Education
Evidence-based education is an established field of study working to determine best practices for teaching and education based on proven effectiveness in learning.
A Common Framework For All Subjects
It's not enough just to teach students an array of disconnected facts about a variety of subjects. In order to really comprehend these concepts holistically, seeing how they relate to each other, to ourselves, and fit together as pieces of the universal puzzle, education must be undertaken with a clear picture of what that puzzle is depicting.
metaculture is designed to be that picture. The fractal serves as a visual representation of the universal whole, with everything it contains fitting into its simple yet infinitely complex pattern. The philosophical grounding in science, reason, critical thinking and universalism make it religiously and ideologically neutral, avoiding conflicts with church/state separation that a purely atheist or religious point of view would raise.
By giving children a vision of what the puzzle will look like when it's finished, children will learn much more easily and eagerly while building a meaningful vision of life's purpose and how to make the most of it.
Filling In The Knowledge Gaps
One of the goals of this wiki is to address the most common knowledge gaps that most people still have after the typical high school or college education. Specifically, the ones that serve as blocks to understanding core scientific concepts like creation and evolution and cause continued reliance on supernatural belief systems.
Other important evidence-based best practices for improved life choices are also provided for a variety of practical subjects not generally taught in schools.
Expanding Education Is Always Good
Expanded access to education is a universal good. Any attempt to limit access to information, books, schools, or any other tool of knowledge, to any person for any reason, is bad.
Limiting access to education by making it unaffordable to some also falls in this category. The public benefit of free access to education will always significantly outweigh the cost to society.
Education enhances our ability to emulate free will by expanding the possible life choices we can make. We cannot choose to do something that we have no knowledge of. Education is a necessary prerequisite for freedom and democracy to flourish.
Education has been shown to naturally reduce the birth rate, the poverty rate, the crime rate, and generally improves every meterstick by which we judge successful policy.
Public Versus Private Education
Public Education is a natural monopoly where geographic location is the most important factor for determining which school is best. Except for large cities, it is inefficient and redundant to offer multiple school options for children. Programs under the guise of "school choice" end up draining resources from existing schools that are already struggling, and the "alternative" is usually just different, not exactly better.
Another issue is that fundamentalist religious schools are the other "choice" that is most often available, causing public funds to support religious indoctrination and violating church-state separation.
However, there is a good point made by the Libertarians that competition in the realm of teaching methods and curriculum is necessary to allow new ideas to develop and gather evidence of their efficacy. Can this be done without the dismantling of public education?
In order to determine best practices in education, you need to perform experiments to determine which curriculum performs better than others, or which ones fit the needs of certain types of students the best. School systems in large cities can offer multiple types of school within the public system to allow for this without diverting and diluting the public funding that needs to go to those least able to afford a private alternative. Smaller cities and rural schools can adopt the best practices learned from the experimental schools, and offer multiple curriculum tracks to meet student needs.
School curriculum variety, competition, and experimentation are all needed to achieve constant improvement in our education system. Supporters of public education should find more ways to make this possible within the public system, or else lose the argument to those who seek to undermine it.
Can We Learn From Videos?
Let's find out! Watch all the videos on this wiki, go to Khan Academy and take a bunch of courses, or check out these videos on evidence-based education principles.
We actually do need education very much, though we can probably do a lot better than kind that existed in England in the 50s and 60. And the kind that exists now.