In The Latter-Day Pamphlets, Thomas Carlyle made a big deal about something he called the human intellect, the beaverish intellect, and the vulpine intellect. With regards to school assignments, these map more or less straightforwardly to the pursuit of excellence in the moment for its own sake, the “good enough” mindset associated with the Chinese phrase “cha bu duo”, and finally plagiarism and other forms of cheating.
Of these three, only the former can provide a schoolchild with a profound sense of fulfilment and self-esteem. This does not mean that everyone other than geniuses are screwed. Instead, most children should be working on either (edit: easier) material, but should learn it to a higher level of fluency. School in this vision should not be aimed at giving you access to universities for the sake of some credential race, but simply at teaching you skills and rectitude and making you able to take pride in your work.
This then is my vision of what childhood should be: children should learn to read and write, but instead of their classes focusing on giving them as broad a knowledge as possible of these fields, spanning every gimmicky type of fad literature that was popular in some decade or other, they should focus on the fundamentals and develop these so that they can write with clarity, dignity, confidence, etc. Likewise, they should learn mathematics. Introducing them to sociology, philosophy, etc. is however pointless as children do not have the life experience to grasp these at any but the most superficial level, not to mention that it is a rare schoolteacher who is capable of teaching them.
Aside from that, they should get work experience, ideally something more or less artisanal in nature. This needs not be traditional crafts like tailoring, but also modern crafts like gamedev, audio engineering, etc. They should of course learn to work seriously and be paid for their work.
In addition to that, they should of course still have plenty of time to play and experiment with things.
This is in many ways a form of preparation for adulthood, but because the children would be achieving excellence in easier tasks instead of struggling at harder tasks, it will also be fulfilling in the short term, not to mention that the skills are much more likely to stick than present schooling is.
In The Latter-Day Pamphlets, Thomas Carlyle made a big deal about something he called the human intellect, the beaverish intellect, and the vulpine intellect. With regards to school assignments, these map more or less straightforwardly to the pursuit of excellence in the moment for its own sake, the “good enough” mindset associated with the Chinese phrase “cha bu duo”, and finally plagiarism and other forms of cheating.
Of these three, only the former can provide a schoolchild with a profound sense of fulfilment and self-esteem. This does not mean that everyone other than geniuses are screwed. Instead, most children should be working on either (edit: easier) material, but should learn it to a higher level of fluency. School in this vision should not be aimed at giving you access to universities for the sake of some credential race, but simply at teaching you skills and rectitude and making you able to take pride in your work.
This then is my vision of what childhood should be: children should learn to read and write, but instead of their classes focusing on giving them as broad a knowledge as possible of these fields, spanning every gimmicky type of fad literature that was popular in some decade or other, they should focus on the fundamentals and develop these so that they can write with clarity, dignity, confidence, etc. Likewise, they should learn mathematics. Introducing them to sociology, philosophy, etc. is however pointless as children do not have the life experience to grasp these at any but the most superficial level, not to mention that it is a rare schoolteacher who is capable of teaching them.
Aside from that, they should get work experience, ideally something more or less artisanal in nature. This needs not be traditional crafts like tailoring, but also modern crafts like gamedev, audio engineering, etc. They should of course learn to work seriously and be paid for their work.
In addition to that, they should of course still have plenty of time to play and experiment with things.
This is in many ways a form of preparation for adulthood, but because the children would be achieving excellence in easier tasks instead of struggling at harder tasks, it will also be fulfilling in the short term, not to mention that the skills are much more likely to stick than present schooling is.
I quite like this.