Post: #1

"Irresponsible, immature, uneducated, stupid, oversized children"

Used any of those words to describe a highschool graduate recently?

Me too.

Do you remember feeling like those were fairly accurate descriptors of your graduating class?

I do.

Do you remember wondering why you had to go to school and what the fuck you were even supposed to be "learning" whilst locked up in a little cage and forced to remember some random facts/stats/ideas completely out of context and without even the slightest inkling how that information could possibly be useful to you in any way?

If you went to school in the last 15 years I know for a fact you do

This debacle that is public education can no longer hide its glaring flaws from the world.

Take some PC miseducation, outright lies and slander, plus an entirely rigid and authoritarian regime, and you quickly find you have a recipe for unhappy, uneducated, unmotivated, confused, lost, disrespectful, angry kids that have no idea what they're doing, where they're going, or even where to find the answers to those questions.

There's been a lot of discussion here about the failure of the current education system, but I'd like to see some sort of structured discourse on the ways it has failed and why, but also, more importantly, what could be done to improve it. I suspect that a large portion of this generation (of RVFer's, at least) will be homeschooling their children, so this is a topic of very real importance to those who want their kids to grow up with their eyes open, rather than as slaves to their state

I recently came across this blog post, which is more or less my feelings on the matter summarised and formatted into a neat little article. It is very much worth the read and says a lot about the current state of the western education system

Quote:School teaches them that life is broken into discernible chunks and and that learning and personal development are to be seen as work. Rather than teaching them how to foster a love of learning, a constantly-centralizing school regime in the US today teaches them to look for standards to be measured against. Rather than helping give them the cognitive and philosophical tools necessary to lead fulfilled lives in the context of the world in which they live, schools remove them from this world and force them to develop these skills only after 18-25 years of being alive. Rather than allowing them to integrate themselves into the broader scheme of life and learn what they get fulfillment from achieving and what they don’t, school leaves fulfillment to five letter grades and a few minutes of recess.

Quote:In short, school teaches apathy towards education and detachment from the world. School removes people from being forced to learn how to get fulfillment from a variety of activities and subjects and instead foists a handful of clunky subjects onto them hoping they meet state standards for “reading,” “mathematics,” “writing,” and “science.”

Not only this, but they’ve had childhood extended further into adulthood than any other generation before them. A young person today is considered a “child” much longer than a young person 20 or 40 years ago would have been considered as much. To treat a 16 year-old as a child in the 1960s would have been insulting. Today, it is commonplace.

Adult children wander the hallways of universities and workplaces today, less-equipped to find purpose and meaning than their predecessors. They can’t be entirely blamed for their anxiety and depression — their parents, teachers, and leaders put them through an institution and created a cultural norm that created the world they live in today.

While I know this is going to be a touchy subject and there are going to be some seriously conflicting opinions here, this is a topic above all else that needs attention if we are to have any hope for the future of the next generation, and the human species beyond.

If you're unsure about this topic, think back to your own education and how you feel it could have been improved, or just try remember the things that just made an 8 year old you shout "what the fuck?" aloud in front of your principal.

I only hope this thread can be a safe place for the ideas that will shape and direct the future to take form and slowly simmer into something beautiful, elegant, and most importantly, effective in raising future generations of intelligent, healthy, happy, productive, and fulfilled humans

Post: #2

Architekt, I highly recommend you read this: Paradigms, Mental Models, and Mindsets: Triple Barriers to Transformational Change in School Systems

It talks about how a paradigm shift is required to change the systems and how it is similar to religion.

If you think about it realistically, it's like expecting people trained in the system to part ways and teach it differently while at the same time, admitting that their schooling was failed. This brings up an 'immune system' that people have towards change, even more so when it is personally inflicted. i.e. ego/personal failure of investment etc.

