I didn't learn scientific method in school -- and my attendence was better than average. Any "critical thinking" skills I have now I've more or less taught myself -- and most of it by reading books that never would have been introduced in a compulsory, public school education. No do I think my educational experience diverges all that much from the norm.

But surely an education should be seven parts teaching people how to think to three parts teaching people what to do? Isn't that what democracy demands? Where is the benefit in allowing people the opportunity to elect governments to deal with problems like global warming if they are completely scientifically illiterate?

In general, I'd much rather a greater emphasis was placed on things like philosophy, logic, science and human psychology than life skills or business.

Niall001 wrote: In general, I'd much rather a greater emphasis was placed on things like philosophy, logic, science and human psychology than life skills or business.

Ditto...because the latter simply produces 'worker bees'. I agree with Mad though...the educational system in this country needs to be refocused, because we do NOT teach kids how to think, but (now more than ever) how to PASS TESTS!

Mr. P.

I think an excellent approach to teaching science could follow the lead from two books we've adressed here at Booktalk: The Omnivore's Dillema and Deep Economy...both appraoching (among aohter things) the world of food production, distribution, consumption, and waste. A careful examination of what goes on their plates and in their stomachs and down the sewer would cover more than enough curriculum for the scientific method, ecological systems, and how humans interact with their environments. And it would be immediate, pertinent, and tasty too! Hands on, tactile, practical and connected to every day living: as well as linking to the world of economics, politics, city planning, and community building. This would also extend nicely into ethics and the philosophy of the "good life": i.e., what responsibility do I have to the world around me (in particular the food I eat), and what kind of world must I live in so that I can eat the way I want?

Just a quick thought but isn't a lot of what people are talking about when they talk of life skills covered by Home Economics? I know when I did it it covered things like diet, budgeting, banking, consumer rights, social problems, basic biology etc.

Niall wrote:But surely an education should be seven parts teaching people how to think to three parts teaching people what to do? Isn't that what democracy demands?

I assume this was directed to me. I'm not suggesting that we shift to an emphasis on trade skills. But the question that we ought to ask when ever we talk about "teaching people how to think" is "how to think about what?" More and more I'm finding all this talk about "critical thinking skills" to be either too abstract to serve as a basis for any practical program of education, or a kind of jargon that stands for "thinking about the subjects I think are important, and in the way I'd like to see them thought about."

Again, think about it in terms of what is actually gained by a third grader being taught Darwinian evolution. Who is recommending that we teach them evolution and why? The answer, generally speaking, is along the lines of a) scientists serving on panels that draft educational standards, and b) because they judge the utility of a subject by its application to their own career. Ninety-nine percent of the students who pass through public education simply will not enter a career in biology or any other hard science -- for them, some other aspect of biology will likely be more useful. But so far as I can tell, the panels that draft educational standards rarely employ any members whose specific task is to assess what subjects would be most useful to scientific laypersons. If that consideration plays any part in the determination of educational standards, it's mostly a matter of felicity.

Where is the benefit in allowing people the opportunity to elect governments to deal with problems like global warming if they are completely scientifically illiterate?

Can you put a name to the phantom that's advocating that we not teach science in schools? And while you're at it, point a finger at the educational system that's teaching people the science necessary to actually address an issue like global warming.

In general, I'd much rather a greater emphasis was placed on things like philosophy, logic, science and human psychology than life skills or business.

I've been studying philosophy for, literally, half of my life now, but I certainly don't think it should be a required subject in compulsory education. Some measure of logic probably should be taught, but even higher level logic is probably beyond the scope of most non-voluntary education, and other philosophical topics are so specialized that I can't imagine that teaching it to everyone would do much more than breed contempt in people who, coming to it later in life, would actually find a lot of value in the subject. I agree that science should be taught, but I'm of the opinion that the wrong science is being taught, mostly because the wrong science is being demanded by professionals who think more about what's needed for future scientists than what's needed by the average citizen. Teaching "human psychology" would probably do more harm than good -- the last thing I need is every fifth grader I come across judging all of my behavior according to standards they got out of a textbook -- and I can't really see much benefit in it.

