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The Best Education System Needs Loving, Concerned and Perceptive PARENTS

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The following was posted by BU commenter Ping Pong on Barbados Education System Challenge, 50 Years and Moving blog.

educationMany if not all of the features of the Finnish education system were “borrowed” from elsewhere and many of these features are actually part of the Barbados education system. However a system is only as good as the people who administer and operate the system and the society for which the system serves. I have formally and informally studied educational systems for many years. I have concluded that (a) there are no perfect systems and (b) even if a “perfect” system existed many children would still be “failures” or be failed by whatever system is developed.

The best educational system (or the best in whatever circumstance) is the one that loving, concerned and perceptive parents fashion for their children. This means that without parents first knowing their children (i.e their strengths, weaknesses and interests) and pursuing a pragmatic vision for their children’s development then success will be elusive. As deficient as our school system may be, there are still many opportunities for individual development. No one can be as concerned and as dedicated about the educational development of any individual child as that child’s parents (assuming good parents). I believe the main failure of any educational system is really a failure of parenting. I strongly reject the notion of “it takes a village to raise MY child” especially when the village has no good intentions about my child. This is not to dispute that we all live in a society and the influence of others may be significant but discernment and choice must be exerted in one’s children’s interest.

Further, an educational systems does not exist in isolation of the society in which it operates. For example, let us take the matter of the health of citizens as distinct from the health (really the medical) care of citizens. If a society has medical care as a significant part of its economy (hospitals, pharmaceuticals, diagnostic devices and prosthetics, nursing homes etc.) would one expect a school system to promote in all students good nutrition, exercise, avoidance of harmful substances, healthy behaviour (adequate rest, stress relief etc.) and considerate manner to others as significant educational outcomes or those students that show promise as future doctors, biomedical technologists and entrepreneurs?

Nobody gets to heaven on a group pass.

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76 responses to “The Best Education System Needs Loving, Concerned and Perceptive PARENTS”

  1. Bush Tea Avatar
    Bush Tea

    @ Ping Pong
    While getting the basic point you are making, your posit is fundamentally flawed. The best education system CANNOT need good parents ….precisely because an excellent education system MUST be able to take children past the best that their parents had been able to achieve.
    A good system should therefore be one that is able to take the children of even idiots, and successfully advance them in life.

    Excellent educational RESULTS are clearly more likely with good parents, but the system itself must be independent of parent quality.

    What an excellent education system DOES need, is a reasoned, logical, “raison d’être”, with an agreed understanding of the objectives being targeted, a meaningful definition of ‘success’ and ‘failure’ and a good appreciation of the fact that children are blessed with a WIDE variety of talents, while having equal HUMAN value and potentialities.

    Just turning out persons who are knowledgeable in a number of prescribed areas does NOT constitute good ‘education’. Education is about preparing the student for success in their ACTUAL life.
    To do this effectively, we need to define and understand what such ‘success’ means, and what it entails….
    …and THIS is where we err…..

  2. chad99999 Avatar
    chad99999

    A good educational system must have reliable tools and techniques to teach both concepts and content.And since some of the content taught will become obsolete sooner or later, the student must be given the skills needed for independent research and self-instruction.

    The problem we have today is that we don’t have a set of PROVEN teaching methods that most professionals can accept as “best practices”. Instead, we have a lot of poorly trained teachers who hide their own incompetence by rejecting the need for the standardization of classroom methods. Most of these people lamely insist that, because every classroom and every student is unique, the teacher must constantly invent or construct novel teaching strategies tailored to specific situations.

    Sounds good, until you realize that most teacher certification programs provide little guidance to trainees. So the puffery you hear from “trained” teachers about their “diagnostic” tests and abilities is usually abracadabra bull____.

  3. Well Well & Consequences Avatar
    Well Well & Consequences

    The scandanavian education system does not seek to apply so much mental pressure on children at too young an age…allowing their brain to develop at an acceptable pace, is the preferred method.

    You need well balanced children who do not have to fear being treated like competitive race horses at age 11….it does wonders for their intellect being accessed as opposed to being stripped mentally and finding themselves lost and floundering by age 12.

