Systems for education are fucked. The learning process should be personal. There shouldn’t be teachers and students since we’re all learning. Teachers and classes are way too clumped together and cliche.
When education is dead mechanical matter young minds are ready to be filled by the men that are forcing equals (as in those who are just as applicable to processing information and teaching) to listen to them brag. Education is a continual cycle.
A few men decide on what’s best for the rest and voila: everybody’s the same, numbers, wasted space, tools.
Kids haven’t been around as long and they don’t have degrees from the prestigious universities flocked with mediocre learners who’ve been conditioned throughout their lives to desire what they’re told to by the media; more subjects controlled by more leaders. Children have purely natural approaches to observation. Your learning method, as a naive, untainted, child is the only stage in your life you will learn the most with. At two you’re short 2 or 3 years later of sitting in a classroom waiting for storytime by some fucking retarded adult who reads what some fucking retarded adult writes of what they believe is a child’s level of understanding, when in reality, it’s what they want. Dumbing down and restriction.
No Johnny don’t touch that. No Johnny that’s too heavy for you to carry. No Johnny you’ve been asking questions for 10 minutes and I’m tired. No Johnny don’t look at that it’s for grown-ups. No Johnny use your inside voice.
A word of advice: Don’t have a little Johnny if he has to be a little you. Don’t ruin him like you were. You’re slow, old, and can’t keep up with him.
I could rant some more but this is a fair beginning to a lovely thread.
There have been threads that express your exact sentiment; my opinion is this:
The only reason we have formal education in the United States is to create competent workers and soldiers to fuel the economy of the Republic. If you want to be ‘truly’ educated, then it may happen where you least expect it. To give schools credit though, every once in a long while you are taught by a remarkable teacher, and you will remember it.
Schools suck. If you want your kids to learn something then teach them yourself homeschool them. All other forms of learning are pretty much just propaganda! imo
If every child was thought by their parents the world have a huge problem with social heritage. If a child wants to be an engineer but the parents don’t know any thing about engineering, shouldn’t the child have a proper teacher then? And in the world we live in we need people with expertise, and it is vary few experts who is thought by they parents.
Of curse a teacher can never be 100% objective but parent wouldn’t either. It doesn’t matter who the child is been thought by, that person will color the child’s view on the world.
I didn’t like school either, and College…don’t get me started.
Still having a social mechanism to ensure that the bulk of our children can read and write our native tongue and possess basic skills is awfully handy. Take a trip to a place where people are completely uneducated, OR that their education system foists true propeganda upon them and suddenly our crappy broken little system looks much better.
I have a feeling that if someone had enough observation skills and will to learn by themselves, it would be plausible. I’m sure if a toddler can pick up on speech without being taught then surely when given the proper materials they could learn to read and write on their own as well.
Yes and given a copy of Gray’s Anatomy, an Exacto knife, and some Ether I could probably successfully remove your apendix. But wouldn’t your prefer to have someone who was classically trained in medicine to do it?
I wonder how they learned…and the people who taught them learned…and the ones who taught them learned? Well I guess they were classically trained in medicine by someone who just knew? There is no such thing as invention or origin, is there?
Plenty of invention and probably alot of spontaneous intuition. There was also a system of checks and balances known as Peer Review, that got rid of quackery and nonsense that springs up along the way.
The education system was not set up for the schools to do all the educating. Parents must become involved for it to be benefcial for the child. If the parents expect the school to do all the educating then you have a nice little worker for the mill. If the parents are involved with the education and upbringing of the child the system works well. The child recieves social interaction, basic education and with the parents encouragment the child will go beyond the basics. Not always but a fair amount of the time. The schools and the parents are failing their jobs, they are not working together as they should.
So if you want to gripe about the schools you really should gripe about the parents too.
Ejumacation is the reason you’re able to write what you have, interpret what you do. You’re using it to come to the conclusion that you did with this thread, and you’re using it to convey what you think. Aren’t you a good slave. The whole world isn’t literate, you can go to places where schooling is unmandatory and see your version of uninstitutionalized free men toiling the farms.