What I am suggesting is that we need to be teaching kids how to think about their immediate environment in ways that make them more circumspect about their actions. Most of them could do without learning about the temperature required to make a solid phase directly into gas, but a clearer understanding of the complexity involved when you apply a pesticide to your front lawn is science with an immediate bearing on their behavior. That need not involve rote learning or narrow training in any particular skill set. I'm still advocating a form of critical thought, it's just one that applies more directly to the sort of situations most non-professionals are likely to encounter on a daily basis.

Just a quick thought but isn't a lot of what people are talking about when they talk of life skills covered by Home Economics? I know when I did it it covered things like diet, budgeting, banking, consumer rights, social problems, basic biology etc.

Insufficiently, yes. The question is, if those are the subjects that really matter to the majority of students, why are we restricting them to one of the most broadly derided and marginalized subjects in the curriculum? Particularly when most of those topics are just as at home in science, economics, sociology and other disciplines? In my school, and in most public schools I'm familiar with, Home Ec. was an elective. At best, it's often semi-required -- that is, it's one option among a few that will fill a particular requirement, but a student can just as easily fill that requirement by taking Typing or Shop. Why require students to learn about Darwin, or Thomas Hardy, or the Battle of Verdun, and not require them to learn subjects that they're more likely to need, that are more likely to give them information they can use to improve their daily lives?

But the question that we ought to ask when ever we talk about "teaching people how to think" is "how to think about what?" More and more I'm finding all this talk about "critical thinking skills" to be either too abstract to serve as a basis for any practical program of education, or a kind of jargon that stands for "thinking about the subjects I think are important, and in the way I'd like to see them thought about."

To my critical thinking involves being able to analyse an argument, identify its premises and detect any fallacies. They should be able to evaluate theories, be they literary, scientific, philosophical or historical to the point where they can differentiate between consistent theories and inconsistent theories.

Again, think about it in terms of what is actually gained by a third grader being taught Darwinian evolution. Who is recommending that we teach them evolution and why? The answer, generally speaking, is along the lines of a) scientists serving on panels that draft educational standards, and b) because they judge the utility of a subject by its application to their own career. Ninety-nine percent of the students who pass through public education simply will not enter a career in biology or any other hard science -- for them, some other aspect of biology will likely be more useful

If you're going to teach biology, you're going to have to teach evolution, maybe not in terrible detail, but to the point where people can understand what the empirical record says about the origins of life. There's very little in biology that needs to be thought - after all, who really needs to know about the genetics or the left ventricle - but if you're going to teach kids about biology, at some point they're going to start asking why biological organisms came to exist. It's the most human question anybody can ask.

Can you put a name to the phantom that's advocating that we not teach science in schools? And while you're at it, point a finger at the educational system that's teaching people the science necessary to actually address an issue like global warming.

Completely was a bad word choice. But I feel that while science is taught, the scientific method is not.

I've been studying philosophy for, literally, half of my life now, but I certainly don't think it should be a required subject in compulsory education. Some measure of logic probably should be taught, but even higher level logic is probably beyond the scope of most non-voluntary education, and other philosophical topics are so specialized that I can't imagine that teaching it to everyone would do much more than breed contempt in people who, coming to it later in life, would actually find a lot of value in the subject.

I'm not looking to make 10 year olds study complex philosophy, but at some point in their education, students should be introduced to some of the questions that have dominated western thought, and given cliff note versions of the philosophies of various important philosophers.

Teaching "human psychology" would probably do more harm than good -- the last thing I need is every fifth grader I come across judging all of my behavior according to standards they got out of a textbook -- and I can't really see much benefit in it.

I was referring more to the aspects of psychological research that details our cognitive biases and basic learning mechanisms. It would help if people understood the psychology behind things decision making, problem solving, prejudice, learning and the like.

Most of them could do without learning about the temperature required to make a solid phase directly into gas, but a clearer understanding of the complexity involved when you apply a pesticide to your front lawn is science with an immediate bearing on their behavior. That need not involve rote learning or narrow training in any particular skill set. I'm still advocating a form of critical thought, it's just one that applies more directly to the sort of situations most non-professionals are likely to encounter on a daily basis.

