Wie unser Bildungssystem verbessert werden sollte

Der Philosoph Richard Carrier (Sense and Goodness without God) macht eine Reihe von Vorschlägen, wie wir unser Bildungssystem verbessern sollten. Dem ist nichts hinzuzufügen:

In general, I would like to see increasing universal improvements in education. In particular, I want our education system to shift from a memory-based to a skills-based model. For example, now we ask students to memorize lists and facts (as in science and history), and mechanically reproduce procedures (as in math and language), without actually teaching them any skills. Instead of teaching history as long lists of names and dates, history should be taught as cause and effect, with an emphasis on historical method: how do we know what we know about history, how do we test and challenge claims about history, when should we be humble or cautious about historical claims and why.

Science should be taught in terms of method: how did ancient scientists figure out what they did, how do we test scientific claims today, what sorts of general and specific methods work, how can they be adapted to other things, what lessons have we learned about assumptions or methods that misled us in the past.

Mathematics should be about why math is useful, it should be about application, what is it for, how can we use it, and to that end statistics should replace algebra as the primary focus of required course work, so students know how to evaluate statistical claims made in the media and elsewhere, and algebra and other maths should focus less on memorizing procedures and more about how those maths can be used in the real world to accomplish things, and what the equations and symbols represent in the real world. For example, calculus makes a great deal more sense, and teaches us a great deal more of use, when we understand that it’s not just a complicated calculation procedure, but that equations in calculus are literally sentences describing physical, often three dimensional shapes, and that we can use those descriptions to predict things about those shapes, such as in the very way Newton designed the calculus for.

And philosophy should be a required subject at all grade levels beginning at least at middle school, again not as a history of philosophy or survey of philosophical positions and ideas, but as a skill, an actual practice and procedure, a set of questions and a method, an understanding of why those questions are important, how their answers affect everything up to and including the moral and political decisions we make, how to find and test those answers on our own, and how using the tools of self-examination and critical thinking about life can make us happier, better people.

Superbe!