We Don't Need No Education

So yesterday Manuela and I had some cafe with the chemistry professor and we entered upon a discussion of the American educational system. Neither Manuela nore the chemistry professor was aware of the differences between the various states and districts' educational systems. While there is a larger national curriculum, they did not quite understand how that difference is beneficial, especially in the university sense. "You go to school to learn," said the chemistry professor. While it is true, one goes to school to learn, one doesn't simply go to school to learn their specialty. That's the point of the core curriculum: to give a wide and balanced education to the students so that chemistry students know how to write and English students know how to draw graphs.

Indulge me and my diatribe as to the faults of the French educational system.

1) At no point in their education, save probably for graduate school, are students in any way taught how to think. They are taught to learn and absorb, but not to think. None of my students know how to think their way through a problem, regardless of how much information I give them. The terminales have a slightly better grasp, but other than that the students know only what is told to them. On the other side of the pond, I distinctly remember "problem solving" being a subject in my elementary school and something we were graded on specifically.

2) At every school in the country, everyone teaches the exact same thing. No joke. You can switch schools on Friday and on Monday begin almost exactly where you left off. On the same token, there are no special classes for those succeeding, nor for those doing poorly in a subject. Everyone is at the same level, which makes it hard for those who are simply proficient because the teacher is trying to teach to the uppers and the lowers at the same time. It is the teacher's job to teach as well as challenge and how can they challenge if part of the class doesn't feel challenged?

3) As for the universities, they are in a state of despair. The professors are simply civil servants who are not indulged to do research of any sort. As a result, the students, as before, are not challenged and not given a reason to do any better than anyone else. This results in mediocre graduates who yearn to be no more than civil servants themselves. Not to mention, the lack of liberal arts required means that the graduates graduate without any sense of worldliness. Rather, those that study only chemistry study only chemistry without any sense of ethics, philosophy, or politics that may have, through history, affected how people study chemistry today. Manuela, for example, has never studied Islam. She is a Protestant theology major. While it is not her fault she has never studied Islam, one would think that a university would require it of their students to study different theologies in order to better understand their own. The thought never occured to me until she couldn't tell the difference between a mosque and a church.

I am writing this rather late and night because this has frustrated me a lot these past couple days and I couldn't get back to sleep. I am very thankful that I have had a liberal arts university education and a very rich high school education to guide me through life. These things gave me the tools to succeed at higher education as well as life. Not to mention, I know I can be better than a civil servant.