The Educational System

I noticed that in all forms of education a large overarching aspect of them is the focus on time.

Exams must be completed in a short time span, assignments have deadlines and material must be learned in a short period of time.
This makes it hard for slower learners to keep up and the vast majority of students do not have enough time to properly understand a topic and have to resort to memorization of facts just to get by.

I realize that this is obviously for the sake of efficiency - to produce as many skilled workers for the country and also to train students to meet deadlines as workers.

Should there be less focus on producing effective workers and more on giving people knowledge that enlightens them?

Or at the very least should there be an option for weaker students to take a slower path to reach a qualification. As long as they are able to prove they have the knowledge required for the qualification is the time it took them of any value?

Many people fail courses but when going back and redoing them they achieve the grade, they have effectively had more time than anyone else but does it really matter as long as in the end they understand the information?

The responsibility of educational systems is not to lower its standards for weak students. There are good alternative paths for people who are not good at school, such as learning a trade.

The current educational system should not lower its standards to help weak students, that would cause a decrease in skilled workers being created. I agree with that

I don't agree that weaker students should be forced to take different paths in their life because they lack in the speed necessary to learn information in a short enough amount of time.
There are more aspects to being a smart person than how fast you can pick up a subject and I believe it is bad that the education system focusses it to be such a dependent factor in who passes and who fails.

You're implying the entire purpose of an educational system is job training.

Being able to learn a subject fast is an aspect of intelligence however in the type of system employed in the education system it's possible to fake this by memorizing key facts, formulas and sentences without really understanding them.

Someone who studies a subject on their own at their own pace would probably be a more capable person on the topic than a student who has passed an exam on the same subject through memorization tricks. I believe this is a damaging aspect to the educational system.

The education system is a luxury, and we can't expect it to be tailor fitted for every student. Not everyone is cut for higher education, and this should be emphasized in high school. Just because you aren't good at math or science, you can still have a good career ahead of you by learning a trade. High school is mainly training for higher education, but I think less people should go to university than they now do. Higher education is over-valued, being seen as a symbol of status for middle-class families as opposed to training for research, as it should be seen.

Yes.

I'm not saying that weaker students are completely incapable of learning higher eduation material, I'm saying that they're not capable of learning it in the same timeframe as some other people.

People's lifes are limited. You are free to study anything by yourself but dont expect others to guide you for more than a couple of years.

No I do not think that we should focus on knowledge that enlightens students, in part.
What I think should be done is splitting into sections or classes.
The major problem with the education system is treating the students, more or less, equally. This should not be the case.
There should be three major sections
A higher learning section
A job/trade placement section
A unskilled worker placement section
Students should be divided into these sections and material should be taught that relates to the students capability, future goals, performance, and comprehension. Basically targeted material to assist the student to live within their cognitive means. In the US we have a system that is more or less like this already.
The intelligent kids are in magnet programs, AP courses, or other higher education programs that focus on having a diverse and well rounded education as well as college preparation.
We also have technical schools in which high school students attend half a day of normal classes then the rest of the day learning a trade at a technical school. Trades like plumbing, fabrication, electrical service, etc.
US schools also have a work study program in which students can attend half a day of normal classes and then go to work in the service sector for the rest of the day. This is so that less able students can gain experience in the service sector before they finish school.
This system works relatively well here, most who track into these programs find success and fulfillment within their respective areas.

I just see it as it is. The system has cracks, and some people will fall through them. That's just real life.

For areas like science and all that aren't dictated by deadlines and whose purposes are simply to learn and advance our understanding of the world? Yes. Otherwise, unfortunately, everything revolves around proper timing. I do believe that tests shouldn't be timed, because their purpose is to test the depth of your knowledge on the subject, but deadlines for projects help teach people time management skills which are important.

(((Enlightenment)))

You can do that off school. Just read philosophy.

But you cant just read math and be competent at it. You need a lot of work, and you can't take forever or else you won't keep pace with research. Exams and time restrictions enforce that on you.

Tldr your post makes sense for qualitative subjects only

>The responsibility of educational systems is not to lower its standards for weak students.
The "education" system (really, the credential system) as it stands is mostly fraudulent. It's not running on any deep sense of responsibility, but rather each school is run and influenced by self-interested people seeking their own benefit, and not being held to account by anyone of integrity.

What the students learn is mostly how to fake their way through tests of material well beyond their comprehension, which they will not retain or be able to apply effectively.

