Education in the Post-Idea World

From an interview with Robert Rowland in The Alpine Review № 3 on “The Post-Idea World”:

Alpine Review: I wonder, though, what kind of education system we are going to need to prepare the next generation of people operating in an Age of Intuition, or in a world beyond ideas. Because it seems we are caught in so many frameworks. It’s interesting to envision a world beyond ideas.

Rowland: I think, in terms of education, it is actually much simpler than that. In this country, we have gone backwards in terms of education. If you think about where education was a generation ago, we have now gone back to more kids taking more exams, at a younger age, with more and more testing. It is becoming more like a Japanese system. The opportunity for kids to develop emotionally, physically and so on, that has been cut back. Time for games, for sport, for emotional exploration, talking in a more open, unfettered way about the world—all of that time in the curriculum has been cut back. In a certain sense, I think, it is just about more of that: more time for kids to play, more time for them to do sport, more time for them to talk about their feelings, more opportunity for them to have emotional tools, I suppose, to help them understand their world. Just a bit less math and science, certainly fewer tests. It is crazy, just crazy.

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