Education system=slavery.

Philosophy Forums Society, Government, and Economics
1

Slavery:

  1. The state of one bound in servitude as the property of a slaveholder or household.
  2. The condition of being subject or addicted to a specified influence.
  3. A condition of hard work and subjection: wage slavery

Choose any definition you desire.

The truth is that the education system is an institution that conditions thinking in all aspects. Setting standards giving unnatural true values of truth without ever explaning that such is the case. The goverment and the rich (same thing really) control all aspects of education and thus, all aspects of learning. They condition thinking into two aspects, right and wrong and everything resides between this two things, without ever explaining that this is in actual fact are relative. Philosophy is the only source of truth and yet by teaching it one in fact conditioning the philosopher (At least in the way it is taught.)

Now does not the entity that control the tools by which people learn, in effect controls everything else by default. Most certainly yes. My question is would a society where everyone was a skeptic and a philosopher hold? in other words if there is no central belief, religion, (Science is defined as religion, logic as well.) would a society hold? if not what should be the religion.

Aim= make individuals within the society as equal as possible, if possible.

2

Although I can agree with almost the entirety of the OP, what did That statement mean?

It seems a bit of a stretch to call Logic a “religion” although I wish it were far more so. Science has definitely become merely a religion recently, no different than the others with all of the same trappings. Science is the new State enforced religion of the West (and a subset of Human Secularism).

3

Basically equal in the essence of opportunity and power. Equal as in everyone has the real, not theoretical, chance to suceed in the society. Mutual respect, equal power. I do realize it is almost (probably) impossible but which religion do you think would be closest to accomplish this?

if you say logic explain.

Religion is defined as by me: a system of beliefs or belief which determines absolute values of truth. (Religions are relative, now I am not taking sides.)

You could say logic but alot of my the people i know would disagree as such they have to be labelled as relative.

4

Well believe it or not, that is a very bad thing, not good at all.

What was intended long ago (and was the actual good) was that all people should be treated equally under the law. But now when you extend the thought to all people should have equal opportunity, you create a big problem. For an extreme example, think in terms of monkeys mixed with homosapians;

A monkey, for whatever reason, tends to need more from the government and must be given far more lenience. At least one monkey should be elected as President now and then just to prevent prejudice. All monkeys should be shown in films in a positive light so as to prevent social oppression. The Congress should, of course, have an equal number of monkeys so as to properly represent their population. Their population should be enhanced to ensure they have an equal influence on society and thus could not be oppressed (must reduce the population of the homosapians). Corporations should be required by government regulation to have an equal number of monkeys represented in managerial positions and should reflect equal pay (or affirmatively higher). So as to not reflect too much difference in the species, homosapians should be encouraged to dress and behave more like monkeys and of course, we must do something to prevent the intelligence of one from being any different than the other, but for a while, we must decrease the homosapian intellect to below that of the monkey (easier than trying to raise the monkey’s) as an affirmative action plan. Of course so as to maintain innocence and inspire cooperation, we must present the story of the oppressed monkey and the evil homosapian. Actual truth MUST be erased, so that all have equal opportunity.

You see, people, by gender and race are NOT equal. Thus the effort to MAKE them equal leads to bringing the intelligence down to the lowest denominator. The hope of the world becomes the toilet of the world. All by the effort to give equal opportunity to all people.

There is a far better and more rational way (CRH).

Logic is a philosophy concerning how to deduce. It is much like mathematics, a tool. It does not demand worship other than the fundamental thought that “A=A”, that what is, cannot also be what isn’t.

In Logic truth is dictated by definitions, but Logic does not set any definitions. It allows for you to do that (“name the animals, Ahdam”), to fill in the blanks of thought and truth. Science was supposed to be much that way, but has been made into a religion of worship wherein people have no idea of what they are really talking about, but because some worshiped prophet of Science said it, it must be true and “our prophets are the true prophets, not those other guys”.

