Frightening Education

I was recently asked to evaluate grade-4 student answers to an open question for a prize. I accepted to study the answers as a favour to the person asking me. I don't want to identify anyone or any organization so I won't tell you the question, but it was a question of the type "Do bright colours make people more happy?" Open format, whatever you want to say.

I found the exercise to be absolutely frightening. I conclude that too many children are under-involved in intelligent conversations, are rarely challenged in their analyses, and are rewarded or comforted for being stupid and superficial. Unfreakingbelievobal.

Even though these students are young, their minds have already been ferociously trashed by the institutions. They are forced to be irrelevant and boxed into lives that are meaningless; nothing beyond canned interactions. It would appear.

I recommended that the prize project be aborted, and I shared my concerns with the organization. Waaaa.

Please treat your kids like thinking mature beings. If you can't exchange intellectual challenges with your children, then find others to do it and partake. Don't assume they are getting anything of value from school, and don't let them do homework in isolation and superficially. No homework is better than that!