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The Underground History of American Education
The true purpose of schooling, according to Gatto, is to produce an easily manageable workforce to serve employers in a mass-production economy. Actual education is a secondary and even counterproductive result since educated people tend to be more difficult to control.
Over the course of the book, Gatto exposes many of the individuals, organizations, and crises (both real and manufactured) that helped to make our public school system what it is today. Such architects as Rockefeller, Carnegie, Ford, and a handful of teaching and management experts sought to benefit directly from a dumbed-down citizenry. Others contributed in a naive attempt at Utopian social engineering, mostly unaware of the harm that they were doing. There was never any master plan, though. The author puts it best:
With conspiracy so close to the surface of the American imagination and American reality, I can only approach with trepidation the task of discouraging you in advance from thinking my book the chronicle of some vast diabolical conspiracy to seize all our children for the personal ends of a small, elite minority.Gatto maintains throughout the book that all individuals have an innate curiosity and desire to learn. Examples are given in the first chapter of prominent historical figures who prospered with little or no formal schooling. But I found the examples of desire for substantive education on the part of "the masses" to be most compelling:Don't get me wrong, American schooling has been replete with chicanery from its very beginnings: indeed, it isn't difficult to find various conspirators boasting in public about what they pulled off. But if you take that tack you'll miss the real horror of what I'm trying to describe, that what has happened to our schools was inherent in the original design for a planned economy and a planned society laid down so proudly at the end of the nineteenth century. I think what happened would have happened anyway-without the legions of venal, half-mad men and women who schemed so hard to make it as it is. If I'm correct, we're in a much worse position than we would be if we were merely victims of an evil genius or two.
When a Colorado coalminer testified before authorities in 1871 that eight hours underground was long enough for any man because "he has no time to improve his intellect if he works more," the coaldigger could hardly have realized his very deficiency was value added to the market equation.The real function of the school system is not to empower people by giving them knowledge, but to crush this instinct toward self-improvement before it makes the workers too independent and troublesome. Another compelling example is the "Jewish Student Riots" described in chapter 9:
Thousands of mothers milled around schools in Yorkville, a German immigrant section, and in East Harlem, complaining angrily that their children had been put on "half-rations" of education. They meant that mental exercise had been removed from the center of things.
The book does have a few problems. Gatto is by his own admission somewhat casual about citing his sources. This is important because there are some assertions made that many will find dubious. For example:
Looking back, abundant data exist from states like Connecticut and Massachusetts to show that by 1840 the incidence of complex literacy in the United States was between 93 and 100 percent wherever such a thing mattered.This would be a great fact to toss out when trying to convince someone that schooling is unnecessary. But where does this statistic come from? What does "wherever such a thing mattered" mean? Some readers may be willing to simply take Gatto's word for it and accept this assertion, but skeptics will be left unsatisfied. According to historical census data from 1840, the national average literacy rate for white adults was indeed approximately 93%, and the literacy rate for white adults living in Connecticut was 99.67%. Why not simply say that the statistic refers to white adults? The omission hurts the author's credibility in the eyes of a skeptical reader.
The other thing that I found disappointing is that Gatto doesn't discuss solutions to the schooling problem as thoroughly as I wanted. Throughout the book examples are shown of educational methods which have worked well. As I read, I mulled these over, and anticipated that the final chapter (titled "Breaking Out Of The Trap") would be a comprehensive look at these methods and ways to promote their implementation. But that final chapter is mostly a collection of anecdotes. Gatto does provide a short list of positive suggestions and a promise to cover solutions more fully in a future book.
The picture that Gatto paints for us of our school system and society is frightening, but I also found it comforting to see evidence that ignorance and apathy are not the natural state of humanity. I found hope in the fact that things were once different. Having a clearly defined problem that can be solved is preferable to having a vague suspicion that something is wrong, but no clear idea what it is.
The ideas presented in Gatto's Underground History have the potential to change our society and our individual lives for the better. Even when we are trapped within the system, knowing how it works and what it is really up to can help us retain our wit and our humanity. If you are a student, if you are a parent, if you know or care about anyone who is in school, or even if you are just concerned about corporate and government control versus individual freedom, you need to read this book.
You can purchase The Underground History of American Education from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
First, the education system here is based on some industrial-conformity training system devised by industrialists in the 1800s, or therabouts.
It is not really natural or right for kids of a certain age to be sitting in a desk all day. Boys especially need to have a break at certain stages of their growth, usually about 13-15 yo, when they should be sent away from home to some sort of boarding school/military school/vocational school arrangement, at least for a time. It all depends on the kid.
Once again, Europe has us beat in this area. Just do what the most advanced countries in Europe do, and it will undoubtedly be twice as good as what we do.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
This is so on-point it's frightening. I was a high school teacher in Los Angeles from 2000-2001, and it's frightening how much of what is articulated in this exerpt I *experienced*.
We had a principal who was fantastic, because he was a former teacher from the area. But when he was replaced by someone with more "administrative experience" it was appalling how quickly things declined. Children aren't held to standards, parents come at odds with teachers, administrators point the finger at teachers, and the children are the ones left out in the cold.
In just one year there, I was chastised for
1) Driving students home to bad neighborhoods after dark.
2) Creating an extra-curricular dance program that "interfered" with the students curriculum.
3) Attempting to engage students with "dangerous" science demonstrations (i.e. using a bunsen burner constitutes dangerous, using 1 Tesla Magnets constitutes dangerous.)
4) Breaking up a fight with my bare hands (I was chastised for "laying my hands" upon the students.)
The list goes on. I truly believe that the entire system needs reform, from the bottom up and the top down. But without involved parents, administrators who take full responsibility, students who are forced to live with their choices instead of having excuses made for them, and up to date equipment and books, it truly is a lost cause except for the few self-motivated students.
I could agree with this, were my school more like a trade school, which it wasn't. Most of my elementary and later teachers actually encouraged some level of independent thinking and creativity -- others were often astounded whenever a student thought of 'the third way' One particularly poor teacher, 2nd grade, seemed only there for the money or until she could get somewhere else -- I was frequently on her bad side and grew to loathe school, prefering to be tardy by as much as 2 hours roaming woods and poking around a creek for frogs and snakes.
I'm more likely to believe the role of schools in NYC was to keep the little animals manageable by compressing their little minds into a one-size-fits-all mould.
I'd later find I had a very high IQ and did exceptionally well in college, after graduating highschool only by the merest of threads.
If you have a kid and your kid seems disinterested or hostile about going to school, you might consider getting more involved and learn about the teacher and the school. At an early age contending with a poor teacher can have a lifelong impact.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
This isn't going to happen as long as educational curricula are based upon textbook teachings. As Diane Ravitch chronicled in her poignant bestseller The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn, there are many lobby forces at work that keep textbook publishers from making sales to school districts if they don't fit the group's agenda. This includes references to multiculturalism from the left, and patriotic propaganda from the right, both of which are not only prevalent but pervasive in American education. There will be no end.