5

Equal is not saying that they are the same or that they will achieve the same. In common language it means that people have the opportunity to achieve the same thing. Your arguement, I guess, is that for this to be the case everyone should achieve in the same way (create equal wealth). So what you are saying is that this is impossible right? if it is impossible then one can assert that every society will develop higher and lower classes. Agreed.

Nonetheless, one is not saying everyone should have the exact same opportunity (impossible on a capilist model, people that achieve more, have more opportunity as a consequence) the question is what religion would be better to give people a more equal opportunity? or do you propose that one should not try to achieve such a thing?

6

Can’t be done unless you make all people not only equal in abilities, but eventually you would have to even make them all born in the location at the same time.

7

Yep, education is slavery, lets abolish it.
You know what else is slavery? Children being under the control of their parents. The parents can tell the children what to do. Lets make everyone orphans.
Having a job is slavery. They tell you what to do and when to do it and they support you through food and housing. Sure it enters the form of money in the middle but its the same principal.
Cars are slaves to humans. They are controlled by us and forced to carry us places; we buy and sell them like livestock and when they are no longer useful we abandon them. Cars should be emancipated.

Any concept of ownership and control are slavery in one way or another but know one ever gave people the right to be free except ourselves. And by that logic I can give myself the right to murder people for fun.
So if you realize I am not free to murder then you must also accept that you are not free to be free. But this is just me ranting.

To answer your question society can not hold with out logic, education and science being used to form technology. Without these society reduces to pre-stone age levels as we have no idea about how tools work or are created. With out logic we would have never realized that by putting water in a container you can bring it places to drink when you are thirsty, never learned how to kill deer or harvest crops. However a society of philosophizers and skeptics would do just fine with logic and science.

8

I think his point was this part;

He isn’t saying the ALL education is slavery, but rather the current method ends up as slavery.

But if you want to inject real Logic into the game, you can certainly change the current methods. You’d have my vote on that one. Current education in the US leaves logic as merely a word game and nothing more = false logic that leads to passion politics that leads to slavery.

9

Even though current education is slavery doesn’t mean its bad.
The problem is the way it is done; more to pass tests than to actually educate.

10

Emm… what would you consider “bad”?

11

Torture and unnecessary killing of innocents.

Slavery is only bad when the masters are unjust and cruel.
Rome and Athens were both built by slaves but then slaves were more like permanent servants than livestock as they became during colonial times

12

Actually, I wouldn’t terribly disagree, but I have to point out that a few people could enslave all others and leave humanity as no more than the insanity of those few expressed more greatly by the many under their influence.

So the issue becomes one of allowing for something NOT under insane control so as to achieve a potentially higher state.

Thus any form of slavery is really preventing the potential for longer life and less cruelty. So even what doesn’t seem unusually cruel one day, can easily be responsible for the lack of development that causes all future misery and death.

Since I believe in something much better (already designed), I have no doubt that all slavery today, and all current governing techniques, are ALL more cruel than need be.

13

jss, you could be right.
But I feel that in some cases the cruelty is made up for by the results.
If the educational system was based on actually educating and was still just as cruel, it would be perfect. A certain amount of cruelty is always required to maintain order whether it be detentions for skipping class or killing a slave who revolts.

14

Well, I don’t call proper correction, “cruelty” by definition. And I agree that some “pain” is required in life, given by others or not.

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I think teachers are extremely important. Here’s a post from another thread.

Hubert Dreyfus in “On the Internet” discusses the embodied situation of a student in a room with a teacher. Much of the text deals with the pros and cons of distance education (learning via podcast or otherwise without an actual instructor). Dreyfus is not a luddite. All of the lectures he gives at Berkeley are available via podcast on ITunes and Berkeley’s BSpace site. That being said, Dreyfus worries about the effectiveness of Internet/individual learning.

