----- 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?