Well I think that one of the things I've found frustrating about science education I've had is the lack of concrete examples. Sometimes, this is just the nature of the beast. Still, I think that there's a lot to be said for the top-down approach to learning.

Why require students to learn about Darwin, or Thomas Hardy, or the Battle of Verdun, and not require them to learn subjects that they're more likely to need, that are more likely to give them information they can use to improve their daily lives?

I think it may be because an assumption is made that many of these things are common sense or common knowledge.

Niall001 wrote:They should be able to evaluate theories, be they literary, scientific, philosophical or historical to the point where they can differentiate between consistent theories and inconsistent theories.

Is that really all we want public education to achieve? How long does it take to teach a person to look for inconsistencies? It seems to me that a compulsory educational system ought to teach more than that. For example, in terms of history, is it really enough to teach a person how to "evaluate a theory"? Personally, I think a more beneficial use of public education would be to teach children the historical circumstances that impacted the development of the governmental system the inhabit. That sort of context will help them to make sense of some of the contingent and otherwise indecipherable decisions that have contributed to the current state of affairs. And it seems entirely likely that the people who have campaigned so hard to make evolution a required part of the curriculum want it to be a feature of the student's view of the world, not just an example of how to evaluate theories.

If you're going to teach biology, you're going to have to teach evolution, maybe not in terrible detail, but to the point where people can understand what the empirical record says about the origins of life.

Again, why? I understand that evolution provides the framework for biology as a discipline, but most of these students aren't going to practice biology as a discipline -- not even in the same sense that they're going to practice democracy and thus need some at least rudimentary conception of the theoretical framework in which the political system operates. Can you give me some real world application here? I can understand how a thorough education in human anatomy will benefit even a person who drops out of high school as soon as it's legal to do so. What practical benefit will a high school drop out derive from having learned evolutionary theory?

There's very little in biology that needs to be thought - after all, who really needs to know about the genetics or the left ventricle - but if you're going to teach kids about biology, at some point they're going to start asking why biological organisms came to exist.

Two points: 1) If they don't really need to know about biology, then do we really need to require the subject? (That question is partly rhetorical. Rhetorical because I don't agree that "very little in biology need to be taught". Most students won't need to know about the genetics of the left ventricle. However, a fairly high percentage of them will benefit from knowing roughly how a ventricle works and in what ways common behavior can impede that functionality.) And 2) I'm not opposed to teachers explaining evolution to curious students, or pointing them to reference materials that will explain the theory for them. But that's a pretty far cry from requiring students to learn it, dedicated time, money and resources to the effort, and then grading them on their ability to understand a topic that most of them will never use again.

But I feel that while science is taught, the scientific method is not.

I agree. It's instructed -- by which I mean, most students are put in a lab and made to move through a series of steps approximating scientific method. But most of them aren't clued in as to why those particular steps are the best way at testing a particular hypothesis -- most of them aren't even told that they are testing a hypothesis. I know that's what high school science class was like in my school. I'm not sure that requiring that evolution be taught does anything to remedy that situation, particularly since the original theory was inductive.

I'm not looking to make 10 year olds study complex philosophy, but at some point in their education, students should be introduced to some of the questions that have dominated western thought, and given cliff note versions of the philosophies of various important philosophers.

Why? Seriously, what would it benefit a grade school student to get acquainted with Wittgenstein's theory of atomic facts, or with 16th century Thomism, or even with something as basic as Plato's myth of the cave?

I think we're talking about two very different things here, Niall. You seem to be talking about the ideal education. A child goes through it and comes out a kind of Renaissance thinker, able to range the full gamut of civilized culture. That's the sort of education that only about 5% of the population of any culture has ever gotten. What I'm talking about is what our society forces every citizen to learn as a minimum for participation in that society. I'd like to think that most humans want to persue some ideal of personal excellence similar to that embodied by the educational ideal, but I don't think it's any more just to force it upon them than it is to deny it to certain groups as a matter of course. In the interests of equality, compulsory education should make it possible for them to pursue a fuller education, but to coerce a person into learning more than they need to avoid being trampled by the society in which they live is to burden both the person and the society.

It would help if people understood the psychology behind things decision making, problem solving, prejudice, learning and the like.

