----- Original Message -----
Sent: Tuesday, November 04, 2003 1:51
PM
Subject: Re: clarification Re:
[Futurework] Riots in Riyadh?
Darryl:
It comes from my having two separate (and
disparate) periods of university education 20 years apart, attempting
to understand what was different with the system; watching students learn
the "system of testing" so they could study for the test and not wholly
absorb the material, never contesting why they were being taught
things that were in opposition to a living, caring
world.
Well, thanks I guess? I don't think I see
formal education the same way you do. I absolutely loathed school as a
kid and dropped out for a couple of years when in highschool. But
during those two years, spent working in a sawmill and achieving a high
level of teenage debauchery at an art school, I came to realize I had
to beat the system from the inside or it would beat me. I didn't find,
as you put it, a "living, caring world" out there. I went back to
school with the rather angry attitude of 'just tell me what crap you
want me to learn and I'll learn it, OK!!?' And learn it I
did, and I then went on to university and into professional life.
Even though I may have compromised what I, as a teenager, thought were
principles, I can imagine, with adult hindsight, what would have
happened to me if I hadn't gone back. In the sawmill and as a
summer-time logger while a student, I worked with lots of guys who had quit
like I did but never went back. Some of them were really smart, but
they never got anywhere and never would. I think that's what would
have happened to me. Keep logging as long as you could and then
what?
All the way through school and university, I can
count the courses I really liked on the fingers of one hand. The rest
was cram, cram, cram - get marks, get marks, get marks! I don't know
if it diminished me, but I rather think not. If anything, it built up
my capacity to handle a lot of crap quickly and under pressure, something
that proved very useful in my career as a public servant.
I guess what I'm saying is that while formal
education may be a rather brutal part of the system, it is nevertheless
a necessary part. You really can't get very far without it. And,
if anything, it's gentler than the system as a whole. Two of the
smartest people I ever knew got absolutely nowhere because they
couldn't go the academic route. They both came from way out in
the bush, and that's probably where they've gone back to - if they didn't
wind up on skid row.
Ed
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday, November 03, 2003 11:16
PM
Subject: clarification Re:
[Futurework] Riots in Riyadh?
Ed.
It comes from my having two separate (and
disparate) periods of university education 20 years apart, attempting
to understand what was different with the system; watching students learn
the "system of testing" so they could study for the test and not wholly
absorb the material, never contesting why they were being taught
things that were in opposition to a living, caring world.
Refer to "Dumbing Us Down" below, which
clarified the above for me.
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday, November 03, 2003
12:48 PM
Subject: Re: [Futurework] Riots in
Riyadh?
Darryl:
Any authoritarian government or ruling body
automatically attempts to corrupt learning; to sway or brainwash the
populace to their desired ends of control. Ray has often bemoaned the
lack of the Arts in the N.A. school system (with which I concur) and ,
as Harry pointed out through "Gatto" (thank you Harry), the desire of
the school system is to create a society of worker bees who do exactly
as they are told and (I will add) through the aspect of "team sports"
will learn the idea of "nationalist fervour" to the point of dying
when you are told (war). It is far easier to control an ignorant
populace than an intelligent one. NOTE: I did not say educated as
"intelligence" and "education" do not appear compatible in today's
lexicon.
See below.
I really don't know where this comes from. I've met and
talked with social scientists who were educated in
the Soviet Union and have an enormous respect for both their
intelligence and their level of education.
I too have enormous respect for my
intelligence. Anyone who has a post-secondary education does, but I tend
to attribute my own intelligence to curiosity and a desire to know
why certain things are as they are or how they came to be and how they
might be made better without altering that which the Creator gave
us--rather than giving the credit to the system.
As for our own education system, it may have suffered from cut
backs and may not be as good as it could be, but it still produces some
outstanding thinkers.
There will always be a few, but could there be
more? And what direction are those few "outstanding thinkers" taking?