According to Dreyfus there are six stages of learning: novice, advanced beginner, competence, proficiency, expertise, practical wisdom

Novice-Competence: In the first three stages we more or less spend our time learning facts and vocabulary. The instructor presents us with lists of rules.
E.g. Learning to drive: Red means stop. Drive on the right side. Wear a seatbelt.
We expand on these rules and find exceptions as we learn more and more. Dreyfus suggests that this kind of learning might be accomplished while disembodied (by “mental download” or individual information gobbling).

Proficiency-Expertise: In order to move from competence to proficiency, Dreyfus argues that being in an embodied learning situation with an instructor is crucial.

To an extent this has to do with an emotional desire to succeed among one’s peers, and especially to succeed in the eyes of one’s instructor. If we are just mentally downloading, there is no risk, no emotion involved. This makes it is very difficult to become proficient rather than functionally competent.

When we attain expertise we are able to dazzle our instructors and peers. We begin to feel as if we “never needed them in the first place.” This is a sentiment you will see a lot on the ILP forums. “Academia is pointless, none of them actually know anything.” “At some point I realized I was already smarter than all my professors.” The fact is, moving through these stages is extremely rare without some kind of embodiment in a group of intellectual peers (perhaps like the ILP forum) and if possible the tutelage of an instructor you respect who is with you in your learning space.

Practical Wisdom: The move from expertise to practical wisdom means that you are no longer completing tasks in order to succeed in the eyes of an instructor. You no longer have specific tasks to complete. There is no longer any indication of what information is relevant (e.g. reading lists). The notion of success in the eyes of your peers becomes ambiguous. Who are your peers? If you truly learn something, they might not have learned it yet.

During the transition from expertise to practical wisdom many people become very depressed. It seems as if nothing matters. We lose interest in all the pursuits which were once emotionally invigorating. All our prior work seems infantile and pointless. We can’t pick any one thing to just sit down and write about. There is no-one to tell us if what we are thinking is obviously off-the-mark, and we couldn’t trust them anyway. All of this makes us very anxious.

At this point however, as with the previous two stages, embodiment is quite necessary. There can never be a “mental download” for practical wisdom. It is something you do in-the-world.

Dreyfus tells a story about practical wisdom. There was a tank commander who volunteered to assist Dreyfus and a team of computer scientists in programming some “smart” tanks for the US military. The idea is that the tank commander would explain what he would do in given situations, then the computer programmers would come up with code to execute this action. The problem is, when they ask the tank commander questions, such as “what part of this landscape would you position a tank on?” He responds very quickly by pointing to a particular patch of land. They ask, “Why that patch of land? Is it because it’s low enough to be protected from enemy fire? Is it because it’s elevated enough to have line of sight on many targets?”

The retired tank commander says, “How the hell should I know? THAT’S JUST WHERE THE TANK GOES.”

EDIT FOR THIS THREAD:
The idea here is not that the tank commander has been brainwashed and only does what he is told.

The main theme is that teachers are really super important when it comes to education.

16

Basically my point, J.SS. got it right. what should be the new way is the question.

17

Pain is not only required but an absolutely certainty in the empirical world. Conditioning is something that no creature could ever aspire to get rid off so the question is what would be a better conditioning?

18

Catharsis.

19

i don’t believe education (these days) steers you to particular views. what we learn through education is the basics…math, science, language. while teachers may have opinions and it is easy to see it when you are younger as the truth i think going through life is the only way to learn the truth (according to you of course). if you are referring to like high school and college, your brain is not even fully developed then. it is a time in your life you spend more ignorant and selfish. if society was made up of skeptics and philosophers that in itself would be a sort of society since people are bound to cross beliefs and disagreements can attract people as well. society would not fall apart but they would have to find ways to keep some faith since we are human and ultimatley it is comfort we aim for. i believe religion is just a faith in ourselves anyhow. it is a way to cope with the purpose of life and death. imagine a world full of philosophers who found faults seeing things as they are…it would be easier to redeem yourself as you and others embraced natural imperfections. philosophy brings about some willingness if not only good thoughts from people. religion will always exist as a belief system because for some God is the truth and for others God does not. it all comes down to individuality and similarities.