God's Existence, Science and Faith, Suffering and Evil, Jesus' Resurrection, and Book Reviews

Showing posts with label pragmatism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pragmatism. Show all posts

Is Education Overrated?

Introduction

A couple months ago I read an interesting article about a professor who made the case that today's education system is grossly overrated. If the article's author represented him correctly, his contention is that because a large portion of educational resources focus on credentials and self-esteem ("vanity" in the words of the author), the system is overrated and needs a major overhaul. You can read the article here: "Professor: 'Education is Grossly Overrated'." The last couple of lines are particularly what caught my attention:

"Is our quest to give students ever-higher levels of education and credentialing based more in vanity hits than in true knowledge and understanding of the world?"

That alone warrants this article for reasons that I will discuss shortly. But also happening in my home state of Oklahoma, as I write this blog post, is a dispute between public school teachers and law-makers regarding funding (you can check out any of our local media for the stories). As I have been involved in discussions at work and on Facebook about this local situation I recalled the content of the article above, that I believe may help explain how our education system got to producing the disrespectful display we have witnessed on both sides of the dispute. Let me get straight to my point.