Lord Skimper wrote:One could teach other than English a communications basis class. One still needs basic reading and writing. Basic math basic science. One can see that philosophy could be introduced in junior high school. Not the boring history stuff the learn to think, think to learn.
A communications class could introduce how different languages all have the same basic notions that are communicated. Rather than what one gets of media types and presentations. Visual audio motion or static. Silk screens and photography, TV commercials that are too loud...
There are cultural representations in the languages though. These help to understand notions and concepts. For instance the Japanese business man follows that there is a past and a present but the future does not exist. While a bay or wall street trader thinks of the future change or gain.
While some of us know that the present doesn't exist just past that can't be changed and future events that don't exist yet but can only be known as past things. One can change a future supposedly but really that just is the past. Although sometimes weird things happen but who knows what that is. Perhaps a in a future we are actively changing our pasts all the time. Or perhaps space time is stringy. And one can cross a string without knowing it until something just doesn't fit anymore. Of course if a change is happening it might be very subtle or hidden from view. One second my neighbour is gone 3-4-5 minutes into the future. Yet if the wall paint in one of the houses changed from green to yellow I wouldn't know. Could things be changing all the time? One wonders.
The problem is to be able to have the language to understand such a class you have to learn english (or whatever your native language is) to have an advanced enough vocabulary.
A similar example would be that instead of teaching kids basic maths we jump straight into them leaning Quantum Theory
And asking schools to actually teach children to think? The teachers don't have the time or training for that, and we still aren't very far from the time where deviant behaviour like persistent left handedness, or independent thought was beaten out of the children