Our educational system is messed up and archaic,. I'm not blaming teachers, that's a red herring. I'm taking responsibility. We are one organism and our educational system is failing. Teachers are doing the best they can under the circumstances.
Why it is failing is because corporations want to continue to produce impotent education and get a fat government check for it. They want to continue to make silly tests that shut people out of higher education. The model is competition but unfortunately, there are two ways to win a competition, you can make yourself better than the rest, or you can make everyone else worse than you. Unfortunately, we have taken the latter route. High class people pay for slightly better education, but lack of resources in poor communities insure they get bad education. However, the education at 'good schools' is also bad, the advantage one gets at good schools is better conformity, better behavior, and mostly, better connections and networking with upper class people. Sometimes they have some useful programs to teach real technology, but often they don't. They just have stricter rules and teach upper class culture, which gives them the advantage. Look at the rapist Brock Turner, in line to serve only 3 months for rape, because he's a white Stanford kid. http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/06/us/sexual-assault-brock-turner-stanford/ Meanwhile a black student convicted of rape is in line to serve 180 months http://www.voanews.com/content/former-vanderbilt-athlete-sentenced-fifteen-years-campus-rape/3420248.html That is the extent of the power and privilege that comes with upper class culture. The black student will get 60 times the punishment for the same crime. Yes, there is white privilege, there is upper class privilege, but if you have to tell someone that, it's probably pointless to talk to them on the issue at all.
Back to education, it is 2016, kids need to learn that which is useful to them. They need to learn to manipulate the things in their environment, especially the technologies but also nature. They should know how a car, a computer, a TV works, and how to fix them. They need to learn that which empowers them. They need to learn about human relationships. They need to learn thinking strategies, what I call algorithms, which I will demonstrate in a separate article. They need to learn different life paths they can take to success or they aren't completely lost when they leave grade school. They need to learn law, applied law, meaning laws that apply to them and the situations they may encounter. They need to learn how to participate in government. They need to learn real history, not that white American supremacist, pro-war, kings and queens stuff they teach in the schools. Most people were not kings or queens or warriors. What was everyone else doing while the handful of elite were waging war? That is history, not the politics of a small group of people. They need to learn about their health and wellness, and medical information, lots of it. I've seen so many people taking medications they have no idea what it is, and it seems unconcievable to me. However, their reading level is often so low, they know if they were to look it up, they still wouldn't understand much about what it is so they don't bother. It's a disempowered attitude, and it makes doctors into tyrants.
What they are learning now is what you can call the white New England culture model. Saying "ain't got no" is considered lack of education, when it isn't, that's just a different culture, it is fully equivalent to 'don't have any'. Lack of education is when you drive a car and watch a TV everyday and don't know how they work. It's not being able to read a nutrition label and see that something that says "low fat" is actually full of sugar and is NOT good for you. It is not being able to see the context of systems like government, schools, companies, scientific studies. Some people say the conditions surrounding a scientific study cannot effect the study because scientists weed out all outside influences. If you can see the financial and social context, you know that is far from true, and has now been pretty definitely proven. Scientific studies have recently been scandalized. Children need to learn how to argue effectively, and not that ancient spiel about logical fallacies alone. People don't understand logical fallacies at all, and they are ancient. There are very many ways to examine an argument, not the handful of fallacies from ancient Greece and Rome for goodness sakes. When you see someone doing nothing but pointing out logical fallacies in Greek or latin, you know that person is likely an idiot without thinking ability.
Everything the child is taught needs to be applied knowledge, applicable knowledge. They need to learn chemistry in a way that allows them to manipulate chemicals in their environment in ways that are useful. Math needs to be applied. You need to learn how to count money, how to calculate distances, how to understand probabilities in ways that apply to real life. This idea that education should be divorced from reality serves the corporate socialist system and takes power away from the people. Real, true, useful information is well protected. It only gets out when humble genius's decide to share it with the world rather than hoarding it in secret patents.
So, how do we redo our educational system? I think the education we have gotten was so bad, adults need to redo their own education. I propose we make computer programs that teach us applied chemistry, electronics, computer science, earth science, argumentation, thinking strategies, history, etc., in a way that is geared toward the attainment of a particular useful goal. The main goal of education is to empower people to improve their health, happiness, and longevity. You go through 12 years of education, and learn little more academic information than someone who didn't go to school at all. You do learn other valuable things, mostly things they aren't teaching, but which you learn from experience. But anyway, the scam needs to end. We must demand real education. After all, we are paying for it regardless. It may be that individuals will have to do this on their own, and as they are out-competing those who go to schools, governments may finally take notice and fix the scam in our educational system.
Lastly, the blame game has to stop. You don't blame teachers or students. It is all of our failure and it is due to our ignorance and greed. What the individual is, the society is. We are greedy and ignorant, so are our schools. Either we don't know how to educate people, or we aren't trying to, we're just trying to make a buck off government funds. We have to change.
What do you think?
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