  4. chad99999 Avatar
    chad99999

    Schools in Singapore, Japan, South Korea,Taiwan and much of China treat kids like racehorses. Lots of drill and rote learning, too. And all these countries are thriving.

    Scandinavia is a fount of the worst ideas in western civilization.

  5. Hal Austin Avatar
    Hal Austin

    Why is the attorney general now launching an attack on young women who smoke and drink? Is he talking about underage young women, if so he should say? Is underage smoking now a criminal offence?
    These are moral and health issues and should be dealt with by parents and the relevant authorities, but not the AG.
    If we criminalise morals, as Tony Blair did, we are heading down a dangerous track. This is what Radical Islam does, from telling women what to wear, how to behave, if they can smoke, drink, and who they can talk to. There is no difference.

  6. David Avatar
    David

    Thought all Ping Pong was saying -in a simplified form- is that for the child to successfully navigate any education system the support of loving parents who are perceptive, discerning etc must be a prerequisite.

  7. Ping Pong Avatar
    Ping Pong

    Other than the school systems of the most extreme totalitarian regimes (which all resulted in human misery), all school systems depend on parental quality. Parental quality is not defined by IQ level or material circumstance but by the the level and nature of the engagement with the child in the cause the child’s well being and development.

    With regard to the “real world” Barbados school system, what is a concerned parent to do? Wait until we reach the “promised land”? My advice is that for any individual child there is no perfect system. Think of the Barbados educational system as a buffet. There are many good nourishing things and some not so good things. Parents have to choose as best as they can and strive to succeed.

  8. Bush Tea Avatar
    Bush Tea

    @ Ping Pong
    “…all school systems depend on parental quality.”
    ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
    Are you saying then, that a good school system can be of no help to the children of deviants, idiots and criminals?
    Surely you mean that all school systems will BENEFIT from good parental inputs. But Bushie puts it to you, that a REALLY good school system MUST have the ability to be independent of such variables as parental quality.

    Perhaps before we get too deeply into this particular point, you may wish to explore the question of what EXACTLY constitutes ‘The education system’ of a country.

    Here is a hint….
    Right now, Bushie would IMMEDIATELY dismiss some KEY members of the “Barbados Education system” and replace them with sane, well groomed and respectable role models of successful citizens …as defined by the national strategic vision.
    …..Of course Bushie is referencing those low-class, crude, disgusting ‘radio DJs’ who exercise more influence on our children than does our teachers, parents or even peers…

  9. Well Well & Consequences Avatar
    Well Well & Consequences

    Lots of blame to go around, it’s an uphill battle for manyn prents the beasts trying to distract and gain control of their children”‘s minds.

    Chad never does complete research…japanese are not producung progeny, are not hsving sex….some are scared to leave their homes…and these are young people….the population is in danger…they are raised to be robots…the A bomb did not help.

    Check out all the various social trauma and turbulence these countries have becsuse of the populstion being relentlessly driven from the age of 5…never having a childhood.., China you say….msybe you should psy a visit…peoplr are notrobits and should not be raised to be robots.

    And still their economies end up in turmoil.

  10. Well Well & Consequences Avatar
    Well Well & Consequences

    http://ow.ly/d1gU3068SAq

    Educate thyself

    http://ow.ly/6SNp3068SMg

  11. Well Well & Consequences Avatar
    Well Well & Consequences

    http://ow.ly/rU2a3068SY1

    MoneyB loves to make Singpore sound like heaven by counting the amount of paper they manage to circulate, through prudence…but it’s not.

    http://ow.ly/wQoy3068TLs

  12. peterlawrencethompson Avatar
    peterlawrencethompson

    The fundamental problem of educating our children is that we do not know what their future challenges will be… we have no crystal ball, so the only effective strategy is to teach them tools for adaptability. Teach them HOW to think, rather than WHAT to think.
    Values such as compassion and love are also thinking skills. Creativity is another cognitive skill that is ignored or actively suppressed in the current educational system.

