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What criticisms does the poem "Modern Ode to the Modern School," by John Erskine, make about modern education?
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The poem "Modern Ode to the Modern School" by John Erskine criticizes modern education for providing only the minimum necessary knowledge for students' immediate career needs, such as becoming a bricklayer, without teaching broader, transferable skills. This approach limits students' ability to advance and adapt, forcing them to repeatedly seek more education for each career progression. Erskine argues that a more holistic education would equip students with initiative and self-improvement capabilities, reducing dependency on continuous formal schooling.
According to Erskine's poem, the primary failure of the modern school system is that it fails to teach students anything beyond the absolute minimum necessary in order for them to do what needs to be done. The school board has determined that nothing "superfluous" should be taught—that is, if somebody wants to be a bricklayer, the school will teach them how to be a perfect bricklayer, but nothing in addition to this. The problem, as Erskine sees it, is that this allows somebody to begin a career but not to advance within this career.
When the bricklayer in question was made a foreman, he found himself unable to do it, so he went back to school in search of a course which would teach him. He was taught, once again, exactly what he needed in order to become a good foreman—but "nothing more." This meant that every time the man...
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advanced in his career, he had to go back again and again for more education. If his original education had taught him transferable life skills, Erskine suggests, there would have been no need for all this subsequent schooling, as the man would have been taught initiative and the capacity to improve himself on his own, without having to return over and over to be spoon-fed only the bare minimum of new information by the school board.
From how I am reading the poem, given that some believe most poetry may be subjective, I would tend to lead towards the fact that (according to "Modern Ode to the Modern School" by Erskine) the modern school only focuses upon providing a very limited scope of education.
The subject of the poem decides upon the course of his life and studies only that. Outside of that area, the student fails miserably. The school then refocuses the education of the student--in a very limited scope again.
Erskine is repeating the fact that schools limit the education of students; they do not educate them on a global level to allow them to succeed in many different aspects of life.