Quote:Paradigm 1: the way teachers teach and how kids learn (shift from group-based, teacher-centered instruction to personalized learner-centered instruction); and, the way support services are designed, managed, and delivered (designed to assure that they are aligned with the requirements of personalized learning);

Paradigm 2: the design of the internal social infrastructure of school systems (shift from an authoritarian, bureaucratic organization design to a collaborative, democratic design; and, transform organization culture, the reward system, job descriptions, and so on, to align with the requirements of personalized learning);

Paradigm 3: the way school systems interact with external stakeholders (move from a crisis-oriented, reactive approach to an opportunity-seizing proactive approach);

Paradigm 4: educators’ approach to change (shift from piecemeal change strategies to whole-system change strategies).

Quote: Why Mindsets Need to Shift
When first-order change (piecemeal continuous improvement) is required mindsets can motivate people to resist those changes. When second-order change (discontinuous, paradigm-shifting, transformational change) is required the change-resistant power of mindsets increases exponentially.

The below is not super relevant as I wrote it in response to comments on student protesting about increased university fees, but it somewhat captivates my point; institutionalization and training to be obedient in society.

Quote:I went through my university years thinking that the education system is a cartel, between institutions of education, bankers (who fund the loans) and the government who subsidizes but can act aloof (as ours is did for the past week).

Then you look at what people study, if there really is demand for so many psychologists, diplomats, architects etc. or if we are just being led on by a system of institutionalization because are apathetic in our choices (and I understand this whole thing is about being afforded the final choices) on what comes next of the a la carte menu of bestowed responsibilities.

Student protesting is bullshit. They will forget about this (current batch of students) and move on.

They will get jobs, with their expensive degrees and have to pay taxes. They will have work commitments, faces to wear and presentations and meetings to attend. They will need to fund their medical aid. Need to take care of their parents. Their stresses will increase and despite having that shiny degree, realize how consuming the 'real' world is and forget about this utopian outlook. It will become the next generations’ problem for they have paid their dues. Start looking towards taking care of themselves, with their attention span being monthly, weekly, daily. Eventually, they will have children and their worries will start again.

By this point, they will understand that the system is capitalist, see that this is how the system is designed; the rich subsidize education for the poor and just accept. The most accepted way for it to be free is for it to be a socialist system heavily subsidized by a collective in one form or another.

Save and do what they can and the cycle will continue.

Post: #3

Reconsider the premise of your thread title.

In short, school teaches apathy towards education and detachment from the world. School removes people from being forced to learn how to get fulfillment from a variety of activities and subjects and instead foists a handful of clunky subjects onto them hoping they meet state standards for “reading,” “mathematics,” “writing,” and “science.”

Not only this, but they’ve had childhood extended further into adulthood than any other generation before them. A young person today is considered a “child” much longer than a young person 20 or 40 years ago would have been considered as much. To treat a 16 year-old as a child in the 1960s would have been insulting. Today, it is commonplace.

Once you do the research on this topic, (start with Iserbyt The Deliberate Dumbing Down and Gotto The Underground History of Education) you will learn to understand that not only are the schools NOT a "spectacular failure" but are in fact successful beyond the wildest dreams of those who have constructed the modern education system as it is.

The purpose of public education is to arrest development, dumb down the masses into hedonistic, mindless consumerists and human resources for multi-national corporations.

Modern Education has been one of the most successful social engineering programs of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Post: #4

Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling by John Taylor Gatto

http://www.amazon.com/Dumbing-Down-Curri...0865714487

Post: #5

I suppose this thread is a good fit for this article.

The state of Michigan is asking for the dismissal of a lawsuit filed by students regarding the dismal quality of schools and education in Detroit on the basis that "literacy is not a right". They say their only obligation is to provide schools (so, physical structures and staff I guess), but there is no obligation whatsoever to make sure the schools actually work.

State of Michigan tells Detroit students 'Literacy is not a right'

Quote:Attorneys for Michigan Governor Rick Snyder are asking a judge to toss out a lawsuit against the state of Michigan filed by students in the Detroit school system and claim that literacy is not a legal right in the state of Michigan.