  13. Ping Pong Avatar
    Ping Pong

    Bush Tea

    A comprehensive response to you would run into many pages but …

    Of course some of the children of such persons as you have described have succeeded in school. It may have been that someone other than the biological parent performed the role I am asserting is required or those children were so determined to succeed that they rose above their circumstances. That said it is a roll of the dice. The overall success rate will still be low if the general parental input is of low quality.

    I do not reject the need for better teacher training, better school facilities, a more comprehensive and strategic curriculum, better administrators, better guidance counseling and of course an overall design approach of process selection to match output objectives. However in a democratic, open society the input and environmental variables are not easily controlled and often only at a tremendous cost. Things such as child nutrition or school uniform availability are relatively easy to address (and Barbados does do these things) but motivation to learn, high regard for learning and provision of a settled environment conducive to learning, getting adequate rest, protection from physical and psychological abuse, identification of personal strengths and weaknesses to name a few are not so easily addressed by system (state) agencies. These things are however relatively easily provided by parents.

    In any event, my continued position is that given a flawed system and further that there may never be a perfect system what is a parent to do? Given that in line with your engineering process design method, the system may actually be working very well as it selects and socialises citizens for roles based on class, gender and ethnic origins, how can perceptive parents militate against the system which deliberately fails their children? My answer is that the history of our people suggest that with individual effort in solidarity with other like minded persons progress can be made.

  14. Bush Tea Avatar
    Bush Tea

    Ok Ping…
    But is yours not a very narrow perspective …and is it not based on the very limited (and failed) model that we now consider to be ‘education’?

    PLT says they “The fundamental problem of educating our children is that we do not know what their future challenges will be….”

    Well Boss….the very definition of education SHOULD be the business of preparing to be successful in a future world. It is not therefore likely that we can EVER devise a successful education system if we admit to not knowing the future…. or at best it will be a ‘hit or miss’ affair….

    Bushie’s point then is that a good education system BEGINS with a serious strategy of determining – at the national strategic level, what our future WILL BE….. and then designing social systems to realise that future.

    A good education system is therefore NOT a reactive mechanism that needs to know how it must respond to some unknown future, but a PROACTIVE mechanism that CREATES and implements a designed future….

    Such a system CANNOT depend on brass bowl parents. It MUST be designed by enlightened, proactive, efficient and dynamic LEADERS…… and it CANNOT be optional …not if a country is serious about realising that desired future. Parents, businesses, community leaders and all citizens would then need to understand and buy into the vision, if national success is to be achieved….. and this again comes from enlightened, community-centric leadership….

  15. chad99999 Avatar
    chad99999

    PLT

    is another spigot of bad ideas.

    I have said we need to teach both concepts and content (i.e., facts). PLT does not want to teach facts, because he thinks we ‘dont know what the knowledge of the future will be like’.

    That is nonsense. The body of knowledge in Mathematics, statistics, physics, chemistry, biology, geology, economics, English, the engineering sciences, etc has changed very little in my lifetime. The ‘facts’ are the same as they were 50 years ago.

  16. chad99999 Avatar
    chad99999

    We also need to clarify what we mean by “better teacher training”.

    Ping Pong is too vague. Get specific about proposals for change.

  17. peterlawrencethompson Avatar
    peterlawrencethompson

    @chad99999
    I have virtually all the facts generated by 20,000 years of human civilisation connected to the little device I cradle in three fingers. So do all the students. What we need to teach them are the cognitive skills required to discern those facts from the tsunami of garbage that is also a click away.
    Facts are easy, judgement is difficult. We need to focus on the difficult stuff.

  18. peterlawrencethompson Avatar
    peterlawrencethompson

    @Bushtea said “the very definition of education SHOULD be the business of preparing to be successful in a future world.”
    I agree wholeheartedly. That’s why we need to teach the cognitive skills that build adaptability. This is the fundamental truth of evolutionary science: adapt or die.