If you're talking about teaching them ways of addressing problems and the reasons why their own traits might obstruct their learning, fine. But the same subjects can be taught from a perspective that encourages students to think of psychology as a way of interacting with other people as though they were only psychological problems standing in the way of "getting my way." An attempt to teach psychology at the compulsory level is liable to the same bias that has guided other scientific curriculum -- namely that if the curriculum is drafted by professionals in that field, it's prone to stand in support of creating more professionals, rather than providing laypersons with the practical skills the discipline claims to provide.

Still, I think that there's a lot to be said for the top-down approach to learning.

To my mind, the most important thing to say about it is that it often obscures the net effect of teaching the subject at all.

I wrote:Why require students to learn about Darwin, or Thomas Hardy, or the Battle of Verdun, and not require them to learn subjects that they're more likely to need, that are more likely to give them information they can use to improve their daily lives?

Niall wrote:I think it may be because an assumption is made that many of these things are common sense or common knowledge.

I think it's because the the realm of curriculum revision has often been a battlefield with no clear motivating conception of what a compulsory education ought to provide. The result is that grade school curriculums often treat students as though they were simply remedial students in a voluntary, secondary educational institution. If you stop treating students as though they were at school of their own accord and started teaching them as potential victims of their own ignorance or burdens on a social system that demands their participation -- which is what compulsory education is intended to prevent -- then I'm sure you'd see curriculum's drafted in radically different ways.

We might still teach literature, for example, but would we teach "Beowulf"? We would be more likely, I think, to teach something like "Candide", whose impact on the shape of our society and the demands it makes is much more palpable. And by the same token, we'd still teach science, but would we necessarily teach Darwin? "Beowulf" represents a literary form whose impact on the whole of literature, on the whole of modern Western thought, has been and continues to be tremendous, but I don't know that most students gain anything by their familiarity with it -- the principle being that importance to the discipline should prima facie determine a subject's importance in a captive audience classroom environment.

If someone can tell me why my proto-typical high school drop out needs to know Darwin in order to get by, I'll be glad to reconsider my position.

MadArchitect wrote:

Niall001 wrote:They should be able to evaluate theories, be they literary, scientific, philosophical or historical to the point where they can differentiate between consistent theories and inconsistent theories.

Is that really all we want public education to achieve? How long does it take to teach a person to look for inconsistencies? It seems to me that a compulsory educational system ought to teach more than that.

Well as it stands, many people manage to emerge from decades of schooling incapable of noticing inconsistencies in their belief structures and arguments.

For example, in terms of history, is it really enough to teach a person how to "evaluate a theory"? Personally, I think a more beneficial use of public education would be to teach children the historical circumstances that impacted the development of the governmental system the inhabit. That sort of context will help them to make sense of some of the contingent and otherwise indecipherable decisions that have contributed to the current state of affairs.

You're right, this would be useful. But it wouldn't be enough in my opinion. People, especially children, tend to simplify history and suffer from a sort of naturalistic fallacy, believing that because history leads us to a certain point, it is the right point to be at. I don't think that it is enough just to supply them with information, which it seems to me, to be where the emphasis of the approach you endorse lies. Am I wrong?

And it seems entirely likely that the people who have campaigned so hard to make evolution a required part of the curriculum want it to be a feature of the student's view of the world, not just an example of how to evaluate theories.

You're probably right, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't include it.

Again, why? I understand that evolution provides the framework for biology as a discipline, but most of these students aren't going to practice biology as a discipline -- not even in the same sense that they're going to practice democracy and thus need some at least rudimentary conception of the theoretical framework in which the political system operates. Can you give me some real world application here? I can understand how a thorough education in human anatomy will benefit even a person who drops out of high school as soon as it's legal to do so. What practical benefit will a high school drop out derive from having learned evolutionary theory?

I'd take issue with the notion that a thorough education in human anatomy benefits a high school drop-out. For example, what benefit do they find in knowledge of the auditory system? Indeed, do they really even need to know about how something like the circulatory system works in order to avoid heart disease? Just instruct them not to smoke and to avoid fatty foods.

