[Royce]

[quoteInteresting quote...i guess that goes into the right direction and what i meant by "thinking for themselves"/"critical thinking" ... the only thing i do not like is the biased/ladden-with-meaning expression "truths" (to be honest, i am surprised that you, Royce, did not object to it...you're the anti-truth preacher here ).][/quote]

Lol Well, how do you teach someone to "think for themselves"?. According to Gatt(who himself was a teacher for 20 years) that is not what our current system intends to do. Basically you learn to fear authority(listen to the teacher), to be jealous of other kids(grading), and you will be streamlined to never really grow up. It is boring because it is supposed to be boring. Most Teachers(almost everyone I have had) is bored aswell, since they to have been through the same 12 year bore of schooling.

Do we really need School? I do not mean education, just forced schooling:six classes a day, five days a week, nine months a year, for twelve years. If so, for what?  To me it seems like there is a hidden agenda taking Place. Although it is not really hidden. Schooling is supposed to produce docile beings who Accepts the status quo.

Alexander Inglis wrote in his book "Prinsciples of secondary education": Compulsory schooling is a Fifth column into the burgeoning democratic movement that threatened to give the peasants and the proletarians a voice at the bargaining table. Modern, industrialized, compulsory schooling was to make a sort of surgical intervention into the prospective unity of these underclasses. Divide children by subject , by age-grading, by constant rankings on tests, and by many other subtle means."

Theorists from Plato to Roussau knew that if children were cloistered with other children, stripped of responsebility and Independence, encouraged to develop only the trivialized emotions of greed, envy, jealosy and fear, they would grow older but never truly grow up.

Royce, do you mean impulse-control when you say "training your mind"?

I mean that it is possible to gain insights that show you that life is yours to create,literally. Like art really. No need to be afraid, to be jealous etc. Institutions force this on ourselves and Our children. Have you read William Reich? Brilliant thinker/psychiatrist/scientist who had to be silenced because of his Message wich can be put in a single statement: You are the authority.Not those fuckers who tell you how to think.

This post is also inspired by John Tayler Gatts "Weapons of mass instructions".

[Wilshire]

Too many pages of text to wade through, so I didn't read everything proceeding, sorry if I cover already trampled ground.

The education isn't so much as broken as it is doing what it was originally intended to do. Which, to my understanding, was to create large groups of people who where basically carbon-copies, purportedly so that large armies could be  more easily made/trained.

I think transferring knowledge form one generation to the next is extremely important, if not the most important thing (I don't have children yet, so maybe I'm way off here). For me personally, who is pretty low on the competitive scale, I doubt I would have achieved anything at all without formal school. I'm habitually unmotivated and without being forced to do something, especially as a youth, I would choose to do nothing.

Then again, some of those very close to me where home-schooled until high school (8 years, more or less). They claimed to be highly motivated to study/learn with less prodding from their parents. It wasn't until they began public school where that vigor slowly drained. I've heard that, statistically, home schooled children tend towards higher IQ's and better test scores (but then again, tests are kind of the problem here right? ).

Anyway, I think the current education system is pretty much garbage, but I don't believe in a child's thirst to learn either. There needs to be some kind of balance. Ideally, the most brilliant, motivated, and inspirational people would be our children's teachers, but unfortunately this is not the case. The most brilliant people are successful business owners, renowned engineers or researchers, lawyers, and doctors. I chalk this up to "thats where the money is at".

I think school as its been described in the board needs to exist until a suitable replacement if found. I doubt that will ever happen though, since I'm a pessimist, and Royce's arguments involving the powers that be and the veiled 'reasons' for the way the current is convinces me that change would be extremely difficult.

In my experience, difficult change that relies on the backs of the public to carry the burden tend to fall flat. It doesn't appear that "enough" people care about any one thing to create a true movement away from established/entrenched principles/rules/hierarchies.

[Wilshire]

I want to hear ideas of what you guys think can replace the ideas of profit, and even money as a concept at all?. Are we capable of breaking this extremely unhealthy circle, or do we even want to?

