@ Mark, good to hear the voice of youth but I don't think that things were really that different in your parents/my generation. Also, can I just explore two words: 'equality' and 'education':

Equality - I am not convinced that things were better in the past. The generation before you were quite lucky but before that not everyone had full access to education (it was not until the 1960s that education became globally equitable and even after that we see many examples of people being denied full education). This means that we cannot consider anything before the 60s to be universally 'better' and even after that we still see many people suffering. So whilst education may have got better for some, some groups have only started to access it (I work in Trinidad and Tobago where universal secondary education was not fully achieved until 2000!).

Education - education and memory are not the same thing. The passage of time means that there is more information available each new day and the volume of information is increasing rapidly. We should therefore accept that we are not living/learning in a world where we will ever know everything. Instead we have moved to a position whereby we pay more regard to the ability to work things out. So we don't need to memorise data we just need to know how to access it and manipulate it. Having information available on the internet is handy but we are not just Google-learners. We USE this information to develop new knowledge.

Finally, 30 years ago my teachers were asking me, "Didn't you already learned that?" and I am sure the same is true of previous generations too.

For the difference between learning to succeed and learning to become a fully functioning adult, i believe this reflects the psychological status of most individuals in adulthood. By this i mean that adulthood has its challenges and this is a crucial stage in life in which the individual spends most part of his/her life. Much of the efforts to sustain survival and other developmental challenges are fulfilled at this stage. One collects resources not only for oneself but also for the family. So our education prepares people for this stage. And for that one has to face the competition in the market. So success is attributed to how much one has achieved in moving ahead in life. There is a statistical competition of who stands where. So one is not able to reflect upon whether the person is fully functioning or not. There is no evaluation of needs in such a race of remaining ahead.

Not everything was well in the past. Remember Socrates' words 6000 years ago: "The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise.". Aren't we saying the same thing Socrates said so long ago?

I can't believe that there was ever a perfect moment in education as, if it had occurred, we would surely know about it. What we have are imperfect memories and nostalgia - which combine to paint a rosy picture of the past. I feel that we are moving forward and that education has become more personalised and more student-centred. But education is also divisive. This means that whilst some enjoy a class - some do not. Whilst some get good grades - some do not. And whilst some embrace education early - some do so later (or never at all). There can be no easy solution to this but, working together as a field, practitioners can better understand what needs to be addressed and start to take steps towards reducing the disparity. Of course, we in education are only part of the system and there are other areas such as work, benefits, health care and the media that need further scrutiny in order to help develop a better/rosier future.

The meaning of being learned and educated has changed over time. Well into the 1800s, learnedness referred to studying the Classics, which formed the basis of both the Chinese and British civil service examinations. In the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, there has been a move toward applied education, the most famous champion of which was John Dewey. In the process, educators have tried to open up the classroom to a greater diversity of students and types of education.

Perhaps some scholars look back at the days of Classical, liberal arts education as a time when learning was not acquired for its utilitarian value alone. Classical, liberal-arts education holds the promise of teaching us greater philosophical truths about the human condition. However, students also studied within that mode of education to learn what were then practical skills about statecraft and historical precedent.

For those interested in the American context, I would recommend reading Calhoun, "The Changing Character of College," and Shipiro, "The Antebellum College: From Right Thinking to Liberal Learning."

Although I do not believe there was (or ever will be) such a thing as pefect education/learning/teaching, I do believe that things were a (quite) a bit better in the past (and I'm only 22!). If I've a look at my parents, and my teachers in high-school (the generation before me), I'm convinced that the (basic) education was better before my time. For example, my parents and teachers repeatedly asked me/us (the class) "Didn't you already learned that (in school)". And most of the time it was really about stuff we should(!) already know, primairly Maths, Physics and Chemistry (my main subjects as well). I think that the modern times made students less capable of memorizes important stuff/simple facts or even (simple) concepts, while quite some of them are so important. Everything is readily available at internet so why remeber, is the credo from these times. I remember it from my own time in high-school, and even now in university I (still) suffer from it.

@ Mark, good to hear the voice of youth but I don't think that things were really that different in your parents/my generation. Also, can I just explore two words: 'equality' and 'education':

Equality - I am not convinced that things were better in the past. The generation before you were quite lucky but before that not everyone had full access to education (it was not until the 1960s that education became globally equitable and even after that we see many examples of people being denied full education). This means that we cannot consider anything before the 60s to be universally 'better' and even after that we still see many people suffering. So whilst education may have got better for some, some groups have only started to access it (I work in Trinidad and Tobago where universal secondary education was not fully achieved until 2000!).

Education - education and memory are not the same thing. The passage of time means that there is more information available each new day and the volume of information is increasing rapidly. We should therefore accept that we are not living/learning in a world where we will ever know everything. Instead we have moved to a position whereby we pay more regard to the ability to work things out. So we don't need to memorise data we just need to know how to access it and manipulate it. Having information available on the internet is handy but we are not just Google-learners. We USE this information to develop new knowledge.

Finally, 30 years ago my teachers were asking me, "Didn't you already learned that?" and I am sure the same is true of previous generations too.

Gardens are meant to be worked and reworked and yet weeds still appear. I do believe the garden you may be looking for contained an apple tree...and alas a snake.If you are a believer then that was were the first learnings took place. We have not stopped since. We are often predictive with our learnings and decide before we go into a learning sitiuation if we want to be taught. Therefore facilitating learning is the challenge. Those that learn by doing with a mentor to guide often gain the most satisfaction (not necessarily knowledge) from the experience. The will also gain life skills is that not what a capable adult is required to have?

