Marcus G. Daniels wrote:
Douglas Roberts wrote:
That, and a hopelessly corrupted US-wide educational system which
provided an environment that was prone to caving in to the demands of
the "Moral Majority".
Another dimension of the Republican world view is found in
trickle-down economics.
In this view, there are people that create wealth (business owners)
and those that depend on that wealth (workers).
And a slightly inverted view is that business owners (Capitalists) do
not create wealth, but rather aggregate it (Capital) and that the actual
creation of wealth (Productivity) is done by the workers (Labor). The
two can operate in synergy or in opposition, depending on the level of
"enlightenment" on both sides.
The belief that workers are lazy and undisciplined leads to institutions
(workplaces, governments, education) that actually reinforces that.
I'm not worried about rigid indoctrination, I'm worried about the
blurring of education and indoctrination. In a free society, I think
rigid indoctrination soon leads to new generation of independent
thinkers. Such an educational system will self-correct sooner or
later. What will take longer to correct is a situation where
education further devolves into two different colors of teachers and
curriculums, each pushing different agendas.
I do think there are natural oscillations, a dynamic balance more robust
than any utopian static-balance we can make up.
A deeper problem, it seems to me, is there is little faith in people
to learn, and little effort made to create the conditions where it can
occur in an unrestrained way. In the U.S., most people very strongly
expect education to be completed in the 20s and for that learning to
be conducted by an institution ensuring certain specific results
(skill sets).
I think our education system conspires against us in several ways.
First, it is mostly about indoctrinating us in a factory model.
Learning to sit a desk, follow assembly-line-like learning plans, etc.
Second, it believes in *teaching* and *performing* more than *learning*
as evidenced by *standardized testing* and exacerbated by "No Child Left
Behind" doctrines. We never give our children a chance to learn, we are
too busy teaching them. Thirdly, it delays our maturity. An 18 year
old in our society is still a child. We often do not allow our young
adults to be adults until they have endured several rounds of hazing...
from Middle-School to High School to University to Graduate Program to
PostDoc. We come into our adult bodies and hormones in our mid-teens,
but are not allowed (or expected) to act on the emotions and experiences
that yields in any responsible way for nearly as many more years.
It is this set of expectations, and the many institutions that are
invested in them, as much as religious organizations, that inhibit
intrinsic motivation and independent thought.
Even our PhDs are blue-collar in many cases.
Happily, in this nation and others, there is so much money in
technology that competition forces the development of novel technical
skills. This even occurs independently from traditional educational
organizations (e.g. the software industry).
But as this becomes a "commodity" this force is undermined. While it
has not fully taken effect, it does not surprise me that much of our
software today is being created in "sweat shops" in India or (more
recently) eastern Europe. We may be able to continue to "surf this
wave" of innovation, but just as the skilled craftsman got run over
(eventually) by the industrial age and the factory worker eventually got
run over by the information age, the knowledge worker will be run over
by whatever is emerging now.
I don't mean this as doom and gloom, just as an awareness that we are
all responsible for our own future and that even when the tide seems to
be on our side, it can reverse in a moment.
- Steve
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