As you note, evolution provides a framework for biology as a discipline. It's useful to know about evolution and genetics if you want to understand the human body works. If I were devising a text, the first section would be on evolution and genetics, because a knowledge of these areas makes it easier for pupils to place the study of the circulatory and endocrine systems within a context.

Also, I think that there is something to be said for structuring an education system so that each level builds upon the next when possible. Evolution underpins all of modern biology, it is part of the fundamentals of biology, so it should not be something one retroactively shoehorns into one's internal models. In this day and age, the average student of biology already knows about evolution, but they also often hold certain false beliefs about it. This inaccurate knowledge if unchallenged could hinder education in biology.

Two points: 1) If they don't really need to know about biology, then do we really need to require the subject? (That question is partly rhetorical. Rhetorical because I don't agree that "very little in biology need to be taught". Most students won't need to know about the genetics of the left ventricle. However, a fairly high percentage of them will benefit from knowing roughly how a ventricle works and in what ways common behavior can impede that functionality.) And 2) I'm not opposed to teachers explaining evolution to curious students, or pointing them to reference materials that will explain the theory for them. But that's a pretty far cry from requiring students to learn it, dedicated time, money and resources to the effort, and then grading them on their ability to understand a topic that most of them will never use again.

Mad, not to avoid your questions, but given the views you've expressed here, would it be fair to say that you don't think physics or chemistry should be obligatory in schools at any stage? Most people will not need any knowledge from either science during their lives.

You seem to think that learning about ventricles may be of benefit to pupils because it will help them understand how treating them badly can make the heart malfunction, but I can't see how that is any different from saying that teaching evolution to children helps them understand why the heart functions in the way it does. You could reduce all education down to a big book of instructions, a sort of user's guide to life, I don't think you'd see that as desirable.

Me:I'm not looking to make 10 year olds study complex philosophy, but at some point in their education, students should be introduced to some of the questions that have dominated western thought, and given cliff note versions of the philosophies of various important philosophers.

Mad: Why? Seriously, what would it benefit a grade school student to get acquainted with Wittgenstein's theory of atomic facts, or with 16th century Thomism, or even with something as basic as Plato's myth of the cave?

You could argue that these things are important because these philosophies are the foundation on which civilisation is built. Philosophers like Marx, Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Augustine, Hume and Kant have all had a great effect on history.

You could also argue that if you want people to learn how to think, then it might be a good idea to expose them to some of those people recognised as being some of our greatest thinkers.

I think we're talking about two very different things here, Niall. You seem to be talking about the ideal education. A child goes through it and comes out a kind of Renaissance thinker, able to range the full gamut of civilized culture. That's the sort of education that only about 5% of the population of any culture has ever gotten. What I'm talking about is what our society forces every citizen to learn as a minimum for participation in that society.

I really think that your aiming too low here. I don't ever expect that any education will produce the ideal scholar, but I think they should be designed with a view toward creating the ideal scholar. Aim for the moon and that crap.

I believe that people should be enabled to decide for themselves what is important and what way they'd like to interact with society - within reason of course

I'm not aiming to create businessmen out of the son's of bums. I'm aiming to put people in a situation where they can decide for themselves whether or not being a bum is a bad thing.

I'd like to think that most humans want to persue some ideal of personal excellence similar to that embodied by the educational ideal, but I don't think it's any more just to force it upon them than it is to deny it to certain groups as a matter of course. In the interests of equality, compulsory education should make it possible for them to pursue a fuller education, but to coerce a person into learning more than they need to avoid being trampled by the society in which they live is to burden both the person and the society.

Surely remedial classes of some sort are the answer to this rather than lowering the standard as a whole?

If you're talking about teaching them ways of addressing problems and the reasons why their own traits might obstruct their learning, fine. But the same subjects can be taught from a perspective that encourages students to think of psychology as a way of interacting with other people as though they were only psychological problems standing in the way of "getting my way." An attempt to teach psychology at the compulsory level is liable to the same bias that has guided other scientific curriculum -- namely that if the curriculum is drafted by professionals in that field, it's prone to stand in support of creating more professionals, rather than providing laypersons with the practical skills the discipline claims to provide.

It seems we agree, however I think that it is reasonably easy to avoid the situation you speak of where professional bodies draw up a course with the aim of creating more professionals - just tell them not to! Tell them what the aim of the syllabus is.