>The education system is a luxury
That ship has not only sailed, but been lost at sea with all hands. The more "luxurious" an education, the more practical advantage it has for personal advancement and income opportunities. Therefore, it's not a luxury at all, but an investment.

>you can still have a good career ahead of you by learning a trade.
This is one of the most unreasonably exaggerated claims. The trades offer lower income, less job security, less flexibility, and lower social status than a college education.

>training for research, as it should be seen.
An idiotic position that would make academia into a pointless circle-jerk. Higher education should be for the purpose of refining knowlege and disseminating it into the world. That's why their doors should be open not only to aspiring researchers, but also to aspiring teachers, leaders, and builders.

What it absolutely shouldn't be about is credentials. It's gotten so bad that we now need laws forbidding any professional organization, government hiring process, or large business from taking education into account: there must be a complete separation of evaluation from training.

>The trades offer lower income, less job security, less flexibility, and lower social status than a college education.
This is simply false. Going to college for a great number of people boils down to getting indebted and having no job prospects. This is not the case if you learn to be an electrician or a plumber.

>Higher education should be for the purpose of refining knowlege and disseminating it into the world.
We are not in agreement on this point.

>Going to college for a great number of people boils down to getting indebted and having no job prospects.
Even with the "[political affiliation] Studies" idiots weighing down the statistics, college grads still earn significantly more than non-college-grads on average.

>This is not the case if you learn to be an electrician or a plumber.
You might be surprised how many people learned a trade and ended up unemployed or pumping gas. The trouble is that you're locking yourself into a narrow category of work, which can easily end up being oversupplied with workers.

Also, there are many vocational training services which, just like bad college programs, are expensive and offer no employment advantage.

Except when that timeframe is larger than the human lifespan, it effectively means you're not capable. It's not worth putting the resources into these weaker students anyways for a efficient and productive society, leave them to do the manual labor and low-skilled jobs.

>The trades offer lower income, less job security, less flexibility, and lower social status than a college education.

Probably meant good w.r.t average barely employed idiot. Besides, people who aren't intelligent should just accept that lower position. They should just accept that some people are better than others and stop whining and being greedy.

There's probably truth in what you say, but in order to take this conversation further, we would both need more adequate data than our stipulations.

I nevertheless take colleges to be at the moment over-saturated with underachieving students who go into useless programs which are little more than scams. Perhaps I'm an elitist in this regard, but my views on what the purpose of university is are very much in line with the reason for which it was created. Universities were formed as guilds of intellectuals, and I believe this to be their first and foremost mission. They are there to form new intellectuals in the pursuit of knowledge, all else is to me secondary.

>people who aren't intelligent should just accept that lower position. They should just accept that some people are better than others and stop whining and being greedy.
People who lack other good qualities should also accept a lower position.

For instance, if you have to cringe in academia away from the harsh realities of the free market, you should accept being an "associate professor" who will never have tenure, get to work on the research he wants to do, or be able to earn enough to support a family.

>This makes it hard for slower learners to keep up and the vast majority of students do not have enough time to properly understand a topic and have to resort to memorization of facts just to get by.
>I realize that this is obviously for the sake of efficiency - to produce as many skilled workers for the country and also to train students to meet deadlines as workers.
>Should there be less focus on producing effective workers and more on giving people knowledge that enlightens them?

>It's a Gattofag episode.
I understand that grades just got released, and you're upset because you didn't do as well as you liked, but we can't slow other people down for you.

Sorry, does the free market already not do this? If you don't produce actual relevant research or in some schools have exceptional teaching qualities, you eat hot shit.

Sounds like you have a personal issue with somebody you should try to resolve though, best of luck with that.

>Universities were formed as guilds of intellectuals, and I believe this to be their first and foremost mission. They are there to form new intellectuals in the pursuit of knowledge
Universities were formed as an outgrowth of the Catholic Church, from its need to standardize the training of clergymen to transmit a consistent doctrine to their congregations, and expanded by kings to benefit their countries.

As they became true university, the original fields of study were theology, (Roman) law, and medicine: they were primarily vocational education for preachers, lawyers, and physicians, and had a secondary purpose of training in various arts.

They were certainly not "formed as guilds of intellectuals", with the aim of producing only more cloistered intellectuals. They certainly had guild-like aspects of their organization, in order to regulate themselves internally and represent their interests to the church and local government, but they were formed by external powers for practical, external purposes.