Educational System

Beneficial or Counterproductive? (In it's current form)

 

i don't really know know. it's better than nothing. the system here is VERY good and flexible. there's more than one style of teaching available, and it's still free.

 

If you read the writings of people such as the founder of modern education, John Dewey, and other elitists from the early half of last century, who have helped mould the public school system into what it is today, you would see that their goal was not to educate children. It was to indoctrinate children. This is what school does. For one, it aims to strip children of their individuality, then it fills their heads with a lot of garbage and propaganda. The system doesn't want people to know anything more than what they need to know to serve the system. It's a very pavlovian system aimed at bascially making people into good slaves who will serve the system well, never asking any questions.

 

"In like manner, the scientific rulers will provide one kind of education for ordinary men and women, and another for those who are to become holders of scientific power. Ordinary men and women will be expected to be docile, industrious, punctual, thoughtless, and contented. Of these qualities, probably contentment will be considered the most important. In order to produce it, all the researches of psycho-analysis, behaviourism, and biochemistry will be brought into play.... All the boys and girls will learn from an early age to be what is called 'co-operative,' i.e., to do exactly what everybody is doing. Initiative will be discouraged in these children, and insubordination, without being punished, will be scientifically trained out of them."

"Except for the one matter of loyalty to the World State and to their own order, members of the governing class will be encouraged to be adventurous and full of initiative...."

"On those rare occasions, when a boy or girl who has passed the age at which it is usual to determine social status shows such marked ability as to seem the intellectual equal of the rulers, a difficult situation will arise, requiring serious consideration. If the youth is content to abandon his previous associates and to throw in his lot whole-heartedly with the rulers, he may, after suitable tests, be promoted, but if he shows any regrettable solidarity with his previous associates, the rulers will reluctantly conclude that there is nothing to be done with him except to send him to the lethal chamber before his ill-disciplined intelligence has had time to spread revolt. This will be a painful duty to the rulers, but I think they will not shrink from performing it."

-- Bertrand Russell, "The Scientific Outlook", 1931

 

"Modern education began...as the propaganda of the Modern State. It sought to establish a new complete ideology and a new spirit which would induce the individual to devote himself and to shape all his activities to one definite purpose, to the attainment and maintenance of a progressive world-socialism."

"Thought and behaviour patterns had to be shaped therefore to subserve this objective, to the relative disregard of any other conceivable purpose. The Modern State became the whole duty of man. This propaganda passed necessarily into a training for public service and a universal public education. ...No other type of school and no other system of teaching was tolerated ..."

-- H.G. Wells, "The Shape of Things to Come", 1933

 

"Scientific societies are as yet in their infancy. . . . It is to be expected that advances in physiology and psychology will give governments much more control over individual mentality than they now have even in totalitarian countries. Fitche laid it down that education should aim at destroying free will, so that, after pupils have left school, they shall be incapable, throughout the rest of their lives, of thinking or acting otherwise than as their schoolmasters would have wished."

"Diet, injections, and injunctions will combine, from a very early age, to produce the sort of character and the sort of beliefs that the authorities consider desirable, and any serious criticism of the powers that be will become psychologically impossible."

"Gradually, by selective breeding, the congenital differences between rulers and ruled will increase until they become almost different species. A revolt of the plebs would become as unthinkable as an organized insurrection of sheep against the practice of eating mutton."

-- Bertrand Russell, "The Impact of Science on Society", 1953, pg 49-50

 

America's education system?

I was not aware that there was one. I thought people here just went to college to hook up, get drunk, and learn to wake up early in the morning in order to be able to attend a class through which they sleep.

In other words.

It's shit.

 

Personally, with my expereince so far, I'm not all that thrilled with it. Oh, it has it's advantages in some ways, but I don't know...I've really not been at peace with my decision with my oldest child, I still think about pulling him out and teaching him myself, something which I did up until he started kindergarten (I never sent him to preschool)

The thing is, he's been very advanced in his class, which makes me feel really good I have to admit, because I've worked with him a lot over the years. He's way above the expected reading level for his age, fantastic in mathematics, and his teacher has had not a single problem with him, says he's a joy to have in her class. Guess we must be doing something right.

Anyway. Back to the original subject, I know that there are good educators, I know that there are good curriculums, however, I'm not sure that we've found our "fit".

 

Do that and you won't be in the system for long,

Education is what you make of it.

 

"Don't let schooling interfere with your education."
Mark Twain

i don't let what they tell me i must learn dictate what i actually am interested in learning

 

I agree, doing that is silly.

Yet when I pay money for school, I expect schooling... not having teachers than know less about a subject than I do trying to teach it to me.

 

I have a GED.

Not to brag, but I'm a very bright guy. Much brighter then many graduates of higher education I've known, and in some instances, with equal knowledge in their fields. Especially with lit students.

My friend Sean has a GED too. We were playing team trivial persuit against a bunch of our friends. Our GED team finished up while everyone else was under two peices of pie.

The other teams were some of our college friends from UTD, getting masters degrees in political science and literature respectivly.

I hate to agree with Pressed Rat, but I kinda do. Most public education is a joke, and Texas would be hilarious if you had that kind of sense of humor.

I don't know anyone who's that macabre however.

 

If you are armed with a Critical mind you will probably be better than just a zombie. If you always question and seek your own truth, you will be fine. Not everyone strives to be an individual, but plenty more do. I don't think education is that cut and dry, it is more subjective. We have all had good teachers and bad. Ones that with hold information or are biased and ones that encourage creative thoughts. maybe you just went to a shitty school? what you experience is different than mine. I was urged to be creative and embrace the arts as much as math, ect.

 

Yeah right. Calculus, Physics, Chemistry, and Medicine are all one big government conspiracy. And people with advanced degrees don't know shit, right? Keep dreamin. You're no expert on subjects you know nothing about.

 

All the educational system seems to do is teach you how to be a good citizen in society for crooked greedy corporations, A society that is also very represive.

 

All of this equals some interesting facts, much pollution in our air and man made drugs that eat at your internal organs as they suposedly heal.

 

I'm not saying advanced degrees aren't important. I don't think anyone wants to pick the person operating on their tumor off of a bus.

And people can thrive even under bad learning enviornments. All I'm saying is that rigid educational systems in the US are not only underfunded, but also emplyoed in a fashion that benifits very few types of learners.

Even a flower can bloom in the sewer, but when sewage is everywhere in the education system, finding your bud may be a risky and shit filled venture.

If you catch the metaphor.

 

I agree with this also. And with chemistry and medicine there are pros and cons, a lot of the times though the cons in my opinion outdue the pros.

 

The US has a majority of the best universities on earth for any subject. Students come from all over the fucking world to take advantage of them.

 

Advantage to go out and work in a greedy capitalistic society.