"At two you’re short 2 or 3 years later of sitting in a classroom waiting for storytime by some fucking retarded adult who reads what some fucking retarded adult writes of what they believe is a child’s level of understanding, when in reality, it’s what they want. Dumbing down and restriction. "
I tried teaching my 2 year old cousin about the illusion of reality, the presence of good and evil, subjectivism and objectivism, but I don’t know, it didn’t really get anywhere.
I was later telling these people about how everything controls them and how they should follow me instead by not following me and be free. Freedom feels better in a new cage.
Listen punk, those people tilling the soil in Peruvian slums make your feckin’ coffee every morning. Just letting you know. It’s because white swine who ride the elevator to boxed in lairs make money by buying their labor at outrageously low prices and selling to the American consumer who is made ABLE to go to school by the farmers overseas who till their shit for them. They’ll buy at outrageously high prices because their education is so fucking worthless that they don’t realize that not only are they being raped but millions more are being raped far worse and even if they did, they wouldn’t care because they don’t have to initiate in dirty dealing, they just work and buy like everyone else. At square one they’re buying the product from the piggies who took economics and business in college and are rubbing their hands together while fucking 'em both over.
Read some Freire and wash it down with some mountain Dewey.
Hehe, the irony of criticising arrogance and then having confidence in the criticism of arrogance antagonized. “Punk”…“feckin coffee”…“fucking worthless”…“raped…raped” hehe, well done. Not that you addressed the uselessness of education vs the lack of, or any feasible alternative, or how you’d be able to have this conversation if education wasn’t a common thing, but hey, whatever floats your ego. I guess it’s not obvious that you’re some arrogant 20-30something pseudointellectual/shortsighted American. Get out your self-righteous colloquialist anger out, it’s what philosophy’s all about… Oh, nevermind. I think I’ll respond with this and get out of this thread before I get sucked in deeper into your tornado of anger:
Wear your Che Guevara t-shirt and throw that can of coke away. Oops!
I’m not angry at all, I just write that way; and don’t take my writing style seriously. I do it for fun and am overjoyed that you do too.
I’m not arrogant or over 20 or smart or any of that so I’m glad it’s not obvious, otherwise, I may worry.
Now where were we…
I’ll try addressing the uselessness of education more like so:
You have this young child who wants to learn and explore everything that surrounds them. They learn how to get around and then walk and eventually talk after a few years of observing. Then they turn 5 and are sent to preschool but they have to sit and listen to a teacher tell them to write their abcs on a paper or paint what they’re instructed to or whatever. Suddenly learning, to them, isn’t what it used to be. They have to rely on someone else to tell them what to learn and how to learn it. The world isn’t as magical as it used to be. It’s not your idea anymore and one thing’s for certain: at that age you want all the independence you can get. If you could get away with whatever you wanted, you’d be in kiddie heaven. You’d probably much rather jump around the room and play with your friends and maybe even tie the teacher to a chair; but all of these actions or desires have consequences and you have to do what you’re told or even more of the magic to your life will be taken from you. The logical and justified reason we do this is because we want our children to behave in a proper manner that we’ve already created; we’ve strayed way too far from nature and a child’s approach to let them come along and destroy it. We have rules and structure and …pollution. Not cars running rampant or unrecycled waste; I’m talking about all of the things that have been “filtered” or “refined” through our heads that make us think we’re oh-so-wise which are really just bullshit. We’re still the same little kid but totally ruined by dead matter left behind by dead men with dead ideas from dead bodies. To top that we live on an overcrowded planet of completely stupid people who are that way because of the other people and the dead people who influenced them from childhood onward to abandon the common sense they’re born with and adopt the “sense” they’re given.
Strong statement from the boy who addresses someone he doesn’t know, and his elder, with a sneering statement, “punk”, and as I was just in the homosexual father post, also says “Why don’t you just parent him like you always have? He’s the same person, but he just let you know he likes dick.” in the most vulgar way. to an obviuosly religious father.