  19. peterlawrencethompson Avatar
    peterlawrencethompson

    @Bush Tea said “A good education system is therefore NOT a reactive mechanism that needs to know how it must respond to some unknown future, but a PROACTIVE mechanism that CREATES and implements a designed future.”
    I sympathise with this objective, Bush Tea,I really do. It’s most in concert with my engineering and management education. But I’ve lost faith in the ability of human societies to do this without creating communistic or fascistic nightmares.
    The best that I hope for is an ANTICIPATORY mechanism that prepares students to deal with whatever opportunities and challenges the future grows at them.
    In my youth I was a voracious reader of science fiction and other, supposedly more predictive, writing about the future. It was all bullshit of course, even though much of it was written by the very best minds. The history of humanity is that whenever try to predict the future we get it wrong. Furthermore when we try to engineer entire societies we fuck up on a truly massive scale: Catholicism, communism, fascism, neo-liberalism, neo-liberalism, anarchism…

  20. chad99999 Avatar
    chad99999

    PLT has no clue how learning occurs.

    A child need to have information presented in an orderly way. Otherwise the sheer mass of information is disorienting and leads to confusion.

    Schools make it possible for ordinary people to master large bodies of information. They do so by organizing and explaining knowledge. Most people cannot teach themselves any complex subject. If they tried, they would end up like PLT.

  21. David Avatar
    David

    @Bush Tea

    Your position is not unfamiliar to the BU household and holds merit. The challenge if we assume a pragmatic view is to craft a plan to intervene NOW and one in parallel to address the future.

  22. peterlawrencethompson Avatar
    peterlawrencethompson

    @chad99999 said ” If they tried, they would end up like PLT.”
    A deliriously happy 60 year old with two successful adult children, passports to live in the Caribbean, North America or Europe, enough resources to spend the rest of my life volunteering to improve the lot of those around me who are less fortunate than I… you could do worse 🙂

  23. peterlawrencethompson Avatar
    peterlawrencethompson

    @chad99999
    Of course I agree that a child needs to be educated in an orderly way.
    Our disagreement is that I think that “information” is the most trivial part of education. The important part is a range of cognitive skills which not only enable a person to learn throughout their lives, but also embody values that guide what to learn and why to learn it.

  24. peterlawrencethompson Avatar
    peterlawrencethompson

    I thought that by now everyone would have seen this 10 year old TED talk by Ken Robinson… but in case some of you missed it:
    https://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity

  25. Bush Tea Avatar
    Bush Tea

    We have a way of arguing from different perspectives – which is counter productive.

    If ‘education’ is the business of stuffing students with the mass of knowledge that we have accumulated over man’s history, then there is merit to Ping Pong’s posit. PLT and Chad would also have more in common than their spats would suggest….

    But let us think for a minute…
    We have reached the stage in history where we know more than at any time EVER, about more subjects than ever, in more detail than ever …and this information is accessible by practically every human on earth……
    …and yet we are realising the VERY WORSE declines in human development that we have seen since the dark ages.

    Conclusion:
    SOME SHIITE IS WRONG WITH WHAT WE ARE LEARNING, TEACHING AND CALLING ‘EDUCATION’.

    If ‘education’ is the process of preparing future generations to carry forward human development, then IT IS NOT WORKING …. not in Barbados, not in USA, not in Japan and not in Norway…. despite having the ‘best of the best EVER’ available to everyone….

    The problem lies in the fundamental strategic objectives that drive our processes
    To use an analogy, we were designed and engineered to play road tennis, and we have been expending all our energies into learning how to swim.

    STEP 1
    Find out what the hell this whole experience called ‘Life-on-Earth’ is all about; what the rules are…; what success means; and what is required to achieve that success.
    wuh…
    If we just jump into the damn sea and start splashing around because we see some other brass bowls doing it, how will we EVER realise road tennis proficiency? …even if we manage to swim…

  26. Bush Tea Avatar
    Bush Tea

    @ PLT
    Ken Robinson shiite!!
    …good stand up comedy, but seriously flawed perspective as usual…

  27. peterlawrencethompson Avatar
    peterlawrencethompson

    @Bush Tea said “If ‘education’ is the business of stuffing students with the mass of knowledge that we have accumulated over man’s history…”

    My point is that this is emphatically NOT education. This is what my hand held device is for, not my mind. I agree that “‘education’ is the process of preparing future generations to carry forward human development” and it is not working.