Not teaching religion, political or patriotic material is in itself a religious/politic/patriotic decision. Gatto's point is that people should be driven to learn what they want to learn --- almost in the fashion of Montessori.
Outside of the most ardent libertarians no one is seriously talking about chunking the one tax funded public institution which is literally the closest with local school boards to the electorate, the public school system.
So for a public school system to survive what do we as a society need to do?
Are voucher systems somehow the silver bullet or does that simply stretch public funds to private hands and further deplete the money to be spent on public education?
Or perhaps what does real accountability mean? Or does it just mean more teaching to the tests?
Is it the teachers fault or does society blame the teachers too much?
What can we do?
ACK
Gatto's got it almost right, and has a lot of good ideas. Like having kids work from 14 on.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
Maybe a moderator would like to challenge the content of my post instead of modding down? Hmm? Here is my source, directly from the book. And I quote:
School is a religion. Without understanding the holy mission aspect you're certain to misperceive what takes place as a result of human stupidity or venality or even class warfare. All are present in the equation, it's just that none of these matter very much--even without them school would move in the same direction.
Anyone who has a problem with religions (ANY religions) being discussed in school is not someone who can be educated. Whether you like it or not, Christianity, Muslim, Jewish, Greek Mythology, Buddism, and other religions all have played a strong part in history.
So get it right, will you?!? The author said "school is a religion", not "school has too much Christianity".
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I thought everyone knew this.
The whole point is to create armies of obedient patriotic worker drones.
Who would submit to being dehumanized by working a production line doing the same task over and over or for todays workplace sit in a tiny cubicle for 12 hours at a time if you don't train them from a very early age to sit at a desk and obey.
Can you imagine taking some tribal person out of the jungle and telling them you must sit in this little cubicle and stare at this screen for 12 hours a day for the rest of your life? They would run away in terror! But since we are "civilized" we start to train our children to be automaton drones from an early age.
You can't really fix it thought because industrial capitalism needs masses of obedient patriotic unquestioning workers in order to function properly.
Trade away half of your life working in a cubicle producing wealth for the shareholders and they will give you back enough money to live and buy some useless techno gadgets.
Why are we so hung up on the origins of things? The nazis invented the VW, was it a bad car?
love is just extroverted narcissism
I couldn't agree more.
I taught a MATH 051 course my last year of college. This class covered nothing harder than learning how to figure percentages and doing basic conversions (ft. -> cm. and such). And yet of the entire 18 students (it was a small school, but this was one of 4 different sections of this class) I think 2 finished with a grade higher than a B.
I asked them what they did when they went shopping and saw "20% Off"? Did they automatically assume they were getting a deal? And one girl told me that of course it was a deal because it was 20% off!!!
I further questioned if they had ever done this type of work before and they all said yes in High School but not one of them could "re-learn" the information they "learned" in High School.
With the emphasis of these students to go to college our school systems have completely neglected to give any of the students a basic knowledge of arithmetic and other required skills to survive.
How many times have we heard about parents pushing for easier or non-existent teaching for their precious and sensitive whelps and yet demand that they "graduate" despite not learning a thing?
Ashamed to to say, I've seen this in my own family. A cousin of mine was coddled since he was born (hell he was in preschool an extra year, how fucked up is that?) by his relative caretakers (an aunt) after his mother died while he was a baby. Despite living in poverty, this person was spoiled continuously with toys. As I recall, he didn't stop playing with toys (complete Star Wars and He-Man collections, to name an example) till the 7th grade. Any attempts by the schools (throughout his schooling) to get him to learn or stay disciplined was met by a ferocious attack by his caretakers. Needless to say, he was socially promoted until he dropped out at 16.
He has worked a total of 2 weeks in his life (he is 32 now), in jobs given to him by relatives in an honest attempt to help, despite he not having training for anything. He quit them after complaining he was actually made to work, doing tasks as running sales money to the bank, etc. His caretakers were equally vehement in their condemnation of his kin/employer about their requirement he work for his money. To this day he subsists on $600 a month for diabetes disability, and will likely continue until he dies. For somone who has worked a grand total of 80 hours in his entire life, he has inexplicably owned more vehicles than I have. Last I heard, his aunt was saving up money to get him his latest toy, a truck, since he's never owned one.
The reason that the European system would not work in the USA is because people in the USA get all touchy when you try to say that "kid A is more capable than kid B". There is currently a witch hunt against such practices in the USA when it so happens that kid A is a suburbanite and kid B is a minority from the inner city regardless of any other circumstances.
The end result is that every kid is equally babysat, whether the they are destined to go to Harvard or to the local penitentiary until they graduate with their "everybody is equal" high school diploma. That is when kid B really gets screwed.
His verdict is not what you'd expect: the school system cannot be fixed, Gatto asserts, because it has been designed not to educate.
I agree 100%.
The true purpose of schooling, according to Gatto, is to produce an easily manageable workforce to serve employers in a mass-production economy. Actual education is a secondary and even counterproductive result since educated people tend to be more difficult to control.
Again, I agree, but I have one thing to add. The US education system also serves as a babysitter up through undergraduate degrees. Education also helps keep unemployment down, and in the case of "higher" education, people are out of the workforce and they are _paying_ into the economy.
And yeah, educated people are a pain in the ass for the "establishment". Try to get some menial "regular" job with a PhD. Who wants a person who is skilled in critical thinking and independant thought to ask people "Do you want to biggie size that?"
In fact, education is overexaggerated. I routinely ask people "What percentage of the population has a college degree?" And I routinely get answers about 50-60% while it has been 20% for a long time, and it is increasing. I don't remember what its at now, but nowhere near 50%.
I consider myself lucky in that I have done standard unskilled services work (convenience store clerk) and manual labor (landscaping and construction). I did construction when I was in college, and let me tell you, I felt very stupid for a month or so, even though I'm a good "booksmart" kind of guy. One skill I was really lacking was basic teamwork. Plus I did not know the vocabulary for the work, and basic stuff like using a level, plumbob, tape measure, etc.
The reasons that I don't have a problem with the education system not educating are twofold. 1) People don't need to be educated and 2) those few that do need educating and are bright will get it.
You can also see the role of being educated in our breeding habits. The more educated one is the fewer offspring they will have, and the inverse is true as well. Poor, uneducated people here in the US have tons off kids. Since kids when they are young are a liability, they tend to keep the poor poor. But one thing that I've noticed about the poor and their offspring, is that the children are more likely to take care of their parents when they are older. Whereas the wealthier/educated crowd are more independant in their old age because they do "smart" stuff like invest their money, have retirement funds, etc.
Comments?