Seven children filed the lawsuit in September, saying decades of state disinvestment and deliberate indifference to Detroit's schools have denied them access to literacy.

The plaintiffs say the schools have deplorable building conditions, lack of books, classrooms without teachers, insufficient desks, buildings plagued by vermin, unsafe facilities and extreme temperatures.

The Michigan Attorney General asked a federal judge to dismiss a class action lawsuit arguing that Detroit schools are obligated to ensure that kids learn how to read and write. The state's motion to dismiss the lawsuit says: "there is no fundamental right to literacy".

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of Detroit school children by Public Counsel, a California-based law firm dedicated to helping the underprivileged. They're suing the state because they claim the state has been responsible for education since 1999 - when the state took over Detroit Public Schools.

"I think everybody wants to work together to improve educational outcomes for our kids. If it's a question of the legal requirements - that's the subject matter of the lawsuit - in terms of spirits, all of us have been trying to work to improve education in Michigan for every child," Gov. Snyder said on Monday.

State lawyers dispute that argument and say that "Michigan's constitution requires only that the legislature provide for a system of free public schools", leaving the details and deliver to specific educational services to the local school districts.

In other words, the state must provide for schools, but there's no obligation to make them work.

Nevertheless, the governor says the state has done a lot to help improve public education.

"We work hard on the education of kids. We've invested a lot of money on the state level but we need to get better outcomes. That's something I've been focused on ever since I've been governor - improving education in Michigan. We've made a lot of advances and there's more work to be done," Snyder said.

I understand what they're saying, though I don't think a state can just say "well, if the city sucks there's nothing we can do about it!" even if they hadn't taken over the schools in the city in question almost 20 years ago.

Michigan has compulsory school attendance until the age of 18. What, exactly, is the rationale for that if the state has no responsibility for ensuring some standard of education for the students? Are they outright stating that the schools are nothing but daycare centers?

In some of the schools in Detroit, less than 10% of the students are literate.

Post: #6

Part of it is generational stupidity.

Consider:
Dumbing Us Down was written in 1991. The class of 1991 is now over the age of 40. It is teaching the millennial generation in schools.
The Closing of the American Mind was written in 1987. The kids it focused on and feared for are 45.
What Do Our 17 Year Olds Know?, a book by the former Assistant Secretary of Education, and which answered its titular question with "Basically fuck all", was also written in 1987. Again: that generation is teaching kids today.

Worse still: that generation is parenting kids today -- if the kid is lucky enough to be part of the upper class or the disappearing middle class.

The Last Psychiatrist weighs in:

Quote:You know that 17 year old kid who thinks Obama is Muslim and Europe is a country and any girl that doesn't sleep with him is a slut? I found someone dumber than him. Wasn't hard, either.

The Atlantic asks, Is Google Making Us Stupid? Just asking: could the real culprit be The Atlantic?

Nicholas Carr says Google is, because along with the massiveness of the available information comes an avoidance-- or simply lack of time-- for contemplation and concentration. Or, to borrow a metaphor (I can't remember who said it) such knowledge is a "mile wide and an inch deep." Oh, Artemus Ward said it about the Platte River. Thanks Google, I feel smarter.

Carr also finds he is less able to read deeply, to concentrate; and he can't read novels anymore. It's changed not just what he knows, but how he thinks. He thinks in internet-style.

I'll generalize: it has changed how most people think.

II.

The effect on medicine is noted by Carr, and by me: doctors almost never read an entire article, and rarely even abstracts. Title, keywords, or title/keywords of shorter summaries written by someone else.

In Science appears Electronic Publication and the Narrowing of Science and Scholarship, in which a now not surprising finding is revealed: the more articles are available online, the less they are read. It also shifts the age of the cited articles up to the past ten months. Recent reviews get read; original studies don't, even to verify the claims. Anything in science that's not "hot" now won't even get read. It's groupthink reinforced by a research diameter of 2 years.