    Your analogy breaks down because we have absolutely no idea whether future generations and human development will require swimming or road tennis. We have to educate so that our children will be able to elegantly adapt to whatever is required of them for human development. (Climate change might lead to a bias in preparation for swimming ;-))

    When the shit hits the fan, no matter what shit or what fan, our children will need to rapidly adapt it into an ‘improved fertilizer distribution device’

  28. peterlawrencethompson Avatar
    peterlawrencethompson

    @Bush Tea said “STEP 1. Find out what the hell this whole experience called ‘Life-on-Earth’ is all about; what the rules are…; what success means; and what is required to achieve that success.”

    I’ve worked all this out for myself (love), but I’m also aware that humans have spilt each others blood arguing over the answers to these questions since the dawn of history; so I’m not going to argue with you that I’m right, I’ll just live according to my light and my life will be my testament.

    I don’t think that we have the time or can risk the bloodshed to settle these questions before we start educating our children.

  29. chad99999 Avatar
    chad99999

    PLT

    Doesn’t understand that you must have a knowledge base before you can think productively.

    Imagine trying to teach people how to think mathematically without first teaching them mathematics. Most people cannot operate in the abstract. They must have concrete experience first.

  30. David Avatar
    David

    At a local level we do not even know how our schools are performing based on current syllabus. We are unable to measure performance of teachers. What we have is successive ministers of education lording over information.

    >

  31. peterlawrencethompson Avatar
    peterlawrencethompson

    @chad99999
    Think about how babies learn. Zero knowledge base but the fastest learning process known to our species.

  32. peterlawrencethompson Avatar
    peterlawrencethompson

    I would presume that CXC results form an approximate measure of how our schools are performing based on the current syllabus. A longitudinal study of those who are successful at the CXC level would be needed to see how our current syllabus is performing based on societal needs.

  33. chad99999 Avatar
    chad99999

    I am struck by how impervious PLT is to facts.

    You tell him Mathematics and physics do not change and he keeps repeating the total nonsense that we don’t know what the future will be.

  34. chad99999 Avatar
    chad99999

    David

    How do you devise a clean measure of teacher performance?

  35. David Avatar
    David

    @chad99999

    That is the discussion.

    We need to establish KPIs aligned to a national strategy which is where Bushie is located. We need to move from measuring success based on a nebulous literaracy rate or CXCS gained. We need to discuss education devoid of emotions if such is possible.

    @Peter

    Where is the utility in measuring by CXC for example if there is no relationship to national priorities?

  36. peterlawrencethompson Avatar
    peterlawrencethompson

    @chad99999
    Of course Mathematics and Physics do not change quickly. I ignored your assertion because it is obvious, like stating that the ocean is salty. The point is that those facts do not affect the points that I made that you have not responded to: “I have virtually all the facts generated by 20,000 years of human civilization connected to the little device I cradle in three fingers. So do all the students. What we need to teach them are the cognitive skills required to discern those facts from the tsunami of garbage that is also a click away. Facts are easy, judgement is difficult. We need to focus on the difficult stuff.”

  37. peterlawrencethompson Avatar
    peterlawrencethompson

    @David
    I will assume that it’s generally accepted that we need to reach some objective international standards in most subject areas: Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, French, Spanish etc. are no different in Barbados than anywhere else. We can measure these by CXC if CXC is reliable.

    I frankly am not sure how Barbados should go about defining national priorities. Jamaica went through a years long process to come up with a document they call Vision 2030 http://www.vision2030.gov.jm/. Is this the sort of think you think we should contemplate?

  38. Bush Tea Avatar
    Bush Tea

    @ PLT
    I’ve worked all this out for myself (love)
    ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
    …so has AC…

    Chad is right
    You have no clue.

    He is also right that education MUST be based on a foundation of SOUND knowledge. You may think a lot about your deductive powers… but you may be alone in that regard.
    We are so lost that we do not even grasp what education is …far less how it can be effectively done.

