Education Part ll

[questor]

i believe if you give it some thought, you'll understand that all morality comes from religious thought. you had to learn your morals somewhere, you didn't create them out of thin air. without religion we would only have morality of animals

[Erasmus00]

Originally Posted by questor

i believe if you give it some thought, you'll understand that all morality comes from religious thought. you had to learn your morals somewhere, you didn't create them out of thin air. without religion we would only have morality of animals

Actually, Kant looked at this question in great depth, and came up with what he thought a moral system not depending at all on religion, but rather based on logic (as GAHD suggests). Pick up Metaphysics of Morals by Kant (its tough reading, but interesting.)
-Will

[IrishEyes]

Don't hijack this thread into the religious realm.
Start up a new thread regarding whether or not morals and religion are intertwined, if you want. That would seem to be a great topic, and would probably have a lot of interest from many different people here.
Please stick to the idea of education, and the original post.


Thanks!!

[rockytriton]

Originally Posted by questor

Rocky, if you need remedial courses in Ebonics, please emigrate to Washington, DC.
it is taught in every high school here and is the mother tongue for most natives.

questor, no need, I already work in the area.

by the way, my dog shows good morals at times, he could eat the cat if he wanted to, but he has better moral judgement... does that mean that my dog has accepted Jesus Christ as his personal savior??????

[questor]

your dog has no morals, he's just like me..,he doesn't like the taste of cat.

[questor]

Irish, you run a very tight ship. it seems to me that morals are one of the most important
aspects of education. education does not consist of only academic subjects. i don't know of anyone that admits to a lack of morality, the subject gets fuzzy when they have to consider where morals come from. frequently they forget that morals are learned from others, and the others are usually some organized religion.

[GAHD]

The morals I specified there do not require this organised religion, just simple logic (and sometimes personal experience) that can be taught in the classroom. If you wish to discuss ths further I agree It should be moved to another threadso this one can stay on the new education topic.


Back to my educational comments, I'd also like to point out

Originally Posted by questor

i think one of our major problems is in thinking we can GIVE someone an education. all we can do is provide facilities and faculties that allow them to educate themselves.

I agree with you, but I will point out that the environment that of the Canadian school systems i have been in was not the greatest. Here I noticed that from grade 4 all that was presented in the class was to relearn everything that we had learned from k-4, until grade 10 when the class was finally permitted to learn new stuff in math class like algebra and trig.
English class was relatively useless (to me) but I was still forced to go. Computer class was 'teaching' basic computer use, when most of the kids in there were trying to learn how to program the macheines, and had learned Basic and HTML programming in middle-school (before the class was discontinued).
All in all the system seemed designed to retard rather than help the sstudent's education, and enforce the 'Simon says' reaction in everybody. Regardless of actual grades, attendance was the main requirement in the school, if you showed up you'd pass, if you didn't you were failed. This is a Major problem in my eyes: if somebody obviously knows everything the class offers, why should they be required to stay there instead of continuing to learn in the next grade or even in another subject? That's why I say that testing is much more important than repetitive work. and will show a student's strong and weak areas much more clearly.

[rockytriton]

I guess we are completely autonomous until religion comes along and gives us thoughts, feelings and morals.

[questor]

do you mean you were raised in a vacumn with no human contact?

[pgrmdave]

Education will not be fixed until a few things happen.

We need to acknowledge that not everybody learns the same way, nor at the same speed - I shouldn't be forced to learn slower than I can any more than someone should be forced to learn faster than they can.

We need to acknowledge that teachers are more important than administrators - teachers have the most contact with the students and know them better than legislators can ever understand.

We need to acknowledge that testing means less than a teacher's recommendation - I am not a number, I am a person, and my teachers can better tell you what I am capable of than my IOWA test scores.

We need to acknowledge that different people require different education - my car mechanic doesn't need to speak French nor does a programmer need to know Chinese history, these subjects, while they should be availible, should not be required.

However, more than anything else, education hinges on one basic thing - teachers. Nothing else will ever have more of a positive or negative effect than a teacher. Until the we can reliably produce well-educated, engaging, and dedicated teachers, our educational system will lag behind what it should be.