That is a brilliant question, and I wish I could come up with an answer. I think people are inherently selfish, to a point. Evolution favors those that survive. Since humans are not anti-social beings and exist in communities, human evolution obviously so some benefit to collaboration. I'll not say that people are completely selfish, just that a large component of how we came to exist. After all, there is no single "human" society that I've ever seen. People posses a great aptitude to kill each other.

I don't think "profit" can ever be done awau with. We're hardwired to 'win'. Winning can be accomplished in many ways, and I think money helped us move away from physical violence. Money was once physical (gold), then moved towards representative (notes representing gold), now its almost entirely intellectual (Money exchanged with no inherent value, but rather an "agreed" upon value).

Maybe it will keep moving towards abstraction, then done away with entirely, with people exchanging thoughts/ideas/intellectual-property for goods/services... But that's a pipe dream. As a thought experiment though, I imagine such a society would become hyper-intelligent in a much (much) shorter timeframe than our own. People clamoring for knowledge, ideas, creative solutions in the way that people today fight for money.

But its really no different than what we do today. In the end, its all about winning. I don't know of any  goal or idea that is some how objectively good and worth bending the backs of a civilization towards. Money seems as good as any other marker.

[Royce]

Here is Rockefellers General Education Boards view on the mission of education. Its statement occurs in multiple forms, this one taken from a 1906 document called Occasional Letter Number one:

"In our dreams.........people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present educational conventions(of intellectual and moral education) fade from our minds, and unhampered by tradition we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or science. We have not to raise up from among them authors, educators, poets, or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians, nor lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen- of whom we have an ample supply. The task we set before ourselves is very simple.....we will organize children.....and teach them to do in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way".

In other words, they did not want brains or talent, just obedience. Who is the "we" here?  This mission statement of the General Education Board should be read more than once, until the illusions about school so carefully implanted in your mind are broken.

[Madness]

If the system is insane, are we also insane?.

Morris Berman was interviewing a person high up in the educational system, and the impression he was left with was that all education was about was to please the big corporations in one way or another.

I think this is echoed as the thread proceeds but it's only "insane" from one perspective because we lack the understanding which would render our view of the system purposeful.

This is what I've been querying Kellais about, I think. He suggested "critical thinking skills" are the object of our curriculum. You've suggested that a school's primarily function is to socialize people...

Perhaps that is what we should be focused on teaching but that is a pretty stark curriculum (and we'd be raising little Dunyain if we solely trained them in understanding emotional content).

Well i was suggesting that this is something we should teach them. But you can not teach it without context. So i think we still need the normal topics like history, math, foreign languages etc. but we have to interweave them and make connections. Transfer skills! And we do need to show the kids and teenagers, that every information can be "twisted" and used to manipulate. And that they should always try to make up their own mind about stuff given the information they have. Not just accept everything they read or hear as "true words". That is what i mean.

Do you take this to theoretical extremes? Or do you think we'd find more than enough material with which to teach?

As I read through the thread, I find an interesting spectrum appearing between chaos and order. We cannot simply let a child's interests dictate what they learn. However, many of us have seen or experienced first-hand the result of too much structure. What is the balance?

Generally we do not(in the west) train our minds.

Really?! I find that to be waaay exaggerated. We do not train our minds in all possible ways, but to be honest, who on this earth does?! But to say we do not train it at all...that's just not true. We do have an educational system in the west that is more profound than in many other parts of the earth. I agree that there are a lot of "construction sites" in the field of edu, but we also have a field of edu....not everyone has that. I guess that is something, right?!

I often wonder about educational theory.

Maybe you should clarify what you mean by "training your mind"?

Agreed.

In Norway and probably many other countries, there are private schools which are called "Steinerskolen". These are schools based on the ideas of Rudolph Steiner, who is one of the big ones in the field of theosophy. I am not well read in that area, but anyways these schools seem to focus more on the creative aspect of our existence. I know one guy who went there and he is a self centered, egomaniac, cannabis wreck, and generally a dickhead:) So I am not sure that works any better than ordinary schooling:)

Funny you should mention the Steiner Schule. I was to post something on that as well. Because they do what you asked for in another post. They do not grade during their school time. And as you, i have met some folks who went through such a school and i have to agree with you...this is definitely not better edu than our normal schools. The Steiner Schule people i know are of two kinds: 1) the same as you said above and 2) people totally incapable of "working" in our society...they cave under the slightest pressure in their jobs, they have no way of copeing with the stress and pressure of the adult day-to-day. It's sad, really.