This is one of those books you have to let percolate a bit before passing (negative) judgement against it; I first read the book just as I was getting my Master's degree and it is hard to come to grips with the idea of just how much of your life has been wasted by the system. A lot of you are still in school and the cognitive dissonance can still be bad for you.
And I was even one of those who would attack the schools on other grounds, mind; I was open to the idea it was flawed, hell, I knew it was flawed, but just how deeply and how deliberately sent me into shock.
Give it a try; more of my opinion in the above link, though I won't trouble Slashdot with it. Gatto really puts his case together well.
Also, I observe there are a lot of Slashdotters who reflexively assume home schooling is some sort of evil. Make sure you first satisfy yourself that the institutional schooling we now have is not itself a form of evil, perhaps even worse. Having read both sides of both issues, at this point I consider not home schooling borderline child abuse. Most of the homeschooling flaws pointed out by people, such as the ever popular (and unfounded in my experience) "lack of socialization" is correctable, with parental effort. The flaws in institutional schooling are not; indeed, they are assumed "beyond reproach". What amazes me about the human spirit is how many escape the system as I did without a crushed spirit, not how well it works.
What's up with your rants and who are you ranting against? The guys you're ranting against seem like they never mentioned anything about teaching about religions or discussing religions.
The original poster said:
The sooner we get an education system which does not teach religion or political or patriotic based material the better.
Which was not the point of the author. The author's point was that school IS a religion, based around social-compliance. Now the mods have seen fit to completely ruin a possibly good discussion by modding up unsubstantiated drivel that has no bearing on the subject at hand.
For pointing this out, I've lost about 5 points or so in karma. I'd lose another 50 if I thought it would help.
As for the distinction of teaching religion vs. practicing religion in school, I don't remember any public schools in the past thirty years requiring students to get down and pray. This leaves nothing but a discussion of a topic of very real import to life on this planet. No, I don't think teachers should shove any religion down childrens throats (that would be wrong), but how can you shy away from discussing it? This is supposedly a country of tolerance for all customs and religions! Where's the tolerance from the average slashdotter?
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A friend of mine, who has a Master's degree and is married to a college professor, recently called me "one of the smartest people (he'd) ever met".
He was flabbergasted to find out that I'd gone through the Chicago public grade/high school system, and had only completed a few years of commuter-school college before leaving to start my career at a no-paying job within my chosen industry. My logic at the time was "working for free is cheaper than tuition, and I'm going to learn a lot more."
In addition to learning about the industry, I learned a lot about getting by in life (at the industry jobs and at my many part-time jobs prior) and about the relative uselessness of a college degree.
Also of note: my old buddies from the neighborhood I grew up in either went to college or didn't, and either stayed in factory jobs or went into more lucrative and thoughtful industries -- but the dividing line between the destinations doesn't appear to jibe with the college/no college choice. Rather, it more or less lines up with how intelligent they seemed to be when they were fourteen years old.
One more thing: my father was the only one of his poor family who went on to relative prosperity. He was working as a security guard at IBM, and started teaching himself computers from the manuals that the staff left lying around. He eventually applied for and landed a job there, which started his lifetime career as a systems analyst. He also had only a few years of college under his belt.
If the kids had the time, a lot of American curriculum is focused on memorization and facts not analysis and critique. I remember seeing a comparision of European math and science school books compared to American schoolbooks on the same subject (Algebra vs Algebra. Chemistry vs Chemistry). The European schoolbooks were 1/3 to 1/4 the size of the Americans yet Europeans generally score better in math and science. The difference was that the European books emphasized theory, analysis, and techniques and not graphics and exercises.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
I also know a teacher who is constantly fighting with the school system to let the students learn, rather than follow the party line.
Background: My sister's original motivation for home schooling was to avoid some of the unfiltered acceptance of life-styles of which she disapproves. Also her expectation that the standard industrial schooling process would label her second child, a very energetic boy as having attention-deficit disorder and get "treated". I was pretty well concerned by this approach that my sister wanted to take. In the fullness of time, the positives of learning, self-confidence and genuine critical thinking will allow the children to become strong contributors to our society, probably a bit conservative but not rabidly dogmatic followers of some party line.
Wow, great post, but I'm out of mod points.
In the high school I went to 20+ years ago, a small county school, we did indeed have teachers who were way out of line in promoting religion (at least two science teachers who didn't believe in evolution), blind patriotism (two total ignoramous history teachers who knew nothing of history, but proceeded to tell us that the United States was God's own chosen land and could do no wrong). But, you know what? The majority of the students hated these teachers and scoffed at everything they said.
Now, my wife teaches as a large city school that fits more closely with the model described by the parent post and I hope that a majority of the students approach the material with the same degree of skepticism. My two kid's teachers in elementary and middle school are a mixed bag, idealogy wise, but they seems to average out and, most importantly, promote thinking. Of course, we moved across town to pick the schools our kids go to as they are among the top 5 or 10 in the state.
The trouble with extremes on either side is that, most often, the truth and real life lie somewhere in the middle.
-- stream of did I lock the front door consciousness
I suspect your private school was both better funded and had a larger percentage of middle to high income kids. I can guarantee you not. The schools mandate was to serve the underprivelaged. Most kids were (1) first or second generation immigrants, (2) children of poor catholics, (3) children of large families (for example, I have 5 siblings, my best friend had 8!).
We had no "free" or "reduced" lunch; our cafeteria was pay only or brown bag. I think the economic factor is off base. I know when I was there we were spending $8,000 per student while the public high-schools in towns were spending $12,000. (And just so you know, because I asked this when I was told, the indentured teachers - aka priests - were paid a full salary but then donated the proceeds to their order).
Oh, and if someone at my school had physically attacked our principal in the cafeteria, the administrators would have restrained the kid very quickly, and the kid would have been expelled. It wouldn't have been instantaneous like in your school, but it certainly would have happened.
Now, if that happens, it's not automatic. In my hometown there was a student who attacked a teacher in the parking lot. He was expelled, but then lawsuits were waived about, he was changed to a 10-day suspension, then a 5-day, and then finally he was just back in school. Where I was there was a low threshold for BS. The teachers didnt have to worry about the ACLU. Didnt have to worry about students rallying to not read books they thought were wrong, etc. You did as told, or you could pound sand. The kids who really made it hard for themselves were the ones who were trying to get kicked out but whose parents had worked out arrangements with the school to make sure they couldn't be kicked out. Punishments became very creative for them. In a public school they'd go to school to protest being singled out, they'd cave, Jesse Jackson may get involved, etc.
You're right. But, consider our modern "service" society. What if everyone "self-actualized" their free-thinking, intellectually-curious, self-motivated selves? Who'd work the cubicles? Who'd work the phone support? Who'd flip the burgers? Drones are what we get because, in the end, drones are what we need.