Electronic subscriptions means even less awareness of the contents. At least when you got the print journal, you flipped through it.

If you want to know why doctors seem always to be hashing the same ground, it's because they are.

III.


As I've noted elsewhere, there are two important effects:

1. As Socrates said, people become "filled with the conceit of wisdom instead of real wisdom" (e.g. Artemus Ward?)
2. you really only know what someone else wants you to know

But there's an another effect, and it has to do with the medium.

Nicholas Carr writes that Nietzsche (title of this blog, BTW) stopped writing because of eyestrain-- until he bought a typewriter and learned to touch type with his eyes closed. His style changed; his already tight prose got tighter. Nietzsche himself noted it, and quickly gave up on it; and, according to Carr, a later scholar observed that the writing "changed from arguments to aphorisms, from thoughts to puns, from rhetoric to telegram style."

Anyone who writes for a living understands this; Neal Stephenson (Anathem) writes with a fountain pen; I can only write on a computer. But-- and you should try this-- using any other medium makes one think differently. I have used this technique to generate new ideas; my post on The Wrong Lessons of Iraq and the other on We Are All Mercantilists Now were both generated on my Blackberry. It felt immediate, important, urgent, political. I could never have written the Wanted humor piece that way. I couldn't have even conceived it. It was part me, part Movable Type.

So the internet allows the delusion that you know things that you really don't; the mistake that the thoughts you do have are your own, and not someone else's; and then changes the way you think, reinforcing this style of thinking.


IV.

Enter Mark Bauerlein's The Dumbest Generation: How The Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (or Don't Trust Anyone Under 30). Bottom line: kids today have (access to) lots of information, but no wisdom. And, rather than the internet bringing diverse people together, it seems to foster tribes of the like-minded, who never closely examine anything different(ly).

We don't know much, and we stick to those who who are like us, who provide our much needed affirmation. If that's not a recipe for narcissism, I don't know what is.

V.

Sounds much like the book by former assistant secretary of education Charles Finn, with Diane Ravitch, What Do Our 17 Year Olds Know? You can guess the answer. 8000 seventeen year olds: half thought he book 1984 is about the end of the human race in a nuclear war; 35% didn't know Watergate was after 1950. 30% didn't know Aesop wrote fables. They thought Jim Crow laws were good for blacks. Etc.

Except it isn't all their fault. Kids are only as dumb as they're allowed to be. Here's an example: introductory "survey" courses in state colleges are universally accepted to be a joke. But why not simply change that? You can still keep the grade inflation and "everyone passes" ideology; but why not just have a professor who cares with rigorous content? Well, because he doesn't care, and the school doesn't care. They have other things to worry about then oversexed freshmen. So how can you blame students for not knowing anything? The college does not even allow them an opportunity for knowledge that they could lazily opt out of. The system offers only no knowledge.

VI.

"Kids today" may be the Dumbest Generation, but the parents and teachers of the Dumbest Generation are themselves so dumb they not only don't know the information themselves, they don't even know what knowledge exists that is important to pass on.

And I can prove it: the above book What Do Our 17 Year Olds Know? was written in 1987. Those dumb 17 year olds are 40 now. Say what you want about the "elitist" conclusions of The Closing of the American Mind but it was also written in 1987, about 1987 college kids-- who are now adults.

The adults are dumb, all right; but they don't know it. They have a unsettling feeling that something is lacking. The general narcissism and insecurity of parents today-- even/especially the "good" parents, is visible in their parenting. At a birthday party, the kids are running Lord of The Flies while their parents completely ignore them, socializing; meanwhile, they hover over them at the store, at the playground-- "no bicycle without a helmet." They secretly read their kid's email and Facebook accounts, but have never once read the kid's math book. "Oh, ha ha, I don't remember all that math!" Idiot, could you at least pretend it's important?

If you do your kid's math homework with them every night, I swear to you that you won't need to worry about Facebook. I will concede that monitoring their Facebook is easier.

