U.S. System of Public Education for all being Dismantled

Merit-based pay for teachers will only discourage educators from taking positions at disadvantaged schools and among students who need the most help. Its practical effect, like No Child Left Behind, will be to shift funding out of the schools that need it most. It is a giant step toward the privatization of public education in America and the formalization of a two-tier, class-based education system.

Already, the quality of education for American children depends largely on the affluence of the area in which any given school is located. Much of US school funding is based on property taxes and other forms of local revenue, and certain states make available far more money per student than others. In this set-up, the public schools in the wealthy neighborhoods and suburbs are vastly superior to those in the inner cities, small towns, reservations, and other financially starved areas. Rich and upper-middle class families may also bypass public education altogether by sending their children to expensive private or parochial schools. Obama’s policies will serve to deepen, and make official, these disparities.

In an interview in the Washington Post, Obama claimed that evaluation tests could be crafted in such a way as to avert this. Tests might be used to measure improvement, rather than comparing students in poor and rich schools, he said. Yet in a society in which social misery is mounting, where more and more children go to school homeless and hungry, a growing number of students will not show improvement on standardized tests—whose value, in any case, has been placed in doubt by countless pedagogues and teachers. ...

They and their teachers will pay the price through the reallocation of resources to the better-performing “charter” schools, which, like private schools, have no obligation to accept all students who might wish to enroll, and which routinely dispense with old union work rules and dismissal practices for teachers. ...

He has encountered no resistance from the teachers unions, who have for years denounced incentive-based pay and charter school proposals from the Bush administration and Republican governors, and have handed over tens of millions to elect Democratic candidates, including Obama.

From: Obama escalates assault on public education, by Tom Eley, WSWS, July 25, 2009.

Education Methods Deserve Enormous Blame For School Violence

09.11.07 I know this is a stunning news flash for most of you (that's sarcasm) but women and men are not the same and they aren’t interchangeable units - the have different ways of learning that are particularly pronounced at young ages. You can’t just toss out some books and lecture for eight hours a day and not expect the boys to go crazy from boredom.

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is just a slightly exaggerated symptom of normal male behavior. When an increasingly large percentage of the boys have to be drugged-up just to get them to sit through an average school day without causing disruptions then it should be obvious to even a half-wit that something is not right with that educational equation. Boys cannot be expected to sit in an uncomfortable chair for eight hours every school day and listen to droning lectures from teachers without reacting in a negative fashion. Mix in drugs to keep them sedated, violent pop-cultural imagery, plus chronic social pressures, and it’s no surprise that kids like Pekka-Eric in Finland flip out lusting for revolution in the classroom.

The girls aren’t getting much out of contemporary education methods either but, crudely speaking, women can be programmed, read this book and listen to this lecture then take this test, but men have to be trained, show then do then test. Yet it’s just so much cheaper and quicker to teach the female way than it is to do it the male way because the school system can buy a few books and hire some hack to talk to the kids all day and they don’t have to do any of the necessary, but slightly more expensive, hands-on out-of-the-classroom type experience-based education. Consequently, school becomes a prison sentence for the boys who just get increasingly angry and agitated as it goes on, and a gossip session for the girls waiting for the bell to ring.

 When Knowledge is a Commodity Society Goes Bankrupt

22.07.07 Creationism and similar ignorant silliness is tragically popular, particularly in the United States, and it seems like this is probably due to the pathetic condition of public education and the widespread acceptance of base religion as a valid authority for explaining world events. The capitalist culture also plays a role in perpetuating ignorance as well, this is because in a capital-driven society education, and knowledge too, are treated as a commodity, and like any other commodity it must be restricted in supply in order to maximize commercial profits.

Not surprisingly the pay-as-you-learn higher education system in the U.S. is world class even as the public schools are shoddy and lacking in equal proportion because the majority of investment and resources are directed at the sector that produces the quick profits. This in turn means that most Americans receiving a university or college education are often lacking in the basics, like knowledge of science and the scientific method, but have plenty of specialized skills. This creates some very odd incongruities in American society where educated and seemingly intelligent people can believe some of the most ridiculous things, like being convinced that God created heaven and Earth in seven days or that the Earth is only 10,000 years old because that’s as much history as the Bible contains, or other tenets of creationism.