As for the content of the post, humans make structures. Life makes structures. Life is order. There’s nothing unnatural about tall buildings, government systems…order, that’s what all lifeforms get more of. Simple cells into complex organisms that are the likes of me and you. Primary schools aren’t exactly prisons killing the creativities of little hapless children. I personally oppose all this “which kindergarden should I send my kids to so they can get into Harvard”, that has been shown in a couple studies, as you said, to kill children’s creativity but to think that they are better off throwing a ball around all day, as opposed to expanding the abilities of their mind through writing, reading, history and mathematics. What common sense are you talking about? The common sense that he can’t even count the number of points he scores in a game? You can’t just say everyone has an innate creativity and desire for knowledge that is killed by education, no it isn’t. Education provides the base for creativity. Education is the reason the device you’re using to post your response exists. General childhood creativity will let you make a paper airplane but education gives you the devices to put that creativity to better use. The argument that they’re teaching “dead ideas” because they are from “dead men” and therefore “dead matter” is just incorrect if you give it some thought. Most philosophies are the result of dead men’s work, as are all the foundations of science, but I’m still standing on the ground and I’m still living in a building constructed through the ideas of dead men, don’t know what that has to do with its functionality. Education has nothing to do with killing creativity. As I already said, you can see the absence of education in uneducated places, your Peruvian workers for instance, and see how “free” these people are. Race is irrelevant.
I notice niether of you are even looking at the parents as the ones at fault. Which is crap. The system needs parental support, without it, the kids are merely taught to be good little workers.
The parents are members of the ‘fucking retarded adults’ group. It’s not about them but what education as a general concept does for the general population, and not for a single intelligent child.
However:
Most of the rebellious people that I’ve met, the anti capitalists anti corporationists and the lot, are the people who had a lot of difficulty with their parents. I personally have come to the conclusion that those who have little conflict with their parents/guardians and embrace them are the ones who also fit into general society the easiest because they don’t have that rebellious personality honed quite so much. Instead, they find a group they’re comfortable with, and this usually (though not always) isn’t a particularly rebellious group, and stay with it. At least, these are my observations from my most ‘ethical’ and family oriented friends.
As for the kids being good workers though, I don’t think this holds true. The best workers I’ve met were the ones who had no education; no need to ask too many questions. It seems education is unrelated to the improvement of the quality of the worker as I interpret what you’re saying. Education isn’t intelligence. If the average/below average are going to be good workers whether in a field or in a factory, does it make a difference? Seems like good use of human resources to teach them different skills. The difference, and the advantage of education I’m arguing for, is in the basic skills: math, reading/writing and critical thinking, though improved social skills may fit in there as well; education has nothing to do with the death of creativity in the creative. If anything, it brings it out. What would plane designers do without education? Where would their creativity go? Overeducation to the unwilling, however, I don’t know.
Sorry for any incoherence or poor structuring, my thoughts are pretty scattered lately.
Funny, out here in Arizona we have alot of ‘trustafarians’ going to a local hyper-liberal college. They are the sort of people who shout “Property Is Theft!” while putting their education, their organically grown hemp clothing, and their beer on Daddy’s credit card.
There is a laundry list of problems with society, but what you will find when you stop trying to scapegoat Corporations, Education, Mommy, Daddy, The Youth ect ect ect, is that most of what is wrong is the sum total of millions of individual selfish acts and stupidities. We all own a little bit of blame for what is wrong.
Unfortunately that leaves us with a dillema in that there is no Gordian Knot solution to the worlds woes. Instead each one of us must see how far our arm reaches and do the best we to improve everything within our effective range.
It also takes several years of flirting with various sillier theories before one arrives at this point. I went from hardcore supporter of the state to hardcore anarchist to…ehhh, I do what I can. That took about 15 years, I suppose alot can happen in the next 15.
Go easy on the kid in otherwords, he’s following the natural order of things. You are supposed to read Kafka and find it extrodinarily profound at this age.