There is a "forgotten classic" in children's literature called "Harry and Lucy Concluded Being the Last part of Early Lessons" by Maria Edgeworth published 1825. She knew about encouraging curiosity and making things with your hands. She was way ahead of her time. Most of her children's books follow the heavy handed moralising of the time but Harry and Lucy is quite different. The children learn by asking each other questions as well as their parents. Well worth looking at if you can find a copy.

thanks for that.. I'll see if I can find a copy. I suspect that it is about be able/allowed to continue asking good questions from childhood to adulthood.

Harry and Lucy are free at https://archive.org/details/harrylucyconclud04edge

Let me show you what Socrates thought about students 6,000 years ago: “Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they contradict their parents, chatter before company; gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers.”

I wonder what this tells us about humankind.

One can not deny that Socrates was right about the 'young'. The elders in society have always said that the young always do not to measure up to the expectations of some their elders when it comes to manners, 'behaving' properly, and treating others respectfully. However, I was thinking more of whether there might be a disconnection between the skills that young people need in order to take the jobs that are newly created by changes in innovative economy. In some places there is a severe shortage of people who have the skills to carry out responsible jobs in their respective societies. Some universities and colleges have found that their students do not sufficiently understand basic grammar, the techniques of writing, maths or basic science, when their grandparents and parents had learned these things in school. Clearly this is not the case in every part of the world, but it is a problem in countries where old industries are giving way to new ones based on more complex technologies. The question is who will be able to fill those jobs?

When there is no real connect - all was well

Another technology that is being used extensively in education is satellite broadcasting. Satellite television for educational purposes has a long history dating back to the early 1980s. India was one of the first countries to use satellite television through the INSAT project, and today Indira Ghandi National Open University is still a major satellite user. The Chinese Central Radio and Television University is another major user, with over 800,000 students. Monterrey Tech in Mexico has four satellite TV channels operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week, covering large parts of Latin America. It is used primarily to deliver lectures from its headquarters in Monterrey, and it provides two-way communication through e-mail questions from students to the studio host in Monterrey

http://www.tonybates.ca/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/farrell.pdf

 The teacher may overcome the problem of rejection of some of his instructions and orders class, taking into account the following suggestions and solutions:

• His dedication to teaching system and application by entering and leaving the quota on time, and keen to take advantage of time to benefit students' learning and the growth of their personalities. The teacher must not be surprised that some people's reluctance and cooperation in carrying out his orders - even in the first semester of primary school - is sometimes due to their lack of sincerity or general generosity in teaching and their lack of justification for listening or respecting their authority.

• He is characterized by balance and constructive thinking in his education and treatment of students. In other words, he does not have a hard time or hard to break. He goes without saying that education requires flexibility, firmness, leniency, care and care in both his time and his pupils.

• Desalination of objectivity and justice in dealing with his students. Every student in our schools is a human being with rights and duties, and the simplest and most direct is his natural right at the time of the quota. If the teacher has 20 students, for example, the average time and attention of the teacher is about two minutes (the share is equal to 45 d) and the teacher's deprivation of any student of this right is in fact non-educational or human behavior, whatever the reasons and justifications productive In the case of the students, the students have a feeling of injustice, inequality and automatic resistance to what the teacher says or does.

• Preparation of the subject of teaching and continuous knowledge of the new educational methods in his specialty, and participation whenever possible in the appropriate training courses organized by official educational institutions usually. This may confer on his teaching personality some kind of strength and influence that attracts with him the respect and attention of students. The above modification procedures are embodied in two applied principles that the teacher takes into account to help make his personality effective: removing undesirable conditions and changing negative behavioral stimuli by introducing positive ones; Its dependence on other therapeutic means and principles such as realistic, human, social and social oriented treatment to change its behavior or characteristics, and to create a humane educational personality.

• Meet the student and identify the reasons for his opposition or negative tendencies towards him (taking into account the teacher's honesty and humanity and objectivity in conducting an interview with the student to be able to access the real causes of the problem). If it turns out that the reason is due to character in character, then it is imperative to self-sincere attempt to modify this to overcome the negative feelings of the student, and to form the psychological acceptance of the teacher and his authority and responsibilities.

• The student meets him and identifies the reasons for his violation of his instructions and orders. If it turns out that the reason for this is that he does not want the subject of the study because of its difficulty or feeling that it is not important to his life, then the teacher follows the following procedure:

§ Identify the difficulty areas in the subject matter and the teacher's educational and human response. Often, the student produces the difficulty of the material from not understanding some of the basic concepts and principles that belong to one area or stage of it; therefore, the cognitive capacity of the following concepts and information confused and limited and unable to generalize from one position to another or from one task to another. What the teacher should initially do in this case is to teach the student concepts and principles that he lacks or has incomplete knowledge of, and then trained to use them in different positions and different to develop the capacity of circular and applied.

§ To convince the student in a humane manner and realistic and logical examples of the usefulness of the subject in his / her personal and functional life, and the usefulness of his / her activities related to him / her, which are usually requested by the teacher.

§ Meet the teacher to the student and identify his family or personal problem and the extent of the relationship to the current class behavior, and then respond to them in accordance with the nature and requirements of education and humanity.