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Phoenix
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The problems with education - public and college level - are deeper than you know. The public school system today is teaching 8th graders (and sometimes below that) how to masturbate, how to use condoms, what homosexuality is and how to practice it, what heterosexuality is and how to practice it, down the line. Kids that are too young to really grasp all this are being taught them. What happened to the process of self-discovery? What happened to the parents having at least some control over what their students do or do not learn? To some parents such things as are being taught are against their religious beliefs. Do they have recourse in the public education system? Nevermind that children are being taught about things that should be learned at least at a later age, and certainly through a more controlled mechanism, given the fact that so many diseases abound, and that children - the result of much of this - bear a heavy burden of responsibility. Although you can delete them before they're born if you find them to be inconvenient, after all, so why worry about them either?
Now, regarding actual education, California recently discovered that the bulk of its students failed the state exit exams. Their solution? Rethink the tests to lower the standards. Consider this: The easier your education is, the less you learn. If you're not pushed, if you're not challenged, if you're not inspired by teachers who KNOW what they are talking about, if you are not encouraged to do better than you are doing now, will you excell? When you have students who think it's "cool" to get an F, and anyone who makes A's in their class is a "teacher's pet" something is wrong. Part of this is that the attitudes of the students are that learning is stupid, school sucks, and it's more cool to "score" and "get high" than learn. A few people I know who went through this hell of public education, and described it to me, opened my eyes as to why the USA has so many idiots, couch potatoes, and why the things that are popular that are downright pathetic ARE so popular. Nobody LEARNS anything anymore, and nobody CARES. Math? Science? Art? History? Language? Everything that makes a culture what it is is shunted aside. When I heard about "Social Promotion" and what it is I could not believe people had, once again, sank so low. That these idiots are so worried about "Hurting the feelings and emotional well-being of the child that they really should keep them together with their friends, even if they don't do so well" is lunacy! What about teaching them what they need to know to SURVIVE in this hostile abomination that you call a society? So you hurt his or her feelings a little, big deal! You just taught that there is a price for failure, and not doing your best, and to TRY HARDER. It gives them a backbone, toughens them up. You know the price for failure in the natural world? YOU DIE. You either get eaten, fall off a cliff, break a bone and get eaten later, die of infection or exposure, drown, burn up in a forest fire, etc. We animals have enough sense to survive on our own in spite of this. There are no government safety nets, no police, fire, or hospitals. You either learn to survive, or you don't. Do, or do not. There is no try, as Yoda would say. If you want to protect the emotions of students then send the bullies off to military school, where they can get their asses chewed by a drill instructor on a daily basis. They used to do that, and from what I understand, it worked fairly well.
There's another little sinister side to this, one that people might call part of the "right wing conspiracy" as I've heard it referred to, but I've seen this before in past empires and regimes where this sort of thing has played out. Knowledge is power, but what is more so, a thinking person is a dangerous person. Those in power, the elites, the aristocracy, don't want the common man to be a thinking man. They want the common man to be a slave, a peon, a peasant, with no more sense than the shovel he's digging a trench with, or the spade he's using to spread mortar for bricks. Otherwise, this kind of man might question authority, might question the right of the aristocracy to rule and govern them, might decide to have a voice and speak out regarding how he wants to lead his life. The thinking man can think for himself, can learn, adapt, and improve. The thinking man can do anything he sets his mind to. The thinking man can learn to govern his own life and not have to depend on anyone else. The thinking man is self-sufficient. This is why those in power desire a stupid society. Stupidity is easy to predict, easy to govern, and easy to deceive. If nobody learns anything then the need for the aristocracy is secured, and all the aristocracy has to do is put up a pretty face with a powerful voice and deceive the people into doing what it wants them to do. Remember Hitler? Remember Nazi Germany? It wasn't just the Nazi party, it was ALL of Germany who bought into Hitler and his treachery. Sure, individuals here and their might have disbelieved it, but dare they speak out, lest they be taken to the camps as well? Remember the Middle Ages? Remember how the Catholic Church only taught the priests to read, and the Lords had their children taught, while the peasants lived in squallor and didn't know anything different? It wasn't until the Renaissance that reading and writing became part of the common man's life as the middle class expanded in Europe. Look at the explosion of technology after the industrial revolution. Now everything's becoming more and more automated, with less and less chance for intelligence to blossom, for learning to expand and flourish. The love of power has brought this about, and the willingness of people to just let their rights erode away and instead settle for mediocrity and the instant gratification of modern conveniences. People will chew out a person who works their ass off for $5.00 an our because a $0.99 hamburger is cold, yet when a $200,000 a year politican screws them out of hundreds a year in bloated government spending on programs that do no good but justify bureaucratic jobs they won't lift a finger to stop it, and as soon as someone does the politician cries out that someone's taking away their "benefits" or "depriving their children" and all hell breaks loose against the person trying to put some sanity back into society. That's the world people live in, and are most often too blind to see, or too apathetic, since the Game is on at 7:00, or Friends has a new episode tonight. Sad from this perch, to say the least. Very sad.