Many professional parents and teachers I know fall back on empty words-- "classical education" or "the use of primary texts" but they don't know what those terms mean. They nod respectfully at Aeschylus, but they don't have the first clue whether he fought for the Greeks or the Trojans. You think these parents and teachers are going to know to tell the kids to read Werner Jaeger? They're not. They're going to buy them a Leapster.

VII.

Simply put: adults today don't know what's important to know. So they make things up to care about.

No one won the culture wars; we forgot who the enemy was. In 1987, when Allan Bloom or William Ayers argued for or against a "classical" education, they were arguing its importance, not the definition. Now? That's why there is so much noise about school vouchers for private schools-- it's a proxy for the culture war without having to know exactly what you're fighting for. There is a vague feeling that private schools are "better," that the surrounding students are "better," that it is more "rigorous," without really knowing what they are pushing towards or away from. It is also evident that it is a fall back; it makes up for their own shortcomings. Secretly: "Hopefully a good school will teach them better than I can." Well, you'd be right on that point, anyway.

I'm not advocating a "return to the classics" (I'm not not advocating it either), but I am observing that the Dumbest Generation of Narcissists In The History of The World is not even remotely conscious of their ignorance or their narcissism, and the technology lets them get away with it-- they actually think they think they know, they actually believe they have chosen what they think is important. And they are now parents and teachers and doctors and leaders. As far as I can tell, this simultaneous conjunction of ignorance and unconsciousness has never happened before in history.

I have every hope and faith in the youth of today, because otherwise we are doomed.

"Don't trust anyone over 30" turns out, after all, to be very sound advice.

God save us from people who mean well. -storm

Post: #7

(11-04-2015 02:53 AM)Sombro Wrote:  Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling by John Taylor Gatto

John Taylor Gatto, a former Teacher of the Year, is the finest critic of the education establishment. Although his writing is now old, it is sadly more relevant than ever. He's a far leftist but his critique is spot on.

My favorite quote about education (attributed to Mark Twain):

Quote:I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.

Post: #8

(11-29-2016 11:08 PM)weambulance Wrote:  They say their only obligation is to provide schools (so, physical structures and staff I guess), but there is no obligation whatsoever to make sure the schools actually work.

They don't. Same as the police have no obligation by law to protect you (only to arrest criminals after the fact). The government's idea of "a school that works" is generally one that produces government-supporting drones. Not wise people.

As always it comes down to the parents. Fundamentally, education is something a parent provides to its child for their own selfish desire to see their progeny reach their fullest potential. So if we want to overthrow the degenerate education class, this is the foundation we should target our efforts on.

The left wants to get to them early with the schools. The early they get them, the more brain damage they can inflict. The right should merely one-up: target them even earlier and prevent the parents sending them to those schools.

Post: #9

10% literate in Detroit? Wow that is a scandal. It's too easy to blame the state authorities in this case, I think the main problem is the attitude and behaviour of the students (which is down to the parents) which puts teachers off teaching there

In England, teachers are paid more if they teach in an 'underperforming' school (codeword for lots of poor kids whose parents haven't taught them how to behave). This system has sort-of worked, there are no critical teacher shortages for the worst schools.


But back to the original point, I'd be inclined to agree, even as someone born in the late 90s. Most of the people at school were genuinely there just so they could go to a sub-standard university to do a pointless degree that would allow them to waste their student loans on partying.

Post: #10

(11-30-2016 12:24 PM)Phoenix Wrote:  

(11-29-2016 11:08 PM)weambulance Wrote:  They say their only obligation is to provide schools (so, physical structures and staff I guess), but there is no obligation whatsoever to make sure the schools actually work.

They don't. Same as the police have no obligation by law to protect you (only to arrest criminals after the fact). The government's idea of "a school that works" is generally one that produces government-supporting drones. Not wise people.

As always it comes down to the parents. Fundamentally, education is something a parent provides to its child for their own selfish desire to see their progeny reach their fullest potential. So if we want to overthrow the degenerate education class, this is the foundation we should target our efforts on.

