What does education mean?

mabon1

Broadening the mind.

👍

At TTC our tutor said that teachers teach pupils how to learn, which can be used by pupils to learn many different subjects.
Lessons for life.

mabon1

Broadening the mind.

Yes, the more reading and self educating oneself the better.

Broadening the mind.

Having once worked in a supermarket I can tell you that everything is dictated from the top, even the displays of anything.There’s no room for any innovation or blue sky thinking😄
Why isn’t it being acknowledged on here that many jobs are boring and repetitive and only done for the money? Of course they are.

Elegran

If a supermarket employee had a good idea for a change in routine which would save time and effort and was genuinely useful, he/she mentioned it to the manager (who in a well -run store should know their staff and be accessible if one of the wants to talk to them) it could be approved and incorporated in the system.

If the employee had been well drilled in "Do as you are told and don't rock the boat by using your brain" and the manager was of David's "The right way is the way we already do things here. Keep doing it that way" the world would still be living on herbs collected in the woods, with the occasional treat of a wild animal caught in a trap of twisted vines or shot with an arrow from a bow.

Try doing that, Even the store manager has very little control of the system, the position of every item on every shelf is dictated be HQ, he is just there to make sure as far as possible policy gets implemented.

Doodledog

Thank you, growstuff. That's very kind.

I fear we are all wasting our time though. Virtually nobody seems to have the same experience or opinion as David, which would give most people pause for thought, but he's not listening - just ignoring things he can't answer and repeating ideas about how 'the world of work' works on one employment model only.

I can’t answer individually the barrage of points that you think you are scoring points on.

Teenaged years are the most formative you will ever have the decisions you make affect your whole life, the friends you make, the relationships, the attention you pay to learning, the option subjects to study further. At that stage I believe that a student should concentrate on employability skills because earning wages are going to high on the agenda quickly.
In the final 2 yrs those that learn about and get basic skills in the jobs they are seeking are the ones that get the jobs. It’s important that you concentrate on whatever career you are choosing, recreational education can take a back seat for now.

My local Aldi is staffed by many students who are supplementing their student loans. I have many interesting chats with them, and the full time staff too. You are very insulting towards manual and retail workers. But you know that, don't you? As I often told pupils when writing discursive essays, one example doesn't make an argument. You require more than personal experience and anecdotes. I would respect a differing point of view which used facts, statistics and a wider range of evidence than just "I said so, so it must be. "

its not a job for muppets.
David, you are excelling yourself on this thread ! What or who do you consider to be muppets - a shocking waste of to think of anyone

If a supermarket employee had a good idea for a change in routine which would save time and effort and was genuinely useful, he/she mentioned it to the manager (who in a well -run store should know their staff and be accessible if one of the wants to talk to them) it could be approved and incorporated in the system.

If the employee had been well drilled in "Do as you are told and don't rock the boat by using your brain" and the manager was of David's "The right way is the way we already do things here. Keep doing it that way" the world would still be living on herbs collected in the woods, with the occasional treat of a wild animal caught in a trap of twisted vines or shot with an arrow from a bow.

“Innovate at work? try doing that on a supermarket till or stacking shelves
A till operator could carry out the job robotically, or they could be cheerful, pass the time of day with customers, make the experience for them and for the customer a more pleasant one.”

Try that at Aldi, other supermarkets do encourage customer chat to a degree, it’s the customer behind that gets irritated. Shelf stacking widely derided has to be precise, it’s not a job for muppets, if the wrong product, price or expiry date is there it causes chaos.

Allira I suspect shelf stacking might very well be a job of bygone years in the future. Amazon have already introduced warehouses controlled by robots.

That means that the remaining jobs are those which do need a "human touch", including flexibility and creativity. So much can already be done by AI and robots and that's the way the world of work is moving.

When I was doing teacher training many moons ago, I remember being told that we were preparing children for an unknown future. That's so true! In the early 1980s, nobody had heard of the internet, a scientific calculator was a rarity and accessing any kind of reprographics was like breaking into Fort Knox. People do jobs now which none of us had ever imagined.

Who would ever have imagined that people could click a couple of buttons on a smart phone (what's one of those?) and a pizza or taxi would arrive a few minutes later?

Doodledog Mon 02-Jun-25 08:36:32

Excellent post, Doodledog.

David49

Innovate at work? try doing that on a supermarket till or stacking shelves, or building house, you do the job exactly as you have been instructed.

Later in your career as a solicitor, or an accountant do you innovate, no, you get into serious trouble if you try to change the system. Many will have been teachers you teach the curriculum as it’s set you cant change it, you follow that schools policy, if you get to be head teacher then there are some thing you can influence but not many.