You want another example? Look at the music and entertainment industry. When you compare REAL music - I mean Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Wagner - to the recycled crap that's pop culture today, the no-talent vulgarity, the repetitive, canned loops that any novice could whip up with a copy of Acid DJ, it's horrid to think that this is what makes money. People are starting to rebel against that, in the form of MP3 trading, since they're seeing a vacuum of value. If you get what you pay for, you should only pay for what you get. Like Bruce Dickinson said, if you pay $20 for a CD and only 1 or 2 songs are good, don't you feel cheated? Same goes for education. The problem with education is that public schooling is mandatory unless you already have wealth. Then college is unaffordable to most, so they have to find unskilled jobs and struggle to survive. Those who manage to make it in on scholarships, and because they worked their tails off to get a higher education and a chance for a good paying job, find a completely different world. The "college=party" mentality, the drugs, the debauchery.. from those students who's parents were rich enough to pay their kids' way in, many of whom don't know what hard work or responsibility means makes for a very bad influence, distraction, or at least a temptation. You have towns wrecked because someone lost a FOOTBALL GAME. Is this the sign of a civilized society? I would expect that sort of thing from the Taliban. Instead of higher learning, you have a lot of people more interested in drinking than anything else. Those who do concentrate on learning, and are intelligent, find either a complete disinterest on the part of many teachers, or that they could probably learn it a lot better on their own. Then add to that the brainwashing. You have people come out of colleges convinced of things that are entirely untrue, or caught up in some "cause", dreaming of a utopia that cannot exist. Again, you have a problem with elitism and aristocracy. People who run colleges see themselves as being very important. They live in ivory towers, cut off from the real world, and hold their little tea clubs and lecture each other about lofty, impractical ideals. You have actual classes in colleges now to teach women how to SUE people for a living, how to use certain things as weapons to get a discrimination lawsuit out of it, that all men are useless thoughtless sex-crazed pigs, that all sex is rape, etc, etc, ad nauseum It's called "Womens' Studies". I heard a nice report on just what went on in one of these classes, at least this particular one. All traditional values are targetted in this manner, and those promoting things for the sake of "tolerence" are the most intolerant bastards around if you do something THEY don't like. Yet, this is taught as what is the norm. I know of people who come out of colleges with an MBA who know less about running a business than the company janitor. Some of those people working menial jobs are damned smart, yet try to get a job without that degree behind your name. THAT is why there will always be a demand for college educations. That is why excellence will never be required of schools. When things are mandatory and there is no oversight, or those overseeing are incompetent, then mediocrity will be the norm, and the acceptable rule. As long as businesses put more stock in accreditation than intellect and wisdom, on a slip of paper that says someone knows something, rather than the knowledge itself, the downward spiral will continue.
Now say you don't like your child being in the public school system. These are your options:
1) Pay for private schooling
2) Homeschool the child
3) Remove the child from the school system entirely.
Options 1 and 2 are cost prohibitive. Option 2 is also time prohibitive. Option 3 lands you in prison, and your child is taken by the Children's Protective Agency and put in a foster home for "neglect." This is why school vouchers were promoted, to give poorer families the option of removing their children from failing public schools. Many poorer, minority families were pushing for this, but again, the Teachers Union, the ACLU, and the Civil Rights groups opposed it, and made it out to be something the "evil Republicans" were using to take away money from the schools. Who's money is it anyway? Who's children are being taught? Should the parents not have a say? I thought rights were all about freedom. Well, do your homework. The Teachers' Union will push for higher pay for teachers, but not for better funding of facilities nor educational excellence. Putting demands on the students to do better is not something that the schools do. I don't think that schools should give their students 8 hours of homework every night, but the classroom is for learning, and if one is to learn, it requires something worthwhile to teach, and people committed to excellence to teach it. Con, you say teachers should be paid more. What about their performance? Is that measured? Are they accountable for what they teach? How many bad teachers are there, who don't know half of what they are talking about? Are the administrators above them accountable for keeping the teachers up to spec? If one is to teach, one should love teaching, and should know what they are teaching inside and outside. If I were to seek someone to teach me something, I would expect them to be a master of what they are professing to know. That means knowing it outside of any books. It means knowing it yourself. Books are fine for a guide, but anyone can learn from a book. I've learned much from books, but I've had to learn it on my own. Nobody taught me how to use a computer. Nobody taught me "C". Nobody taught me how to make models. There comes a point in one's learning process where they no longer need teachers, where their thirst for knowledge, and ability to learn overtakes their need for guidence. Not everyone achieves this at the same point, but I believe it is achievable to everyone. It is only possible if you are motivated, and have such knowledge at hand to learn. Nothing should restrict a person from learning anything they desire, except the desire in their heart, or lack thereof (The exception being how to build a nuclear bomb from household chemicals, let's be reasonable now). Sadly, in your world, this has never been the case.
Anyone is capable of learning anything, but the drive must be there, and with it, the availability of knowledge. This society puts a high price tag on knowledge, and gives very little in return. It also places wisdom on a much lower position compared to celebrity, fame, and popularity. Being good is less important than being noticed, and being wise less important than being pretty. Every empire and civilization suffered such declines before collapsing, or being overtaken by someone stronger and more committed to their destruction than the civilization was to its own survival; be they right or wrong for doing so, the end result was the same. Decadence ends in decay. It would be wise to learn this, as it has happened before, many times. Yet history is boring, after all, and nobody likes know-it-alls.
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