they can ask better questions of the AI or Internet.
However, I don't think that homework is the way for most children. Why not? Well, kids are just kids once. The world will wear them down with overtime work and tedious tasks to make the money needed to live. Why introduce them to long days of tedious work when there is no real need. Most of those facts they are learning via memory just add a way to grade the children without actually providing much real world versatility. I'd much rather have someone with solid basic foundational knowledge but who needs to look up the population of Malawi when needed than someone with a bunch of useless facts they can spout off if needed but little real world versatility.
Do some children need homework? Absolutely. Not everyone is as bright as everyone else. If a child can't read or write they should absolutely have to practice at home to hone those skills to the point where they can function effectively. If a child can't do mathematics and calculate things necessary for living then absolutely they should practice at home so they can master those fundamental skills. However, I also believe that for those who master it quickly and understand it by the time the class finish shouldn't have to do more work when the school bell ends.
Having said that learning can actually be fun. If the class is working on a project to learn about farming and a child wants to go deeper than class time allows? Of course take it home and finish it on their own time. Give the child the ability to follow curiosity and be rewarded for being inquisitive.
Homework should not be the default mode for children's learning. Homework should be an option for students who either want to follow things more or need more practice to get things down firmly. At least for children.
For adult students things change. Some topics are just too vast for teachers to go over everything and at University? Homework rules. Adults aren't children. Adults need to learn more than the basics, they need to go deeper. Our Doctors and Nurses need far more than just to sit in class and listen to lectures. They need to be given the basics and then be sent out to learn the fine details on their own then return to a guiding professor to talk, hone and question what they learned. A very different style of learning that children need.
At the end of the day
School and University are actually vague terms.
People think of them as places of learning but then the question comes: What does learning entail. How do we teach our children? How do we teach our teenagers? How do we teach our adults? What is required and how should it be done. Sometimes it can be a fixed time schedule and sometimes it requires far more work than a fixed schedule allows. Some students are bright and never need to be told something more than once while others need reptition.
Education isn't a one size fits all and everyone is different. One school doesn't fit everyone. One way to learn doesn't fit everyone. One set schedule doesn't fit everyone.
And that's my take on the Hive Learner prompt for today. I'd love to get feedback and as always comments are welcome.