Policies that claim for “more education”, in Brazil at least, tend to emphasize a completely different skillset: far leftist-biased history, far leftist-biased geography, far leftist-biased sociology, far leftist-biased philosophy, arts and culture (there’s this perception that “more culture” is some sort of panacea), and “critical thinking”, which is usually code for “opposing pro-growth policies”.
I do agree math & science are really wanting in the 3rd world, that they’re more fundamental for growth, and that we should focus on them. However, I disagree with the diagnosis; I believe the reason students are comparatively worse in hard sciences is, well, that they’re relatively harder—they require training and competence, from students AND teachers. If the problem were that we implemented leftist pro-culture policies, instead of improve hard sciences learning, we should at least observe improvements in some other capabilities—e.g., they should be able to read, interpret, and expose arguments on why, e.g., everything bad was caused by colonialism, patriarchy, etc.
I think we have a more complex inadequate equilibria: bad teachers in unions defending their interests, students from terrible backgrounds, talented people avoiding teaching (if you know calculus, why would you want to try to teach poor kids for a low salary?), and, of course, governments focused on whatever will win votes in the next election.
I do agree that any proposal on changing educational policies will meet a backlash, espacially from humanities, and that it will often carry a leftist taste—but we shouldn’t focus on this backlash, that’s not the cause of illiteracy, nor innumeracy. When we frame the issue as “the problem is that education is dominated by marxist thinking”, we’re just unnecessarily politicising it.
I’m not sure I get what the core of the disagreement is. Perhaps you could try expressing to me what your understanding of my view is, to clarify the comparison with yours? In general I think I agree with most of your comment.
I do agree math & science are really wanting in the 3rd world, that they’re more fundamental for growth, and that we should focus on them. However, I disagree with the diagnosis; I believe the reason students are comparatively worse in hard sciences is, well, that they’re relatively harder—they require training and competence, from students AND teachers. If the problem were that we implemented leftist pro-culture policies, instead of improve hard sciences learning, we should at least observe improvements in some other capabilities—e.g., they should be able to read, interpret, and expose arguments on why, e.g., everything bad was caused by colonialism, patriarchy, etc.
I think we have a more complex inadequate equilibria: bad teachers in unions defending their interests, students from terrible backgrounds, talented people avoiding teaching (if you know calculus, why would you want to try to teach poor kids for a low salary?), and, of course, governments focused on whatever will win votes in the next election.
I do agree that any proposal on changing educational policies will meet a backlash, espacially from humanities, and that it will often carry a leftist taste—but we shouldn’t focus on this backlash, that’s not the cause of illiteracy, nor innumeracy. When we frame the issue as “the problem is that education is dominated by marxist thinking”, we’re just unnecessarily politicising it.
I’m not sure I get what the core of the disagreement is. Perhaps you could try expressing to me what your understanding of my view is, to clarify the comparison with yours? In general I think I agree with most of your comment.