There is also Waldorf and Montessori who, with Steiner, seem to complete the trifecta of "new pedagogy." In my opinion, all have effective qualities and all have really misinformed qualities.

and if you offer me a new school where i can have big impact on the curriculum and how it's done i surely would change some things...but i guess more in the "administrative" corner...as in "give the pupils more time to work on stuff" ... so upping the hour-dotations math gets. And if i had enough time and freedom, i could also focus more on "how do i approach this-and-that" instead of just teaching formulas. But all in all, i don't think it would look totally unrecognizable for someone who visits a math lesson today.

One thing i would change if we had enough money, space and time for our new school, is class size. I'd do little groups of students with maybe even 2 teachers...more of a personal-coaching thing, than the normal usus. Where you can really dive into the individual problems of every student than just looking to it that the class-average is good enough.

This is the meat of a thread like this. These are the things I want to strategize .

Maybe you should clarify what you mean by "training your mind"?

Lots of ways to interpret this concept, but it goes back to if you agree or disagree with what I stated earlier. I suggested that this system behaves in accordance with how people act, which again is governed by thinking. So, if we act on our thoughts without knowing what thoughts are, we might create something like a beast. I merely suggest that techniques that provide an understanding of what thoughts really are, we would (as a whole) behave very differently. Certain types of deep meditation techniques might provide this.

This is one of those things that are difficult to explain, they have to be experienced to know the impact these techniques have on your understanding of thoughts/mind. Learning to control your thoughts instead of acting out on them all the time. It would be interesting to see how this can be merged with the technologically advanced society we have today. I am all for taking useful aspects of every culture around and create something new and better:).

This is only a valid argument if you agree that the hyper capitalist/globalist culture is something that needs to be slowed down a bit.

You know, I reread the question, I read your response, Royce, and I realize that maybe it's collapsible, maybe the question and the greater thread echo each other. Isn't all education supposed to be "training your mind?" Doesn't the revelation of learning always change our perceptions, and perhaps, our behaviors?

“The primary goal of real education is not to deliver facts but to guide students to the truths that will allow them to take responsibility for their lives.” ― John Taylor Gatto.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeEWPbTad_Q

I found this one in the sidebar: Noam Chomsky: Education For Whom and For What?. So good, though I haven't had a chance to finish, and it doesn't seem to do much more than better articulate and echo some of our thoughts here.

“The primary goal of real education is not to deliver facts but to guide students to the truths that will allow them to take responsibility for their lives.” ― John Taylor Gatto.

Interesting quote...i guess that goes into the right direction and what i meant by "thinking for themselves"/"critical thinking" ... the only thing i do not like is the biased/ladden-with-meaning expression "truths" (to be honest, i am surprised that you, Royce, did not object to it...you're the anti-truth preacher here ).

Royce, do you mean impulse-control when you say "training your mind"? ... because it kind of sounds like that in your second last post. Not just acting on thoughts and trying to controll ones actions before doing them. I am not sure i'd define that as "training my mind" though. It's more like learning to controll my actions and not just act on impulses. And i guess we are not that bad at it, we modern humans. Not perfect, sure, and not everyone masters it at the same level...but i guess we do have some controll or our world would look a lot different

This seems like it is already an aspect of our educational system - socialization is impulse control, just cast in this specific incarnate mold.

Do we really need School? I do not mean education, just forced schooling:six classes a day, five days a week, nine months a year, for twelve years. If so, for what?  To me it seems like there is a hidden agenda taking Place. Although it is not really hidden. Schooling is supposed to produce docile beings who Accepts the status quo.

Perhaps - but again, the spectrum I highlighted above seems to exist. Where do we strike the balance of structure?

...

This post is also inspired by John Tayler Gatts "Weapons of mass instructions".

Much more reading is necessary.

I think transferring knowledge form one generation to the next is extremely important, if not the most important thing (I don't have children yet, so maybe I'm way off here).

But in transferring that knowledge, educators affect just what it is that is transferred and we're back to the "what?"