I recommend "The Technological Society" by philosopher Jacques Ellul. Basically, he argues post-industrial revolution, the whole Socratic notion of "know thyself" as the raison d'etre for the human endeavor was replaced with "make it faster, cheaper, easier, more convenient." The cult of "technique" as he calls it.
BAD IDEA!
I would have fallen into that third category of 'punks on their way to prison', had I been triaged in such a manner in high school.
Now that I'm a ways out of high school, I haven't been in trouble in a decade and am a productive member of society.
She told me and the rest of the class, "school isn't here to 'teach' you anything except 'how to learn'.
Trouble is, that was a lie. It's a nice-sounding platitude, but the school isn't there to teach you how to learn, it's there to teach you to be docile.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I went to public school, I don't think they are unfixable. I think that the "lump all the students together" and educate to the lowest common denominator is the problem.
There is a population drags down the learning of the rest of the students. Because kids are forced to go to school, and teachers are forced to not "leave any child behind" it drags down everybody. Throw the dead weight aside and let most of us learn!
Luckily my school district offered a public highschool that was specificly for more advanced students (not just math/science, but also music & literature). This made the environment in the classroom for students and teachers more conducive to learning. More importantly, the teachers could teach more advanced concepts. Rather than doing a report basically summarizing "Frankenstein", you had to interpret the underlying messages. I learned more calculus in highschool than my first year of college.
I had intelligent friends from jr. high who went to "normal" high schools and it ended up screwing up their lives. A few got in the wrong crowd and became alcoholics or total stoners, or the pace of their curriculum was so slow they'd get frustrated and quit learning. Some also went on to college, but lacked study skills so were slower to keep up with the faster pace of learning.
Once we recognize that not all students are equally intelligent and that we shouldn't hold the more advanced ones (or even the average students) back so the slow kids "feel good about themselves" the better our school system will be. We do this for sports, if you're not good enough to make the team too bad.
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Didn't work for my kids... they see my wife and me almost constantly reading (even if a lot of it is on the Internet) and they are exposed to our interests in learning. In addition to being the ubiquitous (for /.) computer nerd, I also spend a lot of time reading physics and math. My wife loves history and even gives tours at the nearby Civil War battlefield. Our kids have the typical interests of kids (video games, Pokemon, etc), but are also very interested in science and history (among other things) because they get exposed to it. My oldest son (10) wants to be a scientist/inventor and my second oldest (8) wants to be a marine biologist and/or an astronaut. Granted we are not the typical family but neither are we those high-pressure overachieving types. The real culture that affects kids at that age is at home. I know by time I was old enough to be exposed to significant peer pressure, I was perfectly comfortable with the idea of being a nerd and enjoying learning because that's the way I was raised.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
I've come to the conclusion that nearly all of human behavior can be summed up by the following two apparent facts about humanity (taken as a group):
This applies to teachers as well as children - and dealing with the "smart kids", who tend to come up with odd, novel ways of looking at and asking about things makes the teachers have to think. Really good teachers LIKE that sort of mental challenge, but I think most are just ordinary people who don't like to "work". Discouraging time-consuming, thought-provoking smartness just makes their lives easier.
(Someone once told me that one of the few college degrees you can get that does not require ANY science classes is...a Bachelor's degree in Education. That, right there, says something if it's true. Can anyone confirm or refute this claim?)
Some nerds still try to fight against that tendency, though. One of the nerdliest humor publications I know of is The Annals of Improbable Research (yes, the same people that host the IgNobel Prizes every year...). Every issue of their magazine includes a very short, concise "teaching guide", which begins with:
"Three out of five teachers agree: curiosity is a dangerous thing, especially in students. If you are one of the other two teachers[...]"
Personally, I'd love to see copies of this getting plastered all over every "educational" institution, everywhere in the world (I find it hard to believe that the US is the ONLY place in the world with this problem, fundamental human nature being what it is everywhere...).
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Every homeshooled person I've met has been quite socially skilled. Homeshooled people tend to be more attentive, more respectful, more engaging, and more engaged than institutionally "educated" children. Compared to the mal-formed social behavior I've seen in kids coming out of public or even private educational institutions, homeshooled childeren are social geniuses. This has never surprised me though, since people learn better from mentors (parents who love us) than from peers (other malformed socialially immature children.)
Think again about your assertion and go have a conversation with a few kids from both these groups. Barring variations in personality, I suspect you will be pleasantly surprised by many homeschooled kids and will see that most institutionalized kids are actually much more socially inept. That has been my overwelming, though admittedly anecdotal experience.
BTW, I've taught in public and private schools from 2nd grade through College. It has convinced me that the education system can't be fixed and that my decision to homeschool my children is probably the second most important and correct decision I've ever made.
The best science teacher I ever had (8th grade) started off the school year pointing to the (inconspicuous) Bible on his desk and saying "I don't draw my lesson plans from that book, and I will never open it in class--it's for reading in my off hours. But I can promise you that nothing that I teach you will in any way conflict with the spirit of what's in that book. If you have any concerns about that, I'd be happy to speak with you about it anytime after class."
Absolutely brilliant. And allowed him to teach evolution in the Bible-belt South with *nary a peep*.
But more directly to your point, as a Unitarian, I agree with you completely, and find it disheartening that the first time many people get to learn about religion, in a non-partisan, educational setting is in college, when it's often too late to get anyone to actually listen to anyone else. But on the other hand, having grown up in a small, very Baptist town, I can understand why it's a good idea to play it safe and just keep it out of the school entirely. Things don't go bad too often, but when they do, they get extremely ugly, and it happens very quickly.
He decided to just watch the government, and kind of scale it down to size, and run his life that way. --Laurie Anderson
This guy is just ripping off a Pink Floyd classic
Religious secularism and prayer in school are total fabrications. Under existing laws, neither teachers nor students canlead a group in prayer. However, any student can freely exercise their freedom of religion in school by finding a quiet place to pray alone. I went to school with several Muslim students who freely permitted to step out of the room in the middle of the lesson so that they may pray as commanded by their religion.
The reason that it is important that nobody lead a group of students in prayer is because it would be a reflection of what happens during the pledge of allegiance. Anyone can look around the room and see who is not participating. We all know kids are great at picking out small differences between their peers, and exploiting them to pick on the person and make them feel bad. Lead prayer in school is just another way for children to pick out the non-conformists. The biggest difference is that, from a young age, children are taught to be particularly fierce about religion. Tolerance is not one of the regular highlights of Sunday School.