I think it's because the the realm of curriculum revision has often been a battlefield with no clear motivating conception of what a compulsory education ought to provide. The result is that grade school curriculums often treat students as though they were simply remedial students in a voluntary, secondary educational institution. If you stop treating students as though they were at school of their own accord and started teaching them as potential victims of their own ignorance or burdens on a social system that demands their participation -- which is what compulsory education is intended to prevent -- then I'm sure you'd see curriculum's drafted in radically different ways.

Some interesting points here. However, I think that education systems have had many purposes through the ages and that hasn't change of late. However, I think that one of the purposes of any education systems should be education - as an end in itself.

When citizens elect a government, their opinions are enforced by the government on the people. Indirectly, citizens decide what constitutes a victim and a burden. If change is to be a real possibility, students must not simply be guided away from becoming what is commonly regarded as undesirable, but must also be enabled to form their own opinions on such matters.

We might still teach literature, for example, but would we teach "Beowulf"? We would be more likely, I think, to teach something like "Candide", whose impact on the shape of our society and the demands it makes is much more palpable. And by the same token, we'd still teach science, but would we necessarily teach Darwin? "Beowulf" represents a literary form whose impact on the whole of literature, on the whole of modern Western thought, has been and continues to be tremendous, but I don't know that most students gain anything by their familiarity with it -- the principle being that importance to the discipline should prima facie determine a subject's importance in a captive audience classroom environment.

Yeah, I hear you. And I think there is a large amount of merit in your arguments but I'm not certain why you've drawn the line where you have. Why the circulatory system but not evolution? Why "Candide" but not "Hamlet"?

If someone can tell me why my proto-typical high school drop out needs to know Darwin in order to get by, I'll be glad to reconsider my position.

The prototypical drop-out doesn't need Darwin (though that of course depends on how you define a need). But neither will they need "Candide". They certainly won't need to know what a left ventricle is, or what the circulatory system does, and if you're not going to teach about the circulatory system or other systems, then you're not really teaching biology, are you?

I don't think that it is enough just to supply them with information, which it seems to me, to be where the emphasis of the approach you endorse lies. Am I wrong?

Actually, if you think about what I've already written, I'm calling for a great deal less information than is currently being presented. What I think would be most beneficial would be to present fewer "facts" but to be more thorough in dealing with the information that is presented, so that students come away with some sense of solidity -- not solidity in the sense that things simply exist and cannot be questioned, but solidity in the sense that information is something that can be handled, worked with, deconstructed if need be. You probably can convey that sense working with specialized topics like the Big Bang, but again, why burden unnecessarily the 95% of the students who will never use that information?

Indeed, do they really even need to know about how something like the circulatory system works in order to avoid heart disease? Just instruct them not to smoke and to avoid fatty foods.

Acting as a dispensory for the current state of knowledge is self-defeating. For decades laypeople denied that smoking was dangerous, despite the changing state of scientific knowledge, in large part because they were weaned on a more tolerant view of the habit, and partly because their education left them ill-suited to the task of assessing new information that was coming in.

It's useful to know about evolution and genetics if you want to understand [how] the human body works.

Can you give me some concrete examples to demonstrate that? I don't think it's at all obvious that it does. For certain purposes, naturally, seeing the function of the human body in an evolutionary context is useful, but I'm not at all convinced that those are purposes the average student will ever have use for.

Also, I think that there is something to be said for structuring an education system so that each level builds upon the next when possible.

Certainly, and public education at the compulsory levels should provide a foundation for those students who will pursue higher levels of education. But those students will get most of the real education about evolution at the higher levels. Even if it's taught to them in third grade, the majority of them will have to relearn it later on in order to correct the misunderstandings that arise from the process of simplifying the topic. For that matter, teaching a complicated subject at the compulsory level almost always involves serious compromises in presentation, in part because that presentation is almost always modified to account for an audience with mixed uses for the topic.

So, again, I ask -- what good does it do to teach third graders evolution? The majority of them will never use what they've been taught, and the minority that will use it will, in all likelihood, have to relearn it at the upper levels of education anyway.

