DevaCat
Well-Known Member
Lol, I totally agree with you. I actually winced when I wrote "typical modern schooling" but I figured if anyone could, he would overcome that handicap.I sincerely beg to differ with you @DevaCat - our typical modern schooling would be beneath his abilities so he'd probably become an autodidact like I imagine he was during his own time frame. But with the libraries that he would now have available to him (20th & 21st centuries) as well as the internet (later in life), I imagine he would at least reach Hawking or Einstein level of intelligence and success. I benefited from our modern schooling but it was supplemented by living in a rural area where the school I attended had 100 students from K to 8th grade. The teachers had time for us and taught us many things that weren't even taught at the high school level. But when my children went to school, the curriculum was dumbed down so it met the "test" requirements. Where the US once was tops in the educational process, I fear we have fallen way behind other countries. Otherwise, I agree with you.
Not too long ago I heard a teacher on the radio talking excitedly about this new thing called phonics that she was using to help teach her kids how to read. My mom used phonics flash cards to help me learn how to read in the 1950s because the education establishment wasn't getting the job done. The establishment refused to use the technique then and apparently in many places still does.
The single most effective move to improve education would be to reduce classroom size, regardless of teacher competence. But as the Great Recession response to a self-inflicted financial crisis showed, education was among the first budget items to be cut, moving us in the opposite direction. And dumbing down curriculum to teach to a mandatory test is just, well, dumb lol. That's not an educational objective, it's a political one.
To try to swing back on topic (sorry), and to mess with history, what if we could travel back and convince the leaders of the Temperence movement that instead of Prohibition an education focus would better serve to combat the problems they sought to address? That introducing bills to limit classroom size and to encourage local boards to use phonics etc would be more effective than busting up bars. That a better educated public would better resist Demon Drink. So, in addition to school changes, we get no Prohibition, no mob wealth, no Elliot Ness and J Edgar Hoover, a different Cuba (without the mob influence), and who knows what else.