Political literature in school is rather dry and taught very matter-of-factly. It usually steers clear of any heated controversy and also fails to point out that there are serious flaws with America's political system. Considering that it hasn't been revised since the original authoring, this isn't a big surprise; but public schools teach children to remember, not to think. When I was in school, during a U.S. History class, I asked my teacher why election law hasn't evolved in the last 200+ years. I continued by indicating that in a consumer based economy that people are not satisfied with only two choices, but the two choice mentality permeates our political system. He responded by reminding us that there were more than two parties. When I elaborated that the electoral system can mathematically support only a two party majority, he quickly deflected my questions by reminding us that there are countries where people don't get to vote at all. It was a true statement, but not an answer to why our system works the way it does.
That day I went home and wrote a short essay on our political parties, their differences, and their common ground. For the common ground section I explained that our electoral system will never change because both parties agree that they want it to stay a two party system. They've been playing this game for over 150 years, and they know it well. They fear having to contend with a third, or even fourth, candidate who stands a fair chance. Even though runoff, direct elections are more representative of a multicultural system like ours, both parties have no interest in sharing their power.
I went to the copy store and ran off about 1000 copies to distribute to the upperclassmen and stuck them to cars, lockers, and handed them out in the halls. Later that day I was pulled out of class by a Sheriff and the Dean of students. I was searched, and so was my locker and car. They said they had gotten a tip about me bringing a gun to school. While my locker was being emptied in to the all, I asked the Dean what he thought about my essay. He said that productive members of society need to feel safe and secure about their [perceived] power in America's political system, and that people "like me" raise dissent and cause people to lose their faith in our system. Right about this time they pull out my girlfriend's purse, which I picked up after she forgot it at the lunch table. Inside they found a bottle of Midol and some nail clippers. I received a one week suspension for each. As a result, I could not make up the work or tests that I missed. Four weeks later I graduated 8th in my class with 4 missing tests and 13 missing assignments.
Safe and secure in our rational system.
Actually, that's essentially what they call tracking. And it is controversial. Essentially because people who get tracked into the top levels tend to do very well surrounded by other kids who are intelligent, motivated, and supported. But those tracked into the middle or lower levels don't do well, and usually benefit greatly from being mixed in with the more advanced students.
He eventually applied for and landed a job there, which started his lifetime career as a systems analyst. He also had only a few years of college under his belt.
You'd have to wonder if anyone could pull this off in the same way today. Many HR departments cast off resumes right out of hand for not having degrees/certs. The web based ones like Taleo are even worse, using keyword weighting to sift though resumes, rejecting the ones that don't make the cut according to that criteria before human eyes even see it. Hiring managers have their hands tied since they can only hire from the pool of applicants that HR compiles.
Makes you wonder how anyone gets ahead in corporate America.
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
I have long believed there was a problem in the educational system in the United States. I was raised up through it, and have experienced it in 4 different states. Each state takes its approach to education differently, which made it hard for me when I moved around from school to school. There was no consistency throughout my education. At one school I would be ahead and at another I would be behind, but all the while I felt I was playing catch up. Yet that being the case, I was still able to do well when I got to High School. I entered the academically challenging IB http://www.ibo.org/ program, and did a full course load for three years and my senior year I tested and got my IB Diploma as well as the regular HS diploma. I also graduated 15th in my class of 345. I'm not tooting my horn here, put using this as a point to show education is possible, but you have to choose a path that means hard work.
The program I was in was the only one in the district of 6 or so High Schools. Other HS's has Honor's programs, but those are a joke. As are the basic requirements for passing. You show up to class and they pass you, for fear if they fail you, they will destroy your self esteem. Did they ever think about how that makes those who actually work for their grades feel? My brother was able to skip 40 days out of a 90 day semester and still graduate. Now if I were to skip out of work without letting anyone know nearly 50% of the time, I would be fired in a heartbeat. What kind of message are we sending the kids in the educational system? Do what you want, and we will let you pass because we don't want to hurt your feelings. That's bullshit, the minute they get out into the 'Real World' they get stuck with the cold hard reality that it sucks, and bosses are tough. But they have been so pampered and babied, that they blame their bosses for being demanding and uncompromising, and the bosses end up being more lax in the work force. Can you begin to see the effects this could have on society.
There are good teachers out there, I know, I had some outstanding teachers. Teachers that challenged me to think, to question. This became even more apparent when I got to college. But it needs to start earlier, and not just in the 'special or gifted' programs. Our society has been moving away from a mass-production intensive society to a services environment. That means people need to think more on their own, problem solve, not just be mindless droids on an assembly line.
I think and know the educational system needs to change, and it isn't so much about money in the schools, its about complacency. We have gotten two comfortable with how things are, loosening the requirements are far easier then failing students that don't perform.
But that's just my 12.5 cents worth on that subject.
Sig? No thanks, I don't smoke.
Math textbooks are fine, science textbooks are okay
Did you somehow miss the "New Math"? The one where kids could succeed at it, and still not be able to make change for a dollar?
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
I don't see why not. I dropped out of college partway through my junior year, and started working for a Fortune 100 financial services company at which I'd interned during school breaks. I seemed to do okay with it. At the time I was 19 or 20, and was hired as a Senior Systems Analyst. (I think--I had a few different titles while I was there due to the usual reorgs)
;P
Oh--I'm 23 now, happily employed elsewhere, and I took time off between during which I taught ballroom and latin dance fulltime. I'm probably a lucky bastard, but I'm sure I'm not the only one.
The true purpose of schooling, according to Gatto, is to produce an easily manageable workforce to serve employers in a mass-production economy. Actual education is a secondary and even counterproductive result since educated people tend to be more difficult to control.
Hate to piss on the parade, but this is exactly what they teach in Education Foundations 101, History of Education. At the University of Alberta, at any rate.
I didn't realize it was some sort of secret.
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
Actually, we have a post-industrial economy. In basic terms that means that more of our labor is comprised of skilled labors than the world average. The mindless "mass-production" jobs we outsource to China for a few dollars a day per person.
Open Source Sushi
My wife and I decided to home school after we had moved to the best school system and they damaged my child's love of learning by having her do brain dead worksheets.
There are tons of stories of homeschoolers graduating with advanced degrees before they are 18. I remember one story about a 14 year old girl that graduated with a masters and got a job teaching at a Junior College.
Correct numbers for the amount of homeschoolers is hard to come by. Us homeschoolers don't always register with Uncle Sugar. But it is at lest two percent and could be as high as ten percent. Montana has eight percent registered home schoolers and the true numbers are much higher.
Every family that we know that has pulled their children out of the school system and began homeschool has an improved home life. My two kids love it. My five year old can read Dr. Seuss and my nine year old is doing eighth grade math and she reads a Harry Potter in an afternoon.
But it all boils down to taxation. When we are taxed to the point that both parents have to work to make ends meet, parents have no choice but to enroll their children into the public school system. This is the real reason the Dems are against tax cuts and school vouchers. Both of these put the power of a childs education in the hands of the parents.
