Should Education focus more on Emotional and Social Development and less on Academic Achievement?
Are concepts and topics such as
Human Rights
Equal Opportunities
Gender Issues
How we relate to one another, form intimate relationships.
Sexual Health
not at least as important
Shakespearean Sonnets
Differential Calculus
Romantic Poets of the 19th Century.
Do our education systems focus far too much on teaching kids things which will be of little or no relevance many of them at the expense of enlightening them on topics which are relevant to every one of them for their whole lives?
Should Education focus more on Emotional and Social Development and less on Academic Achievement?
Well, you know, if schools taught *too* much about things like human rights and equal opportunities and gender issues, eventually they'd come around to the very unpleasant, unjust things and would have to tell about the powers-that-be that cause them: corporate America, the government, the military, the wealthy 2 percent, the privileged white hetero Christians. I think our churches have some of the bloodiest histories of any institution. This is quite unpleasant, as is rape and torture and wars for oil and American-owned overseas sweatshops and greed and gaping wealth disparities. It's just not very pleasant or palatable to teach about the blood on the hands and the invisible injustices: sexism, racism, homophobia, general hate. And people with lots of money and people who sort of like things now just the way they are would not like instructors stirring up such unpleasant questions and dissent and dissatisfaction and critical-thinking skills and a desire to change in up-and-coming generations. You can't teach people too much about the problems in their systems and societies. You have to make it seem like there are no problems; if there are, they are obviously the result of the individual person's choices and psychological and personal issues, something wrong in YOU, not wrong "out there." This keeps things running smoothly.
Alun Lewis "Goodbye" WW2 Poem set to music Animation Movie