The left wants to get to them early with the schools. The early they get them, the more brain damage they can inflict. The right should merely one-up: target them even earlier and prevent the parents sending them to those schools.

This is why education reform terrifies them. The Prussian model of education which is solely about creating factory drones and soldiers for the state relies solely on coercion of the state. If people were allowed with vouchers to go to grammar schools or home school in a classical education the results would be obvious.

The results are already there, it's just that it takes a lot of discipline and resources to go it alone which deters people. Which is why the propaganda that home-schooled kids are bible-thumping autists still has traction, because there's not enough of these kids out exposing the fact that they really are better educated.

Post: #11

(11-29-2016 11:08 PM)weambulance Wrote:  Michigan has compulsory school attendance until the age of 18. What, exactly, is the rationale for that if the state has no responsibility for ensuring some standard of education for the students? Are they outright stating that the schools are nothing but daycare centers?

That's exactly why compulsory education was enacted. Too many poor kids in cities as a result of industrialization and they didn't want them getting involved in gangs. The upshot was that for about 100 years there was some actual utility in the education they got, but not anymore.

Post: #12

(11-30-2016 12:42 PM)britchard Wrote:  10% literate in Detroit? Wow that is a scandal. It's too easy to blame the state authorities in this case, I think the main problem is the attitude and behaviour of the students (which is down to the parents) which puts teachers off teaching there

In England, teachers are paid more if they teach in an 'underperforming' school (codeword for lots of poor kids whose parents haven't taught them how to behave). This system has sort-of worked, there are no critical teacher shortages for the worst schools.

Public school teachers in the US are well-paid. And they sometimes receive a sort of 'hazard pay' premium for working in dangerous/difficult school systems. Money is not the problem.

Smart, ambitious people do not want to become teachers. Reason: the bullshit edu-theories and lack of autonomy.

Post: #13

(11-30-2016 12:59 PM)ElFlaco Wrote:  

(11-30-2016 12:42 PM)britchard Wrote:  10% literate in Detroit? Wow that is a scandal. It's too easy to blame the state authorities in this case, I think the main problem is the attitude and behaviour of the students (which is down to the parents) which puts teachers off teaching there

In England, teachers are paid more if they teach in an 'underperforming' school (codeword for lots of poor kids whose parents haven't taught them how to behave). This system has sort-of worked, there are no critical teacher shortages for the worst schools.

Public school teachers in the US are well-paid. And they sometimes receive a sort of 'hazard pay' premium for working in dangerous/difficult school systems. Money is not the problem.

Smart, ambitious people do not want to become teachers. Reason: the bullshit edu-theories and lack of autonomy.

Agreed. They also only work 180 days a year, while getting personal days and vacation time every year. In my state, they pay next to nothing for gold plated insurance and dont pay a dime towards their retirement. Believe me, pay is not the problem.

Post: #14

It's disingenuous to say that the teachers are lazy, especially compared to their post-secondary counterparts. The problem is that teachers are generally handcuffed by common core bureaucracy. Administrations, in Canada at least, are filled with academics with no teaching background. Instead of teaching kids multiplication tables, they're taught to do it on a calculator, or some other wacky method that falls under change for the sake of change. Edu-theory is a good way to put it.

Another issue is the demanding parents who think that their kid couldn't possibly be failing and that it's the teacher's fault. In most school systems you can't fail students. I knew a kid in my 7th grade class who took a 7% in one of his classes and he was right back with us in 8th grade.

I've never been pleased with the quality of my education but in elementary and high school it wasn't the teachers so much as it was the principals or the administration.

Post: #15

In Australia the education system has been turned into a marxist concentration camp, where young men are drugged and brainwashed with leftist propaganda.

Overpaid, non performance managed man hating lesbians running the tax payer funded misandrist debacle.

Nothing short of a flame thrower will reset that giant steaming pile.