Child Genius

[Rhyolith]

I think the current education system is flawed in that it keeps trying to push students down the academic path of sciences and computing rather than letting the student think for themselves and decide what they want to do. These students might make mediocre scientists or computer engineers but they would excel at something else like woodworking or metal fab but would never know because they never really had the chance to try.

Why do you think there are so many 30-year-olds quitting their IT jobs and picking up woodworking or the like?

Totally right. The diversity of disiplines in education needs to be reflective of the vast diversity of people and jobs, which I don’t think it is now. Its seems to me that only handful of skills are actively encouraged and have clear routes of progression in mainstream education. Far too many of these routes also appear to just have deadends to.

 

[RogerS]

.... Its seems to me that only handful of skills are actively encouraged and have clear routes of progression in mainstream education. Far too many of these routes also appear to just have deadends to.

And you think that that is only happening now ? :shock: It has been the way education has worked since I went to school back in the '60's. There are some educational establishments and courses that buck the trend but they are few and far between.

 

[Sheffield Tony]

My son is 16, he is on the traditional academic subjects, but when we looked around his current school before he started there, I was impressed by the range of things they had to offer for those not following that route. Ok, no woodwork(*) and metalwork, but product design instead. But if you fancied Drama, dance, hospitality, catering, sport, film studies, music tech, childcare, etc, etc, there was something for you. And a farm - not a petting farm, a proper one. With a farm shop. We get our Christmas turkey from them. Don't believe all the negativity you hear, there is some good stuff going on.

(*) controversially, I think this makes sense. In my day the planer, bandsaw, table saw were the preserve of the teacher, you were allowed to use a lathe and the morticer if the teacher trusted you. If you can't let the kids use the machine tools, how many would benefit from being prepared for a career in hand tool woodwork ? :lol:

 

[Trevanion]

If you can't let the kids use the machine tools, how many would benefit from being prepared for a career in hand tool woodwork ? :lol:

My first year in college was pretty much centred around all hand tool work, so you learn how wood behaves in slow motion before you start speeding it up with power tools.

Hand tool work causes people to train their patience and slow down a little, something that’s lacking in the kids in these high speed days due to the instant gratifications they expect and get.

I was talking with a builder the other day and he was saying a lot of the boys (and girls )that come to him for work have never even swung a hammer or sawn a piece of timber in their life until they got on the job.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

I was allowed at 17 at school to use the bandsaw and the lathe unsupervised, but it wouldn't happen now.
I was a fairly experienced barman doing all the cellar work and brewery orders before I was old enough to work in bar legally - but in that sort of environment there is no scope now for any kind of real training - you can't do that, you might cut yourself, you can't do that, you might burn yourself, you can't that because it's a licenced area, you can't that because you can't work that late ... everything is against some regulation or other (some sensible, some not).
There was a letter a long while back in The Times from an engineer who ran his own company saying that he was supposed to produce trained engineers from apprenticeships (which he favoured) in three years - which was pretty much impossible when sixteen year olds came to him not knowing what a file was and never having held a hammer.
There was also one from a professor saying he trouble training student surgeons when they had no manual dexterity, having never done metalwork, woodwork etc.

 

[Rhyolith]

.... Its seems to me that only handful of skills are actively encouraged and have clear routes of progression in mainstream education. Far too many of these routes also appear to just have deadends to.

And you think that that is only happening now ? :shock: It has been the way education has worked since I went to school back in the '60's. There are some educational establishments and courses that buck the trend but they are few and far between.

I have heard critiques of the british education system having not fundmentally changed since the victorian period. Probably bit exgerated, but it makes the point that our system has not envolve very quickly.

I know I keep mentioning finland, Its really worth taking a look at their system. Makes ours look really quite archaic in my opinion, particularly schools and nurseries.