Far Too Much Information

A few people have made the comment lately that one of the major challenges we have in education is “What should we teach?” There is simply too much history and science and math and technology information available! We can’t possibly hope to cram it all into one little brain in eight or twelve or even twenty years. Here is my answer:  “Why would we want to?”

No one needs to know everything there is to know.

We need to know the basics of our common history and culture.

We need to know how to solve problems and survive in an ever-changing world.

We need to know how to get along with each other.

We need to know how to make a living.

We need to know how to be a responsible citizen.

We need to know how to find information.

We need to know that we don’t know everything and that school is simply the foundation for a life-long pursuit of knowledge.

Our goal in education should not be to teach our children everything, but to instill in them the desire and the ability to continue to teach themselves. 

Comments

[Classof65]

I believe you are absolutely right and that you have a clear goal to work for. I know that you cannot teach everything there is to know, but I am satisfied that you want to enable your students to find out where the resources are to find out more about a given subject. I do hope that you did not interpret my remarks earlier as critical of you or of the school system.

I was enrolled in a school for gifted children when I should have been in fifth grade, based upon my IQ score. I was taught advanced placement math, English, Russian, Spanish, history. Based on that school year, I was skipped to seventh grade. I have to admit that I had no aptitude for foreign languages, but I did benefit from the advanced math, although I never did learn long division -- thank Heaven for calculators! I was socially immature and being skipped a grade in school did not help my social skills and I became more reclusive until I entered high school. However, then, again, my father made me skip my senior year in high school and I entered university at age 16. Again, I was too immature socially to have been in university and left school at age 17, getting my GED in my early 20s.

I guess my point is that there is soooo much information to be taught and yet so little time that I'm not sure that we expect too much from today's teachers, especially when parents seem to expect teachers to also cover morality, social skills, manners, and, now, electronic machines. How could you possibly do all that? Do you feel pressured to be everything to everyone?