27. Education is slavery, it enchains the mind and makes it a resource for class power. When the ruling class preaches the necessity of an education it invariably means an education in necessity. Education is not the same as knowledge. Nor is it the necessary means to acquire knowledge. Education is the organisation of knowledge within the constraints of scarcity. Education 'disciplines' knowledge, segregating it into homogenous 'fields', presided over by suitably 'qualified' guardians charged with policing the representation of the field. One may acquire an education, as if it were a thing, but one becomes knowledgeable, through a process of transformation. Knowledge, as such, is only ever partially captured by education, its practice always eludes and exceeds it. I Guess McKenzie Wark knew something we didn't.......
Infinite time means everything that can happen, will. You being you is absolutely incidental. You do not exist.
is the excessive amount of general education American students have to suffer in the later stages of their schooling.
As a Brit, now living in America, I graduated from a British university at the age of 21 having spent 3 years studying almost nothing but computing (my chosen subject).
Having spent a lot of time around American students and "software engineers" just out of school. I find they spend a lot of time on English, History, Philosophy, etc..., and come out of a computer course without a basic understand of how processors work at a low level.
They should, IMHO, have learned enough general education at the high school level to get them through life. The higher levels should be about studying for your chosen career.
I went to a really good, Canadian, public high school with a lot of really good teachers and a pretty good "advanced" track for gifted students - honours Math, and honours English.
;)
And as your typical Slashdot gifted geek-type, kicked ass even at the higher levels from the advanced track.
(I also took a lot of shop electives, which really paid off in a BIG way later in life... but that's a digression)
Because school was so easy, I got to having a pretty high opinion of myself - which is a nice way of saying I was an arrogant, know it all shithead.
I applied for, and was accepted to, a Canadian Military College (le College Militaire Royale de St Jean), which was unique in Canada in accepting students in advance of their high school graduation - that's right, I joined the Army and went to MilCol at 17, when all my peers were still in Grade 12.
I did this for a couple of reasons. It got me "free" post-secondary education. It made me special. It filled a recruiting officer's quota. A couple of others I'll gloss over.
None of these are good reasons for going, and I was completely and utterly ignorant of both the reasons why these institutions exist and of the ethos of the professional military officer. I could not have possibly been more unprepared for what I was getting into.
Did I mention that CMR was a bilingual institution, and that the operating language of everything outside of classes switched from French to English and vice versa every week? Or that I didn't speak French at all?
So anyway, I dropped into this for all the wrong reasons, and I got the mother of all wake-up kicks to the head. Not only did my private life totally change around, but I was now surrounded by people every bit as smart as me - and more than a few a damn sight smarter. No more special me. All of a sudden, I gotta STUDY. I gotta WORK.
I spent a large portion of the next 4 years in and out of a good bit of disciplinary and academic trouble.
And it was the best goddamned thing that ever happened to me, and I'm thouroughly glad of it.
Suprised?
What that place did - although it took a while - was cure me of of being an asshole. It taught me humility, leadership, and established a personal ethos that I still live by today. (Verite, Devoir, Valliance)
I am a much *much* better person than I was before I went there. The pre-CMR me was a total shithead. Post CMR... less so,
And along the way, I got a decent education and learned to speak French, plus a military career, and the best friends I've ever made.
The media, and especially Hollywood, makes military institutions look like brainwashing hellholes. Nothing could be further from the truth. If I had my life to do over again, I'd go back in a heartbeat - except this time I'd skip all the subversive rebel bullshit and learn what they were trying to teach me.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
I agree with the parent. I am an 18 year old and was homeschooled my entire life. I am now in college, a year ahead of everyone else my age and (strangely) very well liked. I was pulled out of school very early for a very simple reason; I was becoming a bully. I am a big guy and I was hanging around with the wrong crowd. My father is a double major from stanford and he decided that enough was enough.
This all worked out well for me, but I have seen it not work out well. Sometimes the parents just don't know enough. Sometimes the kids arn't motivated. Sometimes the parents simply don't have the time. It is not a silver bullet.
Okay, I have to reply to this.
I am currently a master's student in second language acquisition (which encompases applied linguistics and ESL, among many other fields--but although being taught in English departments, is much closer to research psychology), and I have to call BS on the idea that a "liberal arts education" leads to any kind of critical thinking skills. I spend almost every day resisting the urge to punch all the idiot liberal arts (English) majors who can't cope with reading statistics necessary to understand this field, or can't use their own logic to design an unbiased scientific experiment (e.g. "Does treatment A increase semantic field size more or less than treatment B?"). These people have degrees in BOOK REPORTS (okay, so do I, but thanks to the internet bubble, most of my work experience is in computers, which did wonders for my critical thinking skills). Colleges today oftentimes have "math" courses that don't require you to do any actual math. Liberal arts majors can get by with very high marks by doing nothing more than throwing around terms like "priviledge" and "identity" for four years. THERE IS NO THOUGHT NECESSARY. Moreover, the only sure way to get good grades in liberal arts courses is to say whatever the professor wants to hear. THERE IS NO THINKING, CRITICAL OR OTHERWISE, INVOLVED.
If I had it all to do over again, I would have gotten a degree in CS or EE or ME or biology or something that actually requires some thought and can do some good for humanity. All my literature and film and communication courses have done is make me more interesting at parties, and I could have learned all of that on my own time, just reading things that I find interesting (like I do now with chaos and complexity theory).
The liberal arts education is a ridiculous throwback to the days when a college education meant that you could get a "good job." But if we look at that historically, we find not that the former was a result of the latter, but vice-versa. Rich people who were already set for life due to family connections HAD THE LUXURY of going to college and wasting 4 years reading literature. This made them more interesting at parties, which led to landing pretty wives to add to the family. If a middle class or poor person got into school, they, too, did well, but not because of the education. They got good jobs in going concerns because of the people they were hobnobbing with at university. They were also able to get along at these people's parties because they could blather on about Dickens, for example. There is absolutely no correlation between learning "the classics" or what have you and being intelligent or "well-educated" or able to make money for oneself and one's family. It's just a stupid lingering cultural myth.
Fewer people should go to college, and more should go to trade school. A liberal arts education is a complete waste of time. I am in school because I enjoy it and want to remain an academic. But that decision has more to do with the fact that I'm completely unqualified to do anything else than it does with personal preference. I'd rather be curing cancer or building rockets or a million cooler things, but I bought into the liberal arts hype, and I am looking at a life of relative poverty as a result. (Despite what some of the people here have claimed, teachers make crap. Compare my $30k to my entry-level test engineer friend's $50k; better yet, check back in 10 years and see my $30k and his $120k.)
If you're looking for a good example of the right way to teach religion, you should check out the UCSD MMW (Making of the Modern World) program. http://provost.ucsd.edu/roosevelt/mmw/
...Okay, so I lied, I liked it. But it was a ton of work.
