4 ms·

The censors' safe play is also well known: Introduce mandatory "what did the author mean" classes in schools, where children write down the one true interpret

The censors' safe play is also well known: Introduce mandatory "what did the author mean" classes in schools, where children write down the one true interpretation of a corpus of sanctioned texts from preferably >100 years ago, under dictation, for many years; until they are completely incapable of approaching a work of art to understand it for themselves. It's not 100% effective, but the remaining few percent end up mentally ill, so it's a win-win!

phnofive 4y ago
I hope this is a metaphor as well...
- kuramitropolis 4y ago
  You went to a school that actually taught you how to think? Consider yourself privileged, my friend. The Prussian system of education, which is at the root of contemporary compulsory schooling, was designed to produce machine operators and obedient soldiers, not necessarily to educate anyone - the idealism of individual teachers notwithstanding. This is standard operating procedure, and definitely my own personal experience during middle and high school. Do this over a couple of generations and you get a population largely incapable of basic reflection. And since this form of "education" is, in fact, nonsensical, parents end up paying for tutoring so their kids can pass an equally nonsensical mandatory exam, so that they (supposedly) get better prospects. So teachers get a lucrative side gig giving private lessons to keep the system going, and as they get complacent, they become complicit. Maybe in your community things are laid out different. Either way, larger populations still end up having a "critical mass" of eloquent people maintaining the tradition of the written word, and the benefits it provides to society; smaller ones just get dispossessed at scale. This contributes to consolidation of power, the establishment of global oligopolies that hold back progress for the sake of their bottom line, etc.
- yakubin 4y ago
  Stories of children failing state tests, because they provided an "incorrect interpretation" of a literary work, where the author after the fact states that it was actually a good interpretation, are plentiful. Education system really does punish interpreting things differently than prescribed.
Bakary 4y ago
If the kids in question don't approach literature on their own with the intent to understand it they're not going to far well in that metric anyway, no matter how counter-productive the education system is.
- kuramitropolis 4y ago
  They're just kids. Thrown into a hellscape of their parents' creation :) Do you think they're supposed to just somehow intuit out of thin air that there's such a thing as "literature" and that one is supposed to "understand it"? I thought they were supposed to teach them things like that in school - otherwise what's the excuse for having those classes in the first place?
  - Bakary 4y ago
    The classes are dysfunctional and meant as a compromise between various groups in a society. But even in some Montessori paradise, a kid will need to have a natural impulse to get anywhere. It's not so much that a kid is supposed to intuit things out of thin air, but rather that the type of person who does well with literature or even approaches it at all will almost always also be the type of person that has already has this natural intuition and motivation. What great teachers can do is lend a spark to the wick, and luckily these specialists seem to magically appear when they are needed to the most, but even the most skilled farmer can't grow wheat out of rocks.

phnofive 4y ago

I hope this is a metaphor as well...

kuramitropolis 4y ago
You went to a school that actually taught you how to think? Consider yourself privileged, my friend. The Prussian system of education, which is at the root of contemporary compulsory schooling, was designed to produce machine operators and obedient soldiers, not necessarily to educate anyone - the idealism of individual teachers notwithstanding. This is standard operating procedure, and definitely my own personal experience during middle and high school. Do this over a couple of generations and you get a population largely incapable of basic reflection. And since this form of "education" is, in fact, nonsensical, parents end up paying for tutoring so their kids can pass an equally nonsensical mandatory exam, so that they (supposedly) get better prospects. So teachers get a lucrative side gig giving private lessons to keep the system going, and as they get complacent, they become complicit. Maybe in your community things are laid out different. Either way, larger populations still end up having a "critical mass" of eloquent people maintaining the tradition of the written word, and the benefits it provides to society; smaller ones just get dispossessed at scale. This contributes to consolidation of power, the establishment of global oligopolies that hold back progress for the sake of their bottom line, etc.
yakubin 4y ago
Stories of children failing state tests, because they provided an "incorrect interpretation" of a literary work, where the author after the fact states that it was actually a good interpretation, are plentiful. Education system really does punish interpreting things differently than prescribed.

Bakary 4y ago

If the kids in question don't approach literature on their own with the intent to understand it they're not going to far well in that metric anyway, no matter how counter-productive the education system is.

kuramitropolis 4y ago
They're just kids. Thrown into a hellscape of their parents' creation :) Do you think they're supposed to just somehow intuit out of thin air that there's such a thing as "literature" and that one is supposed to "understand it"? I thought they were supposed to teach them things like that in school - otherwise what's the excuse for having those classes in the first place?
- Bakary 4y ago
  The classes are dysfunctional and meant as a compromise between various groups in a society. But even in some Montessori paradise, a kid will need to have a natural impulse to get anywhere. It's not so much that a kid is supposed to intuit things out of thin air, but rather that the type of person who does well with literature or even approaches it at all will almost always also be the type of person that has already has this natural intuition and motivation. What great teachers can do is lend a spark to the wick, and luckily these specialists seem to magically appear when they are needed to the most, but even the most skilled farmer can't grow wheat out of rocks.