Hi Natalie,
I wouldn't want to quarrel with a great deal of what you have written, but
let me skip down to the parts about education because it is this which will
be the key to it all in the coming decades.
At 14:48 26/07/2010 -0700, you wrote:
----->
(KH) The new government in the UK, since its election a couple of months
ago, is already opening application lists for businesses, charities,
groups of parents, groups of teachers, who want to start new independent
schools in September this year. About 600 such have already applied.
Almost all these applications so far are from middle-class people for
schools in middle-class areas. But, in due course, -- if the present
impetus is maintained -- I think we might see an increasing number of
business proposals by competent firms able to move into the most
broken-down, untruly areas and run fine schools for those parents
(probably mostly single parents) who are strongly motivated to see that
their children are given worthwhile skills.
(Nat) If corporations are involved, one can just imagine the worthwhile
skills: those that will further the interests, ie. profits of corporations.
Businesses (or professional services) run the whole gamut of human nature
-- from "goodies" to "baddies" -- just like the rest of us. In my business
life (when dealing with other businesses) I have found that most businesses
are "goodies", just as I've found in my personal life, that most people are
"goodies". In normal times, most of the transactions that we (as customers)
make with businesses (or professionals) is a fair discretionary transaction
and involves a "profit" on both sides -- a specific satisfaction on our
side and a financial profit on the other side. Businesses couldn't exist
without profits. All profits become recycled through the rest of us sooner
or later, except those profits which go into privileged assets and can stay
there for generations. But these privileges are granted by politicians, not
by business generally.
(Nat) And, as you say, they will be successful, though not necessarily
because of competence, but because of ability to self-fund.
Private schools will be successful or not just like any other business.
That is, from competition for customers -- which drives up quality of
product -- in this case as perceived by the parents of the children.
Yet if parents are truly concerned for children's futures, then only
sustainable industry should be considered in this process. Sustainable
encompasses every facet of society which is not harmful to it.
Parents can only make shrewd guesses as to what is worthwhile and
sustainable by way of future jobs for their children. In this they are no
different from business people, politicians, think-thanks, intellectuals or
anybody else who is given to speculating about the future.
(KH) There has been too much whiff-whaff about education in the past few
decades. It is not about " a desire for learning" or "creativity" or
"opening young minds", etc. This is fine for children of the elite and
upper middle class who already have social confidence before they go to
school, who know during school that it's highly likely that there'll be a
good job for them somewhere in their parents' world, who have time,
leisure and sports facilities in a secure environment. But for 70% of the
children in the past 50 years most post-puberty education at school has
been a waste of time, and half of those children have been actively
alienated from anything to do with "learning". What they've really wanted
were tangible skills.
(Nat) I can't quite tell if you're speaking for the masses, or voicing a
personal view.
I'm voicing a personal view, just as you are. I think I'm speaking for the
masses, just as you are.
(Nat) Tangible skills come and go, but even these are lost on the
undeveloped mind in real life situations that demand more than memorized
facts, and both society and the individual need all senses nurtured,
Exactly. More specifically, the skills that are acquired in the rear and
middle cortex, mainly up to the age of puberty (those that are to do with
seeing, hearing, body-sensing, speaking, playing, socializing, maths etc)
need constant practice under the tutelage of adults and are usually entered
into enthusiastically by children.
(Nat) as Ray keeps reminding us, for optimum health, resourcefulness and
achievement of mastery alike. I can understand that if skills are not
imparted, kids will not be able to earn a living in the immediate future,
Exactly. The more that basic skills are practised in pre-puberty education
the more dense the neuronal networks become between the three primary
sensory areas and the more poised and equipped children are for the
post-puberty years when their minds become increasingly dominated by their
future status and way of life in adulthood.
(Nat) but education is so much more than preparing for just one set of skills.
Yes. It used to be, of course. But ever since the "innovation explosion" at
around 40,000BC (probably the result of a particular mutation to brain
genes which occurred about then) the number of potential income-earning
skills has burgeoned exponentially.
(Nat) And must they be limited to an education for positions designed for
them by IT,
Certainly not!
(Nat) or could we teach them how to use all of what they've got -- not
only for the sake of nurturing their capacity,
After childhood puberty we (as adults) can't really teach anything to them
from then onwards unless they are individually motivated to learn more
specialized skills in more immediate preparation for adulthood. They will
no longer copy and practise (enthusiastically) what we consider to be the
basic skills that they need. (In 40% of our post-14 year old boys in UK
state education [according to one recent survey] they are already alienated
from school. I don't suppose it's a great deal different in all advanced
countries.)
but for the fact that IT is going to evolve, may even not have much
future should our earth experience significant change.
I think that IT has a huge future still, but the experience so far (of the
last 30 years or so anyway) is that it is an aid and accelerator of more
basic economic activities.
(Nat) Skills taught in schools today are primarily boring, for a boring,
hurtful market with no future that is failing them today.
Yes.
Children deserve choice here, too, but as with increasing privatization
of government responsibilities, education will become ever more
corporatized away from genuine values, and humanity will no longer know
itself nor the world which could have stayed a paradise.
Since when has the world been a paradise? It wasn't even that in
pre-Neolithic times. Even when we led far healthier lives than today there
was a high risk of dying before the age of 40 due to accidents or predation
or warfare. Ever since the agricultural revolution, when population started
taking off, the lives of the majority have been increasingly unhealthier,
more stressful, and prone to the decisions of others far beyond any form of
control.
Who's consulting with students for these vapid plans? My bet is that we
should start immediately, and that we'll bring about better minds and
systems far sooner, without selective breeding.
We don't need any sort of selective breeding to bring about a far healthier
education for our children. There is more than enough latent talent, genius
and creativity already. However, if the present sort of highly selective
education for the children of the elite continues and they continue to
protect their professions and jobs, then what I call the meta-class will
become a permanent caste, and increasingly live and work quite separately
from the masses. Because genetics is such a vast scientific area then the
chances of the meta-class accelerating the separation will, in my view, be
inevitable.
Keith
Natalia
Keith
At 08:41 24/07/2010 -0400, you wrote:
If I read this correctly, we are heading for a major socio-economic
split. Those with an aptitude for IT and all of its uses will rise and
everybody else will fall. This suggests the emergence or continuity of
yet another socio-economic category, that of the care-givers and
organizers. Assuming the growth of an increasingly impoverished nanny
class, a world could emerge in which a great number of people have
little to do other than bow, scrape and mill about when they are not
peddling drugs and commiting petty crimes. Given that the IT class, the
best and the brightest, will spend its time perpetually staring into and
poking at little machines, there will be a great emergent need to ensure
that society does not collapse into chaos. A leadership class, perhaps
consisting of some of the best and brightest will have to be present to
ensure that everyone has a chance of staying alive and healthy. Or
perhaps all I'm saying is that we might expect to see lawyers, doctors,
bureaucrats, social workers, police and politicians to continue to
organize and look after things whatever other splits occur in
society. However, they would be increasingly indebted to the IT
overclass, which would make life easier for them by poking away and
devising new programs.
Ed
Keith Hudson, Saltford, England
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Keith Hudson, Saltford, England
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