;)
;)
Undergraduate general education requirement for Roosevelt college at UCSD. We study fscking EVERYTHING under the sun, and being an engineering student I absolutely hated every minute of it. I value it now though. Perhaps it was more of a guilty pleasure.
It's 28 units of anthropology, a complete history of the world crammed into two years of study. It's very aggressive, but it's also taught very well and could easily be repackaged for high school consumption. Professors come from all sorts of different departments - history, English, theology, philosophy, etc. Oh, and anthropology.
When I say everything, I mean everything. From pre-history to the modern day. IIRC the breakdown is:
MMW 1: pre-history to neolithic
MMW 2: neolithic to classical antiquity
MMW 3: classical antiquity to medieval era (or as Eddie Izzard calls it, the "stupid fucker" period)
MMW 4: medieval era to ~1600
MMW 5: 1600 to 1800
MMW 6: 1800 to modernity
A favorite theory of mine posited by my MMW 1 professor is that agriculture came out of the discovery of grain fermenting on river banks, in other words, proto beer
Another interesting theory is that the "virgin" birth was a mistranslation into Greek - the Greeks didn't have a word for "young girl," the closest thing was "virgin," and that's what got used.
One element of our study of the bible was that of who wrote it - the author of the book "Who Wrote The Bible" is a professor here at UCSD. Very interesting. Turns out there were four authors or so over a period of time, and that the whole thing is very political. Go figure.
The idea here is that this is all crap I absolutely never would have known without taking MMW.
Every major religion throughout time is studied, including the oddball ones - we don't stop at Christianity, Judaism, Islam and Buddhism. We read parts of the Bible, the Quran, the Bhagavad Gita, all sorts of stuff. We're taught the beliefs and values, and investigate how these have effected history and decision making, why people might be fundamentally at odds, that sort of thing. But there's never any suggestion that something is right or wrong - that much is left to the student, and essays are graded on the strength rather than the slant of one's argument. Professors aren't looking to make students think a certain way, but instead simply to make students think. Far more valuable if you ask me, and what the author of the book in the OP is fighting for.
What makes it even more interesting is that it isn't particularly Euro-centric, and actually, one of the main themes of MMW 4 is the question "why Europe?" After all, China had gunpowder first. We read all sorts of crazy stuff too - Xenophon, Confucius, the salt and iron debate, the code of Bushido, the tale of Maruf the cobbler, Ibn Batuta, Newton, Treitschke, Ike, Hitler, Bob Dylan, and on and on and on. Contemporary accounts of every event we study, as well as op-ed type stuff. Very interesting.
Just don't ask me to remember any of it
I've suggested that the lectures be made available on DVD to alumni of the program...I really hope something comes out of that.
Speaking as a hippy parent, I'll have you know my activist second grader watched both conventions, knows all of the candiates for the national election and some of the local and state candidates, and keeps asking when we can go to another peace march. Blame the media all you want, but hippy kids are the MOST plugged in, contrary to your poor, suffering, generalization.
Spot on. I went to a private school myself for my last two years of high school, and I was amazed at the difference.
It wasn't that the children in the private schools were brighter. Instead it was the fact that private school teachers could spend their time teaching instead of babysitting. Private school teachers can send home piles of homework and simply expect it to get done, and private school teachers can depend on the child's parents for most of the discipline. Even the dimmest of my classmates at the private school cared what kind of grades they got.
Some do, some don't, assuming by "awfully religious" you mean "irrational and emotional", and not actually "religious".
Agnostics are actually a subset of atheists. Atheists are those without theism. Agnostics (according to the original definition, at least) aren't theists either, but they further believe that they can't make a default assumption one way or the other. Most people who choose to call themselves atheists consider the existence of god(s) to be less likely than most who choose to call themselves agnostics, but it's not necessarily the case. And I think it's more accurate to say that people are born atheist, and not specifically agnostic: if you haven't even heard of the idea of a deity, you can be an atheist (without theism), but you can't be an agnostic (someone who has heard of both positions and can't choose between them).
Actually, this statement would indicate that you are an agnostic, not an atheist.
Not true.
An atheist, on the other hand, would hang onto his disbelief in God regardless of any proof.
Again, false.
You might use the word that way, but that isn't what it means.
I don't "doubt" the existence of god which would be agnosticism.
I don't believe there is any such thing. I don't think it's even possible for there to be such an entity. Omniscient, Omnipotent, and Good is a fallacy Just look around.
Now if God himself came down and started doing god type stuff, well, I certainly don't deny evidence. That doesn't mean I am agnostic, that's just basic rationality.
For a person to present solid proof is totally impossible by the very nature of the beast which is one of the reasons it seems so incredibly silly to me.
"Some students are going to misbehave, cause trouble, underperform, or fail, and we should let them. Not everyone gets to be an astronaut when they grow up, and you don't get increasing results by applying declining standards."
This is a great statement. I have a slightly different perspective on it though. While my line of thinking, which is really just a sort of wishful thought, only seems to lead to declining standards, I think that the conventional measures for determining 'success' or 'failure' in education are pretty flawed to begin with.
I went through 12 years of public education dealing with a constant expectation from parents and faculty that I should be getting straight A's instead of more or less a straight line of C's and D's. This expectation came from my general demeanor, and several years of intelligence testing and counselling. None of it would change the fact that I had no work ethic when it came to school assignments. I simply wouldn't, nearly couldn't, perform their repetitive chore version of learning.
I was naturally curious, asked a ton of questions, generally would pay attention in class and I learned a lot that way, I was lucky that many teachers just gave me a benefit of the doubt in terms of their actual opinion of my intelligence, but that was often a source of frustration for both them and me as it almost never helped my letter grade. In this sense, I was in some small way benefited by a sort of declining standard. It wasn't full on decline because I still received low marks, but at least very few faculty actually seemed to look down on me, in the way that my parents describe how their teachers treated kids with low marks. As I got older, teachers generally gave me less and less of the benefit of the doubt and I progressively withdrew from caring about my education.
It wasn't until my senior year in High School that I realized that my way had been nearly the best for me overall and I regained most of the confidence in my own intelligence that I had slowly lost through years of mediocre marks. Naturally what I had been doing with all that time I should've been doing homework was spent working on computers.
What happened my senior year that was particularly lucky was a great irony, because my school was so fiscally poor, I was able to convince a couple key faculty that we should build a computer lab using a few underdeployed computers they had received on random donation, and that I knew how to do most of the work. For some reason, even with my poor reputation as a student, I was able to impress them with the proposal. With the sponsorship of one particularly progressive teacher I was able to waive nearly half of my classes since I'd already satisfied most of the curricular graduation requirements. We started out fairly small, but donations of mostly broken old computers started pouring in and we basically floored big chunks of the school district with how much we were able to do with so little by basically leveraging my skills for free. To them the scale of our technology project was unfathomable in such a cash deprived district.
