Age for "education"?

[Excuse]

I'm in my 2nd year of university, and it has done wonders to the way my mind works. I know not everybody is good at math, so the question in my topic is sort of rhetoric. I just want your opinions: how can we quicken the education process by introducing to our children more advanced topics at as early of an age as possible? Can we alter the education system so that we can improve the standards of humanity and the capacity for knowledge?

I was pondering this as I walked home after having hung out with some friends and thinking about their debates. The dawn of civilization started ~5000 years ago (maybe give a few more thousands) and we had barely any knowledge when it started. Since then, with the introduction of government, politics, structure of society, then science, philosophy, and entertainment, our knowledge pool has exponentially increased to the point where one can barely learn EVERYTHING (up to their current time) in a lifetime. However, 5000 years is only about 200-250 generations - barely a millimeter's worth of time within the meters of the Earth's history. With evolution (assuming that it happens, for all you fundamentalists ), human brain capacity has grown enough so that we are able to obtain and discover knowledge of up to 130+ year's worth; along with our processing power coming from our pre-frontal lobes, we are pretty advanced beings compared to the rest of the taxonomy. Of course, no one could survey human beings 5000 years ago (or even before the ice age) to find out what the brain capacity was at that point. One can postulate that our capacity has been increasing during these 225 generations as needed (based on the amount of knowledge increased), and if you can imagine a graph, our capacity is slowly increasing while knowledge is an exponential function that has yet to reach the capacity slope.

(For example, we could time travel back several thousand years ago to kidnap obtain an infant and let it live in our age. We can find out the capacity by seeing if it may learn as quick as current humans do, or be labelled a retard by society.)

On a side note, I think many of you who claim to be 13 (+/- 2) years old are actually 20+'s who just want internet credit/to troll professionally. That or I am an above average slow learner who's rate of improvement is diminished by the intelligence you people bring to these forums (or anyplace, for that matter). Not to say you are not to be believed, nor am I an egoist/elitist or stupid.

Actually, continuing from that note (and the thread title), I have been in an unlucky situation where my educational system sucked the life out of my first 17 years; I really wished they taught me algebra and calculas earlier, but unfortunately my school/area/everywhere was/were plagued with people with a lower learning capacity (for knowledge) than me (they may had a higher social capacity, and I may have just traded off capacities WHO KNOWS ). I did not learn about complex numbers until a semester ago when they were introduced so I could do second-order differential equations; Canadian history is uninteresting as my American neighbours had 100+ more years of more interesting history than us (damn you, neighbours!); my entire grade 8 math consisted of a review of grade 7 (which sucked); in physics (my concentration), they did not bother with teaching about waves and optics until I reached my 2nd year and OH GOD WHAT THE FUCK WAVES AND OPTICS EVERYWHERE. So yeah my elementary and high school education system sucked.

I also often think about how to teach my children things such as math (my high school calculas teacher taught her 4 year old calculas) and (today, an hour ago) the definitions of transparent, translucent, and opaque (Glass reflects, but shouldn't we see through glass? Why are certain colours described as "opaque" when opaque means it doesn't let light through/can't see the other side?). Do they have the capacity to understand such though processes? Can they?

As a disclaimer, I am not in biology nor teacher's education. I am a PHYSICIST dealing with REAL PHYSICS PROBLEMS (no, metaphysics is not a part of REAL PROBLEMS).

So if you got tired of reading all that, my simple question to you is: What exact age should we teach children more complex types of math/science, etc. (for e.g., calculas at the age of 10?)

[Gunneddown]

Personally I find "Child Geniuses" to be something akin to cruelty to children. These kids are drilled calculus and math at an early age, removing likely their ability to interact with others. Furthermore, their despair fuels a sense of self accomplishment in their "genius", which is a hubris that ultimately leads to incompatibility in the workplace and society (no need for cocky geniuses at work, no matter how smart you claim to be). Being homeschooled like that only worsens the situation, as interaction is diminished even further. Parents who subject their children to such regimens are simply living vicariously through their children's successes without fully grasping the ramifications said actions will have on the rest of their children's lives.

The current education system is fine. It works well, and it should be here to stay. No need to push the bill too much, because the learning process is all you can really squeeze into them at an early age. If you drill in algebra and calculus then, you don't instill a desire to learn but instead a desire to memorize. This limits the creativity that sets Western Education apart from Eastern Education (where people memorize like no other). Introducing the option to learn higher math will of course be incremental, but I don't expect them to understand my textbooks on vector calculus anytime soon, and that's just fine with me

[garywoot]

Personally I think it's fine the way it is. Early on me and a group of people in my class were put in a math class 2 years ahead of our grade, I was doing Algebra in in 7th grade, and by the time I was a sophomore I had already done Trig/ Pre Calc. But realistically I think it all went too fast, I ended up dropping out of Calc as a Junior then not doing math for a good 2 years, bombed my math placement test and thus ended up in remidial in college. I think it should vary for person to person, it should be taught if and only the person's ready for it. I think I was a bit too young.

[Anti]

the school system is FUCKED! im a junior in public school and honestly im not learning anything! the school system is very bad, all school does is teach you how to memorize and regurgiate information rather than teaching anything imporatant. i educate myself by reading books, lookin up current events,politics,etc.

[Dirk]

[quote=Anti]
the school system is FUCKED! im a junior in public school and honestly im not learning anything! the school system is very bad, all school does is teach you how to memorize and regurgiate information rather than teaching anything imporatant. i educate myself by reading books, lookin up current events,politics,etc.
[/quote]

That's exactly how i felt in history, so i dropped it. Plus, the teacher's every word was one i disagreed with. He was so authoritarian, i was pissed off beyond belief. Bit too much for an anti-establishment rebel like me to stand.

[Anti]

[quote=Dirk]
[quote=Anti]
the school system is FUCKED! im a junior in public school and honestly im not learning anything! the school system is very bad, all school does is teach you how to memorize and regurgiate information rather than teaching anything imporatant. i educate myself by reading books, lookin up current events,politics,etc.
[/quote]

That's exactly how i felt in history, so i dropped it. Plus, the teacher's every word was one i disagreed with. He was so authoritarian, i was pissed off beyond belief. Bit too much for an anti-establishment rebel like me to stand.
[/quote]

fersher dude i definitly feel u but i actually like some teachers like that only cause u can debate them and also have intellectual conversations during class and u might actually learn something meaningful while the time in class doing busy work.

[Dirk]

[quote=Anti]
fersher dude i definitly feel u but i actually like some teachers like that only cause u can debate them and also have intellectual conversations during class and u might actually learn something meaningful while the time in class doing busy work.
[/quote]

Well, some of our teachers are decent. My english teacher lets us listen to music. History teacher, though, slashes the Marxist historiography by nitpicking and missing the entire point of the theory. For a start. He rejects any possibility that he might be "slightly" off with a statement and spouts his nationalist crap the whole class through.

[zenonzyta01]

Hi all,

According to me, there is no age limit for Study. At any age u can studying, when u will studing anything from anywhere in any branch u will be considered as a Student, so age is doesn't matter for study. So, i want suggest u all, if u wanna study then u can studying anytime in any age but while some colleges required age limit, it may be problem for u.