Education to the extent that it provides the tools to spend ones life learning and applying and learning, and sharing.

Learning circles, extended use of libraries with human beings to support democratic learning. Pulling a book randomly from a shelf and becoming acquainted with a world beyond one’s reach.

Learning and learning to learn….

“So, now that I’ve rambled … the question is: just how damned dumb do the powers that be want us to be? And, the corollary … why the hell do we put up with it?”

The majority of people don’t understand it, and if they do they don’t care enough about it to do anything.

The point of the educational system is not to educate, but to avoid educating. The only way to get an education is to live, to quest and work, to experience, to read, and to think. School is far from useless, but a student has to be really creative to get much out of it.

The vast majority of students are not going to become part of the ruling class. Since the ruling class controls school (through state control either directly or otherwise) it’s not in their interests to educate students. The only effective education occurs in graduate school.

An example of the lack of education in the “educational system” is the incredibly slow pace of instruction of most subjects whereas drivers’ education is done in a couple weeks. Driving a car is more difficult than algebra, yet teachers drag out algebra instruction for years. The reasoning here is simple – the state wants it’s citizens to be able to drive but doesn’t want it’s citizens to learn algebra. So it gives REAL instruction in driving, excellent instruction, and wastes huge amounts of students’ time, boring them, making them hate algebra – they essentially *create* difficulty in the subject. For me to say algebra should be taught in two weeks sounds ridiculous precisely because American propaganda has been so successful.

To aid this whole process, American propagandists have pushed the importance of intelligence – and stress that humans differ greatly in their intelligence. The truth is otherwise – there is little difference in intelligence between humans. The point of the propaganda is to provide a reason why there is disparity in educational performance from student to student (one gets higher grades because one is more intelligent) and conceal the true reasons – family life, future expectations, relationship to the ruling class, among others.

People say that students hate school, and that’s true. But they are confused about something crucial. They think that students hate *education*, and that’s completely false. Students crave education, and they hate school because it prevents them from getting an education, in the same sense that eating junk food prevents one from getting nutrition or filling one’s mind with trivia prevents one from getting knowledge or listening to George W. Bush prevents one from hearing truth.

Very few people in America understand any of this – they keep linking state-controlled or state-aligned schools with education. Sadly, the truth is just the opposite.

A common question that arises when people hear this is – if the education system is so useless, why do students who do well in it get high paying jobs?

The answer is two-fold, and neither aspect has to do with education -

#1) Accreditation – job applications neither ask about nor care about what someone knows. There are no tests given in most cases, and even when tests are included they do not override accreditation. What they care about is an applicant’s accreditation – at what point in the educational system the applicant reached (what kind of degree, if any).

#2) Systemic conditioning – the further a student goes in the educational system, the more he is conditioned toward state (ruling class) obedience. This is why education is conducted in a hierarchical teacher-knows-best model with students in an obedient and slavish role. Also, as a family supplies more and more wealth into a child’s education that child becomes more indebted to the educational experience, thus needing a high paying job which is favored by the state, thus aligning himself with ruling class interests (such as favoring income inequality, low taxes, corporate benefits, white race rule, etc.) in order to not create social problems which could hinder his pursuit of wealth.

However, as previously noted, when a student has already proved himself enough of an obedient slave, cringing before the master (the state), the state rewards him with a position in graduate school, and he finally gets a decent education. He gets a good paying job, his mind destroyed by propaganda, and he calls it a life. His ignorance of this entire process saves him the humiliation of self-knowledge.

“I have never let my learning get in the way of my education.”
Twain

That is why resources are purposefully drawn down as artificial standards are pumped up. NCLB is slow poison for the principle that even the children of non-elites deserve an education.

I particularly like “Sudbury Schools” (see http://www.sudval.org). They are run as democracies. Each student and each staff have a vote. They create they laws they will live by. Of course there is no place for coercion in such a system. The student decide for themselves how they will spend the day.

Why? Because our professors didn’t have to take all of those meaningless and terribly dull and boring education classes that lead to what we call certification or licensure.

Standardized curriculum is the next step in dumbing down education. The first step was to dumb down the teachers … now we want to dumb down what they teach?

Bunk.

As an autodidact and iconoclast, I spend my time reading and thinking … that is when I am not working just hard enough to buy the books to read and then think about. Most teachers don’t have time to read, much less think, because they spend so much time doing administrative crap and making (and then grading) meaningless assignments to prove to marginally educated idiots (called administrators) that they have their classes under control because the kids appear to be busy.

Thus, busy work is king (or queen) in the classroom and actual learning and inquiry and all of that stuff we say we want to happen is totally ignored.

Then again, our education system does seem to educate some people some of the time. Obama, the fellow running for president, got an education because as a black with a single mom he fit the demographics that help bright kids ‘get’ there if they have a support network. Suburban Hillary had all of the characteristics for a woman to get through the education system … and McCain was privileged from the get go as a military officer’s child to have the requisite perks to be where he is.

But what of the unwashed masses? What of the kids we send to school for seven or eight years only to see them drop out? They are the ones who are the measure of our success (actually failure). When less than 70% of kids who start school graduate, the question has to be … not why … but rather: isn’t this what we want out of our education system?

So, now that I’ve rambled … the question is: just how damned dumb do the powers that be want us to be? And, the corollary … why the hell do we put up with it?

Faddy

Oh, yeah, my email is: faddy.macmough@gmail.com in case you want to carry on a discussion person to person instead of here.