You have all been robots to the system as most employees are but you won’t admit it. If you are self employed you do have much more control.

In your personal life you can educate yourself as much as you want but your priority is still paying the rent, when you’ve achieved that improve your lifestyle.

Adhering to the 'system' of your particular field of work does not mean people have to turn into robots.

Innovate at work? try doing that on a supermarket till or stacking shelves
A till operator could carry out the job robotically, or they could be cheerful, pass the time of day with customers, make the experience for them and for the customer a more pleasant one.

Stacking shelves - yes, I have done that and having a robot to stack endless tins of dog food would have been preferable. However, often it is students or someone gaining experience who does that kind of job then they move on.

You are removing human nature and personality from the equation.

David49

Yes you have constantly changing regulations but you personally have no control over it you just to follow instructions.

If you enjoy the work thats great I have 2 daughters are self employed accountants, they love working with accounts and earn a lot of money from home.
The downside is clients that don’t produce the information on time

But what has this to do with education?

Are your daughters automatons who are simply following instructions? Whose instructions?

Presumably there are sanctions for people not producing information on time? Again, I'm not sure what that has to do with education, other than that by definition these people are not following instructions, or they would have the information with their accountant by the required date.

Doodledog

Thank you, growstuff. That's very kind.

I fear we are all wasting our time though. Virtually nobody seems to have the same experience or opinion as David, which would give most people pause for thought, but he's not listening - just ignoring things he can't answer and repeating ideas about how 'the world of work' works on one employment model only.

Au contraire! I'm finding the discussion very interesting.

Thank you, growstuff. That's very kind.

I fear we are all wasting our time though. Virtually nobody seems to have the same experience or opinion as David, which would give most people pause for thought, but he's not listening - just ignoring things he can't answer and repeating ideas about how 'the world of work' works on one employment model only.

David49

Yes you have constantly changing regulations but you personally have no control over it you just to follow instructions.

If you enjoy the work thats great I have 2 daughters are self employed accountants, they love working with accounts and earn a lot of money from home.
The downside is clients that don’t produce the information on time

So your daughters will have to use "soft skills" to coax the information from the clients and re-organise their own time, so they're getting on with something else until the information arrives. If they don't, they'll end up losing the clients.

I'll just pick you up on one thing. I think the vast majority of people (not just those deemed "intelligent") forced into repetitive work with no opportunity to change their lives become alienated and resentful.

PS. Second thoughts ... maybe you meant that most people are intelligent (even if their intelligence isn't recognised).

Yes you have constantly changing regulations but you personally have no control over it you just to follow instructions.

If you enjoy the work thats great I have 2 daughters are self employed accountants, they love working with accounts and earn a lot of money from home.
The downside is clients that don’t produce the information on time

Wow Doodledog, I wish I could have written your last post as eloquently as you did.

But accountants and solicitors need to keep up with changes in legislation David49. From what I see, anyone working in uncharted areas can be quite stressed and can benefit from a lot of positive reinforcement when the going gets tough. I am thinking of scientific start ups who will sack their employees once a particular milestone has been achieved.

Innovate at work? try doing that on a supermarket till or stacking shelves, or building house, you do the job exactly as you have been instructed.

Later in your career as a solicitor, or an accountant do you innovate, no, you get into serious trouble if you try to change the system. Many will have been teachers you teach the curriculum as it’s set you cant change it, you follow that schools policy, if you get to be head teacher then there are some thing you can influence but not many.

You have all been robots to the system as most employees are but you won’t admit it. If you are self employed you do have much more control.

In your personal life you can educate yourself as much as you want but your priority is still paying the rent, when you’ve achieved that improve your lifestyle.

I know what it isn't.... cramming facts down children's throats in order to do SATs.

If all people learnt in school was how to do boring repetitive tasks and submit to authority, where would innovation come from? The country would stand still if nobody had the knowledge to invent the next generation gizmo, or work out how to make grommets more cheaply or in more useful shapes. If nobody learnt how to play music or write novels (or produce tv programmes) we would all be reading the same books over and over, and watching repeats from the days when those things were encouraged. There would be no fashion, no food development, no advances in medicine. We could either sink back to a less advanced way of living or buy in expertise from countries who do educate their populations, and act as service workers for them.

You have a very limited understanding of education, David, not to mention a very limited grasp of much of ‘the world of work’. You seem to see both as homogeneous environments with no scope for development. A basic understanding of, say, history, psychology or sociology would show you that many intelligent people forced into repetitive work with no opportunity to change their lives become alienated and resentful. Society then has to choose between harsher policing/ government and finding more enlightened ways to prevent revolution. Presumably you would deny people the opportunity to study those things though, as they don’t have immediate and obvious application in what you see as ‘the world of work’?