5 ms·
"There's a reason education sucks, it's the same reason that it will never, ever, ever be fixed. It's never going to get any better, don't look for it, be happy
by kdragon 12y ago
"There's a reason education sucks, it's the same reason that it will never, ever, ever be fixed. It's never going to get any better, don't look for it, be happy with what you got. Because the owners of this country don't want that. I'm talking about the real owners, now. The real owners, the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians, they're an irrelevancy. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They've long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the statehouses, the city halls. They've got the judges in their back pockets. And they own all the big media companies, so that they control just about all of the news and information you hear. They've got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying, lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want; they want more for themselves and less for everybody else.
But I'll tell you what they don't want. They don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don't want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that. That doesn't help them. That's against their interests. They don't want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table and figure out how badly they're getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago.
You know what they want? Obedient workers, people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork but just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it. And, now, they're coming for your Social Security. They want your fucking retirement money. They want it back, so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street. And you know something? They'll get it. They'll get it all, sooner or later, because they own this fucking place. It's a big club, and you ain't in it. You and I are not in the big club." - George Carlin
There's your answer to why.
The answer to how involves more details, but it basically has to do with pacifying the concept of critical thinking from our education system and all facets of american culture, and replacing it with rote learning. It's a lower form of intelligence, which is great for passing arbitrary tests and producing the obedient workers who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork.
The best thing you can do for a child is teach them how to think and learn for themselves. Grow their critical thinking skills and get them into programming or engineering. Teach them empathy. Oh, and buy them a bitcoin.
- maximumoverload 12y agoYeah, I don't think there is a conspiracy. I think you are full of it. edit: see, that was a critical thinking.
- sp332 12y agoIt's not a conspiracy, it's a self-organizing system. Each person acts in their own interests with the information and resources they have available, and this is the end result.
- kdragon 12y agoExactly.
- PavlovsCat 12y agoNo it wasn't, and just calling it that just highlights the problem.
- Loughla 12y agoAs someone inside the higher education machine and who is married to a long-time teacher, that's false; there is no conspiracy to keep kids dumb in schools. The problem is that we're tasked with coming up with a universal system of education for an unbelievably varied skill set presented by students. So, we shoot for the middle (or just slightly below the middle when parents complain that it's too hard). Combine that with apathy and burn-out among the aging workforce in education, and you get the full picture. There's no conspiracy, just an averaging out of student abilities and bitter, resigned teachers who are tired of being told how to do their jobs by politicians and loud-mouths in the media. Whether or not critical thinking skills are being fostered in our current system in all classrooms, that's another question. But, there is no conspiracy. As a side note; working in programming and engineering doesn't magically imbue a person with more or better critical thinking skills than English literature or art history.
- danielweber 12y agoI feel for you. It seems that for each design decision, school systems are set up to be easy to administer. Slots students and teachers into classes and classes into periods and rotate them around. But: who are tired of being told how to do their jobs by politicians and loud-mouths in the media If you are getting paid by the public, the public is going to have lots of opinions on your job performance. Everyone has to answer to someone, whether its bosses or customers or constituents, and no one is given a guarantee that these people will only judge you based on the "correct" things.