The God of the Machine - Tranche 47
Posted by mshupe 1 year, 7 months ago to Government
Chapter XXI, Excerpt 2 of 2
Our Japanized Educational System
There can be no greater stretch of arbitrary power than to seize children from their parents, teach them whatever the authorities decree they shall be taught, and expropriate from parents the funds to pay for the procedure. The intrinsic nature of the power was so little realized that this was called “free education,” the most absolute contradiction of facts by which language is capable. A tax supported, compulsory educational system is the complete model of the totalitarian state.
The famous Scopes “monkey trial” in Tennessee was discussed with equal heat and ignorance on both sides. They were not concerned with freedom of thought, speech, or person . . . no conception of personal rights. In short, they did not question political control of education; they only wanted to use it for themselves. Education in civilization . . . is possible only to a frame of mind in which knowledge is pursued voluntarily. The useful knowledge the average person possesses is acquired out of school.
The desire to learn and to impart knowledge are so universal that they can be restrained only by legal penalties. The most vindictive resentment may be expected from the pedagogic profession . . . should they be dislodged from their dictatorial position. The Germans are notably literate, and their technology enabled them to build a war machine which must destroy them. A prominent geologist was struck by the fact that only Americans find oil. “Where oil really is, in the final analysis, is in our own heads.”
Our Japanized Educational System
There can be no greater stretch of arbitrary power than to seize children from their parents, teach them whatever the authorities decree they shall be taught, and expropriate from parents the funds to pay for the procedure. The intrinsic nature of the power was so little realized that this was called “free education,” the most absolute contradiction of facts by which language is capable. A tax supported, compulsory educational system is the complete model of the totalitarian state.
The famous Scopes “monkey trial” in Tennessee was discussed with equal heat and ignorance on both sides. They were not concerned with freedom of thought, speech, or person . . . no conception of personal rights. In short, they did not question political control of education; they only wanted to use it for themselves. Education in civilization . . . is possible only to a frame of mind in which knowledge is pursued voluntarily. The useful knowledge the average person possesses is acquired out of school.
The desire to learn and to impart knowledge are so universal that they can be restrained only by legal penalties. The most vindictive resentment may be expected from the pedagogic profession . . . should they be dislodged from their dictatorial position. The Germans are notably literate, and their technology enabled them to build a war machine which must destroy them. A prominent geologist was struck by the fact that only Americans find oil. “Where oil really is, in the final analysis, is in our own heads.”
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Read a book a couple of years ago which nailed it on the head. It was something about why public education is teaching English wrong but it applies to other topics as well. What the author pointed out was that unless on relates the material to the students through association, context, and application that they will be turned off by the material even before one begins. You don't find too many (outside aspiring thespians) who view Shakespeare with anything but dread and revulsion. I was certainly in that boat. But then I started getting courses on specific Shakespeare plays which spent the first lecture not on the play, but on the backstory: why the play was written, what was going on in society at the time the play was written, etc. Suddenly a bunch of the tumblers fell into place and the play became not just interesting, but the work of art it truly was.
Boy is that true. You learn what YOU want to learn and WHEN you are interested or feel a need for the information.
There shouldnt call them "teachers", since very little is crammed down the throat of the students. All another person can do to help in the acquisition of knowledge is to find out what the student wants to learn right then, and show him or her how to acquire the knowledge.
For example, when I need a quick general answer I used to go to Wikipedia, but NOW I go to chatGTP and get instant answers. They say that you don't have to know anything- just need to know where to find it *google and chatGTP"
The problem with Galt's Gulch is that I don't have enough time to properly read it!
Hopefully, the voucher system being used in some states (and proposed in some others) can take a bite out of this.
But once again, wisdom from (at least) 1943 seems ripped from today's headlines. And most people still haven't learned. Due largely to their "educations".
Yes, and just as a lion cub is eager, by Nature, to learn how to hunt because that is a lion’s way to survive, so to, a human child is eager to learn how to think because that is a human’s way to survive.
To deliberately crush that child’s propensity to think for himself in his early formative years is unspeakably evil. It has been going on for a long time. This from Elihu Palmer in 1801 "…The strength of human understanding is incalculable, its keenness of discernment would ultimately penetrate into every part of nature, were it permitted to operate with uncontrouled and unqualified freedom. It is because this sublime principle of man has been the object of the most scurrilous, and the most detestable invective from superstition, that his moral existence has been buried in the gulph of ignorance, and his intellectual powers tarnished by the ferocious and impure hand of fanaticism. Although we are made capable of sublime reflections, it has hitherto been deemed a crime to think, and a still greater crime to speak our thoughts after they have been conceived…"
We should prepare ourselves for a very long struggle.