I don’t claim to have any great insight as far as education, but I’d like to share a couple of thoughts. Let me start by saying I’m astonished by the level of ignorance displayed by a large percentage of people from politicians to scientists to journalists.
Now I admit I don’t see how one can avoid teaching the basics. If you can’t write and do basic math is going
to be hard to learn anything more advanced. However, let’s consider a basic understanding that every adult should really understand. Every adult should understand what money is. You say “of course we do, that’s what my boss gives me for working”,
The basic concept of money is really simple, money is a token that represents value. The value of a particular good or service, e.g. your employment or a head of brocolli, is established in relationship to the market. Originally money often had it’s own intrinsic value, e.g. a $20 gold coin contained aboiut $20 of gold. These days the US dollar, for example, has a value related to the gross domestic product, i.e. what is produced in real and conceptual goods, versus the money supply.
Why is money such a useful concept? It’s because we can exchange things of unequal value by determining the value of each item in terms of our mutual understanding of the value exposed as money and instead of bartering fixing my plumbing in return for a bushel of apples, we can just agree of the value of each. In addition the rates can vary according to the market allowing me to use the value of a good or service at some advantageous time rather than when the barter would be needed.
As much as I wish we could teach more advanced subjects in math such as trig and calculus, But school doesn’t follows a course for math that follows an education for math rather than a practical knowledge of understanding math related topics like inflation, basic investment and time value of money. Saving for retirementr.
Another subject that badly needs teaching is critical thinking. People are bombarded with everything from get rich quick schemes to campaign pledges.
Well, truth to tell I’m probably just dreaming but given the choice I’d rather see people understand critical thinking and then read about history and decern the realities of those times gone by.
Imagine if people understood what actually backs up the value of the dollar, and the pluses and minuses of things like the gold standard. Imagine if people better understood why imigration is not a zero sum game. Somedays I would be quite content if people just understood the need to make adjustments to social security in an age where the life expectency is no longer around sixty five when the program was introduced but one’s late seventies. Lest you misunderstand, I’m quite for sucial security and it makes a big difference to my retirement income. It imagine the Ebates if everyone knew that the govnment is only allowed to invest any social security surplus collection in treasury bonds.
My Gifted Life 