There needs to be some kind of balance. Ideally, the most brilliant, motivated, and inspirational people would be our children's teachers, but unfortunately this is not the case. The most brilliant people are successful business owners, renowned engineers or researchers, lawyers, and doctors. I chalk this up to "thats where the money is at".

I like balance. I dislike teaching being dictated by "where the money is."

I want to hear ideas of what you guys think can replace the ideas of profit, and even money as a concept at all?. Are we capable of breaking this extremely unhealthy circle, or do we even want to?

...

Maybe it will keep moving towards abstraction, then done away with entirely, with people exchanging thoughts/ideas/intellectual-property for goods/services... But that's a pipe dream. As a thought experiment though, I imagine such a society would become hyper-intelligent in a much (much) shorter timeframe than our own. People clamoring for knowledge, ideas, creative solutions in the way that people today fight for money.

But its really no different than what we do today. In the end, its all about winning. I don't know of any  goal or idea that is some how objectively good and worth bending the backs of a civilization towards. Money seems as good as any other marker.

These are interesting thoughts. Who posed the original question, by the way?

Here is Rockefellers General Education Boards view on the mission of education. Its statement occurs in multiple forms, this one taken from a 1906 document called Occasional Letter Number one:

"In our dreams.........people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present educational conventions(of intellectual and moral education) fade from our minds, and unhampered by tradition we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or science. We have not to raise up from among them authors, educators, poets, or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians, nor lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen- of whom we have an ample supply. The task we set before ourselves is very simple.....we will organize children.....and teach them to do in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way".

In other words, they did not want brains or talent, just obedience. Who is the "we" here?  This mission statement of the General Education Board should be read more than once, until the illusions about school so carefully implanted in your mind are broken.

Watch my linked Chomsky video!

[Madness]

The Brainy Bunch - The Harding Family's Method to College Ready by Age Twelve

[sciborg2]

I promise to go through this thread but for now:

Capitalism vs. education: Why our free-market obsession is wrecking the future

Writing in Salon last month, Matt Bruenig illustrated the inadequacy of education as a remedy for inequality by looking at the market poverty rate in Finland, a nation whose students’ math and science proficiency is among the highest in the world. Were education reform in the United States shaped by liberal utopian principles instead of corporate ones, Finland would be its model. The Finns’ education system is radically egalitarian, with free college and no private schools. Standardized testing is limited, and teachers enjoy significant pedagogical freedom. Yet the only thing keeping Finland’s market poverty rate from exceeding that of the United States is a redistributive system financed by a tax level twice as high as our own.

In his new book, “The Falling Rate of Learning and the Neoliberal Endgame,” philosophy of education professor David Blacker takes Bruenig’s pessimism several steps further. In Blacker’s vision, the economy’s dysfunction renders systemic improvements in education not merely inadequate, but impossible. He argues that the form and quality of public education is so dependent on macroeconomic forces that education reform is “at best a mirage that diverts oppositional energies.” To Blacker, it’s no coincidence that universal public education became a reality in the Western world at the same time that industrialization created the demand for an expansive, educated workforce.

Now, as automation and globalization renders whole swaths of the American labor force useless to capital, Blacker sees the economic system transitioning from a mode of exploitation to one of “elimination.” From the perspective of capital, an ever-increasing portion of the population is no longer seen as a resource to be cultivated, but as a risk to be contained. He sees this “eliminationist” logic driving disinvestment from public higher education, impatience with student speech and activism, and the charter movement’s push toward school privatization.

[Royce]

Everyone in this thread should read Island by Aldous Huxley, and discuss the different aspects of education he brings forth. A great read.

We do after all live in a culture where people think self awareness is looking at a reflection of yourself in a mirror. The educational system reflects this notion pretty nicely.

[Wilshire]

These are interesting thoughts. Who posed the original question, by the way?

Fixed my post to show it, but it was from Royce's original post

[Seökti]

The way our system of education is set up its no wonder kids come out of school without motivation.  Instead of nurturing our native curiosity as children, cultivating our ability to think independently and collectively through open group discussions, the majority of modern educational systems force feeds 'answers' that we are expected to memorize.  Having our earnest questions repeatedly dismissed as children leaves us rather cautious as teenagers and downright hostile with suspicion as adults.