What really brought my confidence back though was when old teachers in whose classes I earned D's and F's inevitably swung by to check out what the big deal was and they saw what it was I was actually good at. The reactions were varied, a couple were actually hostilely dismisive to some extent, seemingly jealous that something could actually be created in such a forsaken environment, but particularly satisfying to me were a few teachers that actually apologized to me, a few years after I even had them as a teacher. They were just apologizing for their impression of my overall ability and were worried that I may have felt that they just wrote me off. At that point I was basically working with quite a bit of the faculty as more of a peer then a student as we expanded the network and tried to introduce extra PCs into various classes and train them on the software.
Although the most hilarious aspect o
I separate the desires of the individuals from the desires of the organization, and I believe that organizations DO have desires. Just as a plant desires more sun, but doesn't have a brain.
The goal of most large systems is the system itself. I think that explains most of the effects mentioned: punishing lateral thinking (Work With The System), majority of money spent on administration (The System Needs To Grow), frequently bizarre mandates (The System Must Be Felt), and being unwilling to respect outside authority --- many schools have rulings/rules that are absolute hell to get overturned by a court (The System Is All).
My personal feeling is that the problem of public school is its central-government nature. Could be because I'm a libertarian, though. So I'm biased. Friedman's Free To Chose has a good section on public school education, if you're interested in something similar to my viewpoint.
In my high school (Great Falls MT, class of 1972) the school heroes were the nerds and geeks. EVERYONE knew who they were and wanted to be like them (and it had been that way since grade school). GFHS had a big sports program and were state champs in football, wrestling, and several other sports, but sports heroes still took a back seat to the geeks. (And sometimes they WERE the geeks.)
I don't think it's coincidence that in my class (some 572 of 1500 total students) there were only two dropouts. Nor coincidence that the Montana school system did everything the "old fashioned way" (you WILL learn this material, like it or not) and on a shoestring budget, yet was rated #1 in the country.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
--Robert Heinlein
Actually becoming a well rounded individual will help you in any field that you decide to make your career. Is merely learning the information necessary for a particular trade all that a child should learn? Should we decide a child is going to be a network admin if the seem to be interested in computers and teach them simple binary math (2^n-2 and 2^(n-2) for subnetting) or hell, since no one really figures that stuff out on their own anymore, just teach them how to use a subnet calculator? Why waste all that time teaching them things that they don't need to know?
I've been a computer nerd my entire life. During school I found out that I have a knack for writing poetry. Who knew? My life was enriched by this experience, and I never would have known had I not been exposed to it. I also sing, play the piano, play golf, write code, cook, study math and physics in my free time, and game. I've also spent the last year building a rather extensive VoIP Network.
Actually learning new things helps us grow as individuals and helps us to find meaningful things to do while we're still around. What happens if you get bored with being a Network Admin after 5,10,15 years? If that is all you ever studied, it might be a little difficult to start completely from scratch with only your networking knowledge to build on. Being grounded in a wide array of subjects, even if only superficially, gives you a foundation to build upon. The brain tends to store information by connecting it with other information. The more connections, the easier it is to retain and process information quickly. Don't knock a good general education.
All of this said, I am not arguing that public schools do a good job of teaching this (I didn't find that my university did a particularly good job of teaching it either). Most K-12 programs teach to the lowest common denominator, so it is dreadfully dull to those who augment their schooling with self-education. But still it is good for exposing the young to things they wouldn't normally think of exploring on their own and giving them a base that they can continue to build on later in life.
There's no place I can be, since I found Serenity.
In most places this is illegal, thanks to the power of featherbedding labor unions. They are responsible for the minimum-wage laws, and hence for high unemployment among young and poorly educated people. They DEFINITELY don't like competing against volunteers or unpaid apprentices.
The Democrats are so in hock to the unions for manpower and money, they ignore the fact that unions regularly shit all over the most marginalized workers in our society, and destroy the impulse for volunteer civic betterment.
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.
No you're not the only one.
I dropped out of college the first semester of my second year, wasn't for me.
Kicked around the country, learned "how to work"
Rekindled my interes in electronic and computers and successfuly landed a job 10 years later making 70k plus that i've held for 5 years.
I'm 37 years old and believe this happens all the time.
Who run Barter Town?
Consider the Crusades, the slaughter of the Cathars, the wars that were sparked by the Reformation, Cromwell, the witch hunts, Northern Ireland, and the list goes on and on
Cromwell was responsible for allowing Jews into Britain (they'd been banned since the middle ages) and for the instituting official toleration of christian sects, allowing freedom of conscience to all. I dont think he really had anything against Catholics particularly as long as they knew their place, i.e. not holding any sort of power, not trying to force their beliefs on anyone else (aka preach), or take up arms against parliment or him, its just when they did he was uncompromising about it and lots of people tended to die.
Also Northern Ireland is a political dispute rather then religious, for a number of reasons the two sides tend to break out along religous lines, but there are protestant republicans and catholic loyalists, its just uncommon.
I cant argue with the crusades etc though.
Its worth noting that although here in England we have an official state religion (the Church Of England logically enough) I was taught about Islam, Judeaism, Sikhism etc in school. The emphasis was on the similarities in principal and differences in custom rather then any "ours is better then yours" dogma.
Where you stand depends on where you sit...
American history is deliberately taught in a way that discourages critical thought, heroizes the government, and suppresses historical dissent
The antidote to this is Howard Zinn's "People's History of the United States". Zinn's PHOTUS should be required reading in all American junior high schools. In contrast, I think a teacher would probably be fired (or strung up) for attempting to use it. America's dumbass parents don't want to hear about how American strikers were machine-gunned in the 1930s. Better for them to continue thinking happy thoughts about their beloved Land of the Free. {snort}
[You have a stable society when some nut guns down a schoolyard and the law doesn't change.]
In my humble opinion this is an important book. Please read it. Mr Gatto states that the purpose of American education (and perhaps much of the education that happens on this old planet) is designed to "dampen" the intellect, spirit and humanity of people. It is in fact, an assembly line approach to humanity. Mr Gatto writes about the "empty child" and the stuff that s/he is filled up with. (I know I ended this sentence with a preposition...sorry.) This stuff is supposed to snuff out the dreams and replace them with "reality". He notes that the educational system (not the teachers, not the schools...but the SYSTEM) is set up to destroy not enhance intellect (I mean thinking and problem solving skills). The statistics he cites on the decline of literacy are frightening. Literacy has dropped so much in less than a hundred years. Education has replaced learning. Learning is a natural part of life. Learning is how we survive. But I disagree with him on one point. I believe that this has been done deliberately. I ask again, please read this book...the text is online. We're all individuals here. (quoting Life of Brian) Thanks for your attention. LadyMary