Mad, not to avoid your questions, but given the views you've expressed here, would it be fair to say that you don't think physics or chemistry should be obligatory in schools at any stage?

No, that would be a misunderstanding of my position. If anything, the modern circumstances of the average American's life make those subjects all the more important. I just don't think they're being taught in a way that encourages students to make practical use of the elements that are most immediate to their experience.

To give a pretty facile, but illustrative, example, I went to school with a number of guys who dropped out, or finished but did not pursue secondary education, and immediately went to work in the local bottle factory. Incidentally, I worked there over one summer, so I'm not pulling this entirely out of my... imagination. These guys work around very complex machinery that requires a high degree of calibration, maintenance, etc. Most of them have, through sheer practice, become very skilled workers, but I can't say with any confidence that the 11 to 13 years of schooling they underwent contributed much to those skills, save for some basic mathematics and literacy.

All well and good: they get along alright. Not many of them are candidates for executive positions, but not all of them would want those positions, either. The problem is that most of them, even those who work directly on the machinery, know those machines only because they've worked on them, or on similar models. One day, the factory is going to upgrade their machinery, and everyone in the factory is going to have to relearn their jobs. Some will fare better than others. Some will probably lose their jobs out to people who don't have the bias of knowing an outdated machine too well. To some degree this is unavoidable -- even a reformed educational system could not be expected to teach them everything they'd need to know to work on the machinery in a bottle factory. That sort of education is just too specific to fit within the context of a compulsory education, and so it falls to the industry itself to provide the more specialized education.

But, a solid working knowledge of some very fundamental physical premises, geared towards application, would have gone a long way towards giving these workers more flexibility when it comes to the machinery they work on. Understanding, say, hydraulics, or tensile strength would enable them to learn the machines as the embodiment of physical forces, rather than as simple working parts that are necessary to a particular task (when in fact, the working parts are quite dispensible, and their replacement with something that works in another way is practically inevitable).

To give another example, automobile traffic is ubiquitous in modern industrual nations. So even people who will never work with heavy machinery benefit from some workable understanding of inertia, collisions, viscosity, and so on.

As for chemistry, we deal with such an impressive battery of chemicals on a daily basis -- and are confronted with even more each day -- that I consider some form of education in the subject practically indespensible. But it doesn't strike me that schools are really teaching students how to assess the uses and dangers inherent in using this or that chemical to clean their kitchen, or ingesting this or that pain reliever every time they have a hangover. Most of the chemistry education I received seems to have been calculated (if I'm being generous) to prep students for a career in chemical engineering -- despite the fact that only a voluntary, secondary education could really provide them with the competence to pursue that career. That is, when the curriculum seemed calculated to do anything at all. Mostly, it seemed calculated to keep test scores high enough that the state committee wouldn't revoke the school's accreditation.

Knowing the period table is probably not all that useful for most people. But to say that most people "will not need any knowledge from either science during their lives" is to ignore the extent to which we interact with the products of science on a daily basis.

You could argue that these things are important because these philosophies are the foundation on which civilisation is built.

I do argue that. I just don't think most people have much use for knowing all that. To say that we shouldn't require people to learn a particular thing isn't the same as saying it isn't important. Knowing the properties of magnetic attraction is pretty important for providing electricity to modern cities, but it isn't something I need to know. And I don't think it very likely that I'll ever need to know much about magnetic attraction.

I want people to be able to think about the matters most immediate to their survival and happiness. Exposing them to Marx and Plato isn't going to make most lives any easier.

Look, I came out of one of the most dismal public education systems allowed to operate in America. Yet, Marx and Plato don't give me much trouble. You could argue that natural aptitude explains my facility for certain subjects, and to a degree, I suppose that's the case. But I guarantee you that any talk about either philosopher would fall on deaf ears right now if I hadn't seen in their work some practical use specific to my ambitions. I encountered exactly zero philosophy until I was about 15, and then it was while taking a voluntary class over the summer. I can't tell you the form of the Pythagorean theorem to save my life, and yet, I had the damned thing reiterated to me at least five years running, and actually used it to solve problems. The fact is, I haven't needed the theorem, haven't had much occasion to use it, even in college, and I was pretty convinced in high school that I wouldn't need it. I understand that it's a brilliant theorem, and that it's incredibly useful for certain tasks, but it was wasted on me. It's wasted on most people who are forced to learn it.

