Eliana Finerman asked for responses to the Bloomberg Beta article regarding school's work being "wildly different from the things that life, and founder life in particular, ask."
I have laryngitis so I cannot shout from the rooftops about how wrong I find that article. It, like most articles of its ilk, is reductionist, overly simplistic and smacks of ignorance of education and, dare I say it, life. If I sound angry it is because, yes, I'm angry. At an article.
Go figure.
My first concern is that the items on the left side are often not mutually exclusive with the items on the right side. It is in the creation of a false binary that we fail; instead, we should be seeing life's subtleties and situational demands. The author imagines a world where one either completes everything or picks a single thing while "ignoring pleas for your attention." That isn't necessarily a reasonable summary of the life experience nor a healthy way to be.
Second up -- the idea that the items each side are either clearly good or bad. Is it really true that if I live my life working to get 100% then that's bad? If I go in for surgery, I certainly hope my doctor doesn't believe that "Act first, correct later" is reasonable.
Third is the imputing of the notion that education teaches the left column. I am surrounded by gifted professionals who, in their classes, teach students to become authorities (when it is appropriate) and accede to authority when the situation demands. His creation of that straw man so that he can feel superior does him no credit in establishing any overall validity of his argument. In life, there will be times when any student must accept the authority of others. We live in a society of laws -- if he sees "life" as a matter of being an authority as diametrically opposed to obeying authority, then why follow any rules at all?
Numero four is the question of my role as an educator in a religious context. My students are individuals but they are, at the same time, parts of a grand tradition and members of a community and their group identity is incredibly important. "See yourself as one of many " is something we DO teach but that's because b'rov am hadrat melech.
Maybe, just maybe, his words have some local value to the student who wants to make it big as a start-up entrepreneur. Maybe the formal education doesn't serve that student who needs to, in one context, blaze a new trail. But this goes beyond throwing the baby out with the bathwater. It invents a problem which isn't even a problem, takes a very parochial approach and pretends it to be catholic and sows division where it doesn't need to exist.
So, yeah...I'm angry.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/07/2016 02:26PM by mlb.
