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Learning Objectives for Public and Private Schools

In the U.S.A. private schools educate about ten percent of the total population of children from kindergarten through high school. Public schools deal with the other ninety percent. The possibilities and problems out there give us lots to discuss and argue about, but what I want to examine is the particular attention and effort that ANY schools direct to – mind, thought, understanding, intelligence – the thing we humans like to brag about.

Well, ALL education is aimed at developing and improving MINDS, right? Everything that goes on in schools involves children employing their ‘mental faculties’ to – get smarter. Our massive nationwide public education machine brings the kids in, sits them down and teaches them English, math, science, history and how to get along with others respectfully. We assume that after thirteen years the kids are ready to either go on to college education or get into specific employment training and instruction.

During those thirteen years that the kids are sitting on chairs in classrooms how much time is spent on MIND, THOUGHT, how we understand anything at all or what an intelligent person does with that thing upstairs? Students in college can take philosophy courses to get at epistemological questions – usually in junior and senior years. It is something of a spectacle to watch college students struggle with the discipline of epistemology – because they never had ONE minute of teaching/learning  about it to prepare them for college work on the subject. The time to introduce kids to PAYING ATTENTION to what goes on in their heads is NOT the final two years of college – but kindergarten and every year after.

In this section you will find facts about schools in our country to set up a review of any efforts being made to put THOUGHT, as a particular topic, in front of children in all schools – private and public. The first purpose of any school is to ASSIST CHILDREN IN BECOMING SKILLFUL AT THOUGHT. They will pick up ‘practical’ knowledge and ‘specialty’ knowledge as children always do – BUT the great failure of education institutions is that old human problem, we like to suppose that we KNOW what we know and that is all there is to know, so there. We do not like to face up to the ever present intimation we all have that there is more going on in our minds, that we do not want to attend to, than just collecting facts, learning the social ropes and getting by from one day to the next. We, the Homo sapiens gang, have a curious aversion to that Sapiens thing – the immediate realization that we realize. There is just something different about thought. What could that be?

I intend to survey and examine schooling around the country and put forward information about who, what and where is happening to explicitly aim at helping children to become skillful at thought. The education racket has battalions of opinionators and experts and loads of organizations blasting away at the ‘trouble’ with our schools. I am thinking that a focus on thinking may be a better way to help kids improve their thinking and knowing and learning and understanding.   Got it.