Nor would I have been better served if someone had decided to start teaching me philosophy at age 8. I'd have only had to relearn everything later on. (Computer programmer friends have informed me that cutting my teeth on BASIC has set several years back any attempt I might make at learning to program.) What would have served me best is that someone had sat down and said, "Here are a dozen skills that all but a handful of the people in a class will need, so we're going to make sure you know them well." Sadly, that didn't happen. The curriculum was determined in reference to a set of criteria that had very little to do with our contemporary situation.

I don't ever expect that any education will produce the ideal scholar, but I think they should be designed with a view toward creating the ideal scholar.

Why? In any given generation, only the lowest percent of people compelled to enter the school system will opt for a scholarly career. That means that something like 99% of the population is given no choice in the matter: They have to submit to at least 10 years of training for a job they'll never do. To invert your statement, I don't expect education to produce happiness or to ensure a just society, but I think it should be designed to at least make them more plausible.

Surely remedial classes of some sort are the answer to this rather than lowering the standard as a whole?

I'm not talking about lowering standards. I'm talking about reassessing whether or not those standards were ever implemented for good reasons. Standards will gradually lower of their own accord so long as you insist on cramming thirty kids into a classroom with one teacher who has the impossible job of teaching them something they don't want to learn and will never use. We'd probably need fewer remedial classes if our curriculum were geared towards practical education rather than competitive education.

However, I think that one of the purposes of any education systems should be education - as an end in itself.

And I seriously doubt whether or not education is ever an "end in itself."

And I think there is a large amount of merit in your arguments but I'm not certain why you've drawn the line where you have. Why the circulatory system but not evolution? Why "Candide" but not "Hamlet"?

Because evolution wil not pose a problem for most citizens; all citizens have circulatory systems, though, and a fair percentage of those circulatory systems will cause problems for their owners. Because "Candide" is emblematic of a school of thought that directly informed the view of human nature that undergirds the American Constitution, while knowing the impact that "Hamlet" has had on Western culture is less likely (note the relativity here) to enable the average person to do anything they would like to do in the first place.

The prototypical drop-out doesn't need Darwin.... But neither will they need "Candide".

No, they probably won't. But I think there's a strong argument to the end that knowing the context of thought that produced "Candide" will better benefit most people, since that same context made significant and direct contributions to the political system that most Americans certainly will interact with, year after year. From that point of view, "Candide" is not important in itself, but only insofar as it indicates an important context that most American citizens cannot escape -- that is, the Enlightenment views of human nature that serve as the basis for American law and political organization. In that sense, "Candide" becomes a kind of shorthand. I'm not yet arguing that "Candide" should be taught, only that it's a better candidate for a practical, compulsory curriculum.

They certainly won't need to know what a left ventricle is, or what the circulatory system does, and if you're not going to teach about the circulatory system or other systems, then you're not really teaching biology, are you?

Most of them are more likely to have a doctor tell them that they have to change their lifestyle to account for some damaged or failing organ than they are to use evolutionary theory as anything more than a novelty. Going into that situation with a basic understanding of what's at stake will make it easier for them assess and assimilate the diagnosis and prognosis, to avoid making mistakes that will exacerbate the problem, and possibly to avoid it in the first place. If you were to suggest that we teach about the venticles almost to the exclusion of teaching about, say, the ulna, then I'd say you're splitting hairs. It may be that the percentage of people who will see health benefits from learning about the venticles is as low as the percentage of people who will benefit from learning about Darwinian evolution. But nearly everyone in the class will have some sort of health problem in their lifetime, almost all of them will stand a better chance of surviving it without impairment if they know a least a modicum about how their body works, and so if you compass the full range of physiology that bears on personal health, you give everyone in the class information and a skill set that, depending on their receptiveness, portends some benefit accruing directly to them.

Incidentally, it's probably about time we started breaking this thread down into some less lengthy side threads. I'll let your interest decide where the joints are since I find myself, at this point in the discussion, in the position of defending a point of view.