    No wonder the world is up shit street.

  39. chad99999 Avatar
    chad99999

    When universities create knowledge, they try to create knowledge that lasts. Knowledge for the ages. Based on “laws” that represent the Truth.

    The more advanced a discipline or subject, the closer it approaches this ideal.

    So Math, physics, chemistry, statistics, even economics have constructed bodies of knowledge that are reliable and permanent, or that change very slowly.

    We know the body of facts we should be teaching in our schools, and we should stuff our children’s heads with that body of knowledge.

    The only things we should be arguing about are (a) the methods we should use to get children to retain the knowledge they have been taught, and (b) the best ways to teach students to apply what they have learned, so that the knowledge they have becomes a useful tool for solving actual problems they may have to face.

  40. David Avatar
    David

    Thanks Peter!

    Not sure if there is a similar document for Barbados.

    Is Vision 2030 a 100% live document? Is is a top of the mind document? Are stakeholders using the document to inform strategies?

  41. peterlawrencethompson Avatar
    peterlawrencethompson

    @ Bush Tea
    Of course “education MUST be based on a foundation of SOUND knowledge.” I never disputed that, just pointed out that students have the whole world’s sound knowledge in their handheld device, but that it does NOT constitute education.

    The cognitive skills to sift sound knowledge out of an ocean of nonsense, the creative thinking skills to assemble sound knowledge into new and useful configurations, the cognitive judgement skills to make sound decisions in environments of incomplete and imperfect information… this, and much more, is what education needs to be in our contemporary society.

  42. chad99999 Avatar
    chad99999

    Bush Tea

    Can you spell out a concrete alternative to the CXC system?

  43. peterlawrencethompson Avatar
    peterlawrencethompson

    @David
    I get it quoted at me at least 3 times a day in the work I’m doing 😉
    I’m not sure how “live” it is, but it is referenced.

  44. peterlawrencethompson Avatar
    peterlawrencethompson

    @chad99999
    My son is a young lawyer in Canada. In court opposing counsel generally has decades more experience and much more knowledge stuffed into their heads. My son generally makes mincemeat of them because he is always plugged into all the legal databases in real time through the handheld device tucked away in his pocket.

    The era of stuffing children’s heads and calling it education is over. It gives them no defense against those who would stuff their heads with nonsense and it gives them no guidance about what to do with all this head stuffing. Furthermore, the body of knowledge, good reliable tested knowledge, is now to big to be stuffed into even the largest head.

  45. peterlawrencethompson Avatar
    peterlawrencethompson

    @chad99999
    I actually agree with you that key objectives for education are “(a) the methods we should use to get children to retain the knowledge they have been taught, and (b) the best ways to teach students to apply what they have learned, so that the knowledge they have becomes a useful tool for solving actual problems they may have to face.”

    One strategy which works well in pursuit of both objectives is to make education much more experiential: to take children out of the classroom and put them to work trying to solve real world problems. It dramatically improves retention as well as being the best way to model actual problem solving.

  46. Well Well & Consequences Avatar
    Well Well & Consequences

    I ppresume the Bushman was taking endless blows on this blog and he ran for his life…lol

  47. peterlawrencethompson Avatar
    peterlawrencethompson

    I didn’t see Bush Tea taking any blows at all…

  48. chad99999 Avatar
    chad99999

    PLT

    No strawmen, please.

    I didn’t say stuff all the knowledge we have into a student’s head. I said stuff their heads with the basic knowledge they need to launch their own scholarly pursuits.

    Without a base or foundation of facts in any discipline and conceptual framework to organize those facts, a student is confused and cannot become an independent researcher.

  49. peterlawrencethompson Avatar
    peterlawrencethompson

    Sorry chad99999, didn’t mean to be setting up a straw man… I misinterpreted “We know the body of facts we should be teaching in our schools, and we should stuff our children’s heads with that body of knowledge.”

    What are your thoughts about experiential education?

  50. Well Well & Consequences Avatar
    Well Well & Consequences

    PLT…maybe ya did not read Chad unanswered comment to the Bushman.

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