Do you think the next generation will take education more seriously and view it as a privilege?

[Cortina]

I think there are very hard times coming which will see less of an emphasis on play-based learning in school? I think there will be a sea change in education in the next 20 years and we will take it far more seriously in the future. Serious work ethic and academic rigour will be what parents begin to look for in schools as the world becomes increasingly competitive.

I don't know how relevant this is, but DS2 has just started at uni & was really looking forward to it, thinking he would be with lots of other students who were interested in learning, using their minds & being challenged

So far (8 weeks in) he's really disappointed & has found most of them are only interested in getting pissed

That is an experience being repeated at universities across the country. Some of the students will get more interested again once the novelty has worn off.

I hope so, Damsel

(not optimistic though )

They do. Honestly. At least, the ones in my classes do. Everything starts mattering more in the second year (when their marks start to count) and lots of the students settle down and find that they enjoy learning. Obviously some of them would still rather be in the pub/bed. Not all, but.

oh good - thanks - I'll pass that on

I must confess that it is nothing to do with the current system of education I wasted four years doing a degree and not much work finalising in a third and large overdraft. Nothing to be proud of I know but just to point out that was in the late 80s when learning by rote was the norm. Something I regret now.

Cory, I find myself agreeing with you every time. I think there is so much anxiety about school results that parents feel if they present any sort of distraction or responsibility to their children they will have precious information dislodged from their brains, or not enough time to get down to studying, etc.

I don't pay my children for helping around the house but I do expect them to do their bit. My DS raised the issue of payment but I said no. Otherwise they grow up expected that they only do things for money. That would be a sad world.

Ponders, tell your ds that 'twas ever thus (just read some accounts of Oxbridge students in the 19th or 20th centuries), but if he hangs in there he will find other students of his own type; they are around.

But the most important thing is what he does with his own studies: academic study is to some extent a lonely business, but very worthwhile.

As Damsel suggested, he may even find that some of the "get legless and laid" types settle down after their initial burst of excitement at freedom from parental restraint and become more civilised. It has been known

I think it is hard to compare play based learning and traditional learning because what we mean by either can be very broad. What we call play based learning doesn't necessarily have any relation to what is going on in Scandinavian classrooms. So saying it gets better results based on Scandinavian countries doesn't mean that it will work here. The same is true of traditional learning here when compared to Asia.

I'm not sure that we do need more people with better thinking skills. To deal with the problems that are going to hit the next few generations we need to think less about economic growth and more about self sufficiency so that we can buffer problems hitting global systems. So we need more practical people - more people producing food, working in manufacturing and in Science. We are all going to need to do more real work and less time sitting about thinking about stuff and pushing bits of paper about.

I agree with a lot of what Cory and Mathanxiety say. I am also an academic, and we get high numbers of Asian students, many of whom are very hardworking and motivated. The first thing that we are having to get a lot of them to do is to unlearn the rote learning habit and to move beyond being descriptive, which would barely get you a pass at HE level. Some of them manage this paradigm shift, and then they fly, some others never make the transition, because the supremacy of knowledge and the idea that you don't question authority is so deeply ingrained. At the same time, IME the discourse in the field of higher education is, if anything, shifting away from the emphasis on imparting knowledge and towards student-led inquiry and the development of cognitive and (other) transferable skills. This seems to happily coexist with the growing managerialism in HE and the corresponding employability-driven view of education. Overall, in this context, it's what you do with knowledge that really matters (this is also facilitated by the rise of ICTs, etc.), and this is where imagination, creativity and critical thinking are so important. I really can't see how taking away play from children (or even adults for that matter, but's that another topic) would produce someone who would thrive in this sort of environment.
On another note, let's not pick on night owls - some very creative and 'rigorous' work can get done quite late at night!

That's quite funny, MillyR, are you saying scientists don't sit about thinking? But, of course, if you take the view that thinking is a waste of time and has nothing to contribute to the solving of the world's problems , then why bother with education at all?

"I'm not sure that we do need more people with better thinking skills"

According to DH's engineering magazines we still lead the world in skills that require high ability thinkers. Dyson now actually employs more people in the R&D department in the UK than he employed in the whole company when he manufactured in the UK.

AB, I didn't take the view that thinking was a waste of time, or that scientists don't think. I simply said that we don't need more people with better thinking skills - the current level is adequate. What is not adequate is often people's knowledge base in Science and various practical skills.

But I certainly think people should have good enough thinking skills to understand the quite obvious difference between the argument I made and the conclusions you have leapt to, but perhaps that is more a question of language skills than higher level analysis.

cory, thanks for that encouragement too

I suspect from what you say that the fault is mine for giving him too much freedom from parental restraint before he left home...

anyway he seems to have found his first kindred spirit lately - someone else who loves Radiohead, football & real ale

DS is also in his first year and has been doing some actual studying, handing in papers, attending classes. His roommate has already dropped out .

I don't think there should be any quota system for 'thinking' skills or indeed any demarcation between 'thinking' and 'doing' groups. I see a two way flow of insight and opportunities for everyone to be able to engage in the sort of work that suits them best, without any snobbery attached to one form of work, as an extremely important component of any modern economy. The German apprenticeship system, where practical skills are respected and can lead to a middle class life, is a good example of what can be achieved when snobbery (or maybe that should be classism) is removed more or less from the education system. The Irish system is pretty good too, at least in what it aims to accomplish. (Both systems have their detractors, and neither are without flaws though).

MillyR, I've clearly offended you, so I apologise - the comments I made were meant in the spirit of debate, as are the points below.

"We are all going to need to do more real work and less time sitting about thinking about stuff" - this kind of presumes that 'sitting about thinking' is not 'real work', no? Given your previous sentences, it also implies that 'sitting about thinking' is not what 'practical people' (the group in which you include scientists) do/should do in trying to solve the world's current problems. (I hope this is not a totally unreasonable interpretation of the way you expressed your post, although it is of course possible that my poor language- and possibly higher level analysis skills are letting me down again .)

The problem that I have with this line of argument is that it is all-too-often used by policymakers to construe thinking as a waste of time and therefore a slack/inefficiency to be cut out as much as possible out of the societal productivity machine that becomes increasingly focused on the production of measurable outputs. There is a visible parallel here between attempts made to cut out blue sky thinking in science and play-time in education, and, in so far as this mentality takes over, the OP might actually turn out to be more right than I would wish her to be in her predictions.

Personally, I would fight this mentality tooth-and-nail. For starters, it rests on an extremely problematic assumption that thinking is somehow not 'doing', or that thinking is somehow not 'practical'. (To repeat the words of someone much wiser than me, 'there is nothing as practical as a good theory'.) In education, given that children think and communicate through play, this translates into the equally problematic assumption that playing somehow is not learning/not educational. Secondly, this mentality and its accompanying emphasis on performance measurement tends to produce a very short-termist orientation in the social systems it affects. This is, of course, the last attitude you want to encourage when you are trying to reorient people from profit-making towards trying to solve longer-standing environmental and social problems. Thirdly, it actually actively discourages reflexivity by not allowing sufficient time/resources that are often needed for the sort of 'wasteful' thinking that effectively move someone from instrumental (thinking about the means) to substantial (thinking about the ends) rationality.

I think the world needs as many great thinkers as it can get - I certainly don't think we have anywhere near enough, or we wouldn't be in the dire state we are in now.