Active Thinkers For & Against

21. The limits of education in a complex society (Proposed — Thor)

• thormay@yahoo.com
• June 22, 2013
• 0

Our com­plex soci­eties are approach­ing the lim­its of edu­ca­bil­i­ty for large num­bers of cit­i­zens (e.g. “func­tion­al” lit­er­a­cy hov­ers at around 50% in most “advanced” soci­eties). Even those select­ed in schools for high intel­li­gence (e.g. many doc­tors) seem unable to absorb, retain and use crit­i­cal­ly all of the knowl­edge nec­es­sary to prac­tice their pro­fes­sions com­pe­tent­ly. With less able stu­dents, good teach­ers often real­ize that there comes a point of dimin­ish­ing returns for teach­ing effort, so dif­fi­cult choic­es have to be made.