I feel I’ve had a lack of education, coming from a developing nation in the Far East. I wish I had been enrolled in a school that actually taught history and geography in all its wonderful richness.
I don’t care so much about math because I feel it’s hard to screw up math because it has been made comparatively standard and agnostic from politics and subjectivity, that I assume it hadn’t been whitewashed or dumbed-down for our consumption.
And life isn’t all about numbers.
About an hour ago, I was flipping through the pages of a free, relatively unpolished ebook by Seth Godin. Despite his rough outline about blogs and how to write them, I could tell that by mere reference to specific names and his understanding of journalism and the publishing industry set him many miles apart from so-called “blog experts” that promise to sell you the secrets to blogging success (and I’m not even mentioning “social media”… ugh).
And I feel that the difference about a man or woman is brought about by his perspective of the world, and more importantly, the appreciation and critical self-assessment of that worldview.
I feel that topics like history and geography actually provide the building blocks for thinking about important issues like culture, politics, business, society, philosophy and religion. I may never know what it’s like to have that rich perspective of life without a proper understanding of these basics – because it feels like I’ve been robbed of an opportunity to learn stuff like history and geography in all its richness when I was growing up, except for those moments when my mom was actually teaching me.
The overemphasis of rote learning could’ve been the cause of this. And I remember that I was told off for asking “why” so many times, despite genuinely seeking answers. Did I surpass my superiors’ ability to thirst for answers at that young age? Heaven knows.
Wikipedia only helps so much. Don’t take your education for granted.
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Sure history / geography are key (or history keeps repeating itself), but you need good -and a bit rebellious- teachers.
Things is , the syllabus is very heavily influenced by the politicians. History is written by the winners, and the school book reflects that. It is also used for some communication/propaganda.
A couple of examples: there is still very very little about the involvement of France in the Algeria war [1954-1962] (which has never been officially recognized as a war, just “events”). And students from my generation were heavily suggested the idea of Europe was the best thing ever without any counterpoint… you need good teachers that also tell you the other version to have both and make up your mind.
So in many ways, by its international and crowd-sourced editing system, wikipedia can give a better and fairer assessment.
I like the fact that Wikipedia upholds neutrality toward all its articles, but it doesn’t provide the kind of depth of a classroom study. You can’t learn in depth, subjects like nuclear physics or cultures of remote tribes just from Wikipedia. I’m not arguing against teaching a critical perspective of history or geography – I’m against teaching it at surface value, where you grade students on how much they can remember from books.