The ones that can overcome the fallacies of religious belief still trip over modern secular versions that abuse and misunderstand scientific principles to push an agenda or make a profit. Perpetual motion machines and quack medical cures have been a staple of American hucksterism for centuries and the market for these products remains robust, to put it mildly, because the fundamental weakness’ of the customer base haven’t changed. A contemporary example is ‘free-energy’ and ‘zero-point’ energy power devices that their promoters claim can easily solve the energy crisis with the help of small investors with big dreams of striking it rich, just like you.

General education levels have certainly improved over the past fifty years but as technology has advanced there’s much more that the individual has to be cognizant of too. So this often means that the average person has just enough education to be skeptical and susceptible to convoluted conspiracy theories but they still lack the sagacity to see through irrationality and paranoia, or avoid untenable assumptions.

Large portions of the public fall victim to paranoid conspiracy theories and attribute malicious intent where ineptitude and bureaucracy suffice for explanations! They fall victim to financial scams because they don’t understand basic mathematics, and they get robbed by credit card companies and greedy banks because they don’t understand how compound interest works. They fall victim to creationism beliefs because they don’t understand geology and biology and can’t grasp the simplicity of natural selection, perhaps because it seems to contradict common sense expectations sometimes. They fall victim to free energy scams because they misunderstand basic scientific principles and often lack a functional awareness of physical science.

The uneducated question the facts that science presents but they don’t understand the process that science uses to reach those conclusions! They think science facts are just more didactic edicts from a competing authority, just more arbitrary rules like the ones in the Bible, but science is very different than the rules of religion, kings, and dictators because it has a consistent and verifiable methodology. The Scientific Method is important because it’s such a useful and effective way to approach almost any problem.

You can see that many of the widespread problems within our society could be solved, or at least ameliorated, by improving basic education when it come to practical skills and knowledge on topics of math, biology, physics, and history. And even if you're old enough to not be in school you can still learn, it doesn’t even require any financial penalty, and in fact it will  confer a great personal benefit. If everyone would just turn off the damn television for half an hour and read a non-fiction book -- go to the children’s section of the public library and pick up a really simple one with bold diagrams if you need to because everyone has to start at the basics.

People that are wealthy and intelligent don’t watch television; not even Hollywood executives watch the drivel that they green-light! If you want to be either one (preferably not a Hollywood executive though) then you’d be wise to turn off and tune out the TV. Research has even shown that people who don’t watch television have more money, mostly because they aren’t being continually brainwashed to buy things they don’t need and they have more time to do things that are actually beneficial to themselves and those around them, instead of the corporate monstrosities that own or sponsor the asinine entertainment.

Your 'Mission Impossible': Defeat the Television

10.06.06 My own personal encounters with heavy consumers of entertainment-based television have led me to conclude that television is more than just an ignorance generator, it's a cognitive impairment generator. Since so much of TV is entertainment of the lowest kinds, the more someone watches it the less useful and functional knowledge they possess. And the less able they are to learn useful information and to think in a constructive and functional way because of the mental conditioning that has occurred, all beyond the awareness of the viewer I might add.

I think too many of us underestimate the damaging effects of TV on the human mind, especially on young minds that are in the process of developing and forming habits for their adult lives.

Teachers often get blamed for educational failures, and in many cases tired and unimaginative teaching methods are clearly to blame. But it’s also true that they can only teach to the capacity limits of the students they have to work on. With so many kids already mentally deadened by TV and other forms of passive entertainment, then turned obese from sloth and drinking gallons of corn syrup sweetened carbonated-candy, how much can we expect them to learn?

Even if the kids wanted to learn, they're very often physically and mentally constrained from excelling. Then couple this with the tired old methods of passive teaching and you get a very dysfunctional educational system right there, even without the school violence thrown in to the mix.

TV can potentially be an educational tool but even when teachers do use one in the classroom it’s used only as a passive medium of education, so in essence the result is just another commercial in the minds of the students and they give it just about as much attention.

It’s amazing how fast young minds can learn the rules to a new video game or navigate the byzantine complexity of operating a new cell phone or similar electronic device. But show them a world map and they can't figure out where Iraq is to save their life. Learning is clearly going on, and the desire to learn is clearly present as well, but if it’s not happening in the schools then it raises the question: what’s the source of the problem?

Education has to be engaging and interactive in order to be effective, and the younger the mind of the student the more this rule holds true. Primary education especially needs to shift to interactive learning, not passive watching. And this behavior needs to be broken not just in schools but at home too. This concept is so simple that the lack of implementation is pathetic. I rarely enjoyed school and much of it had to do with the passivity of so much of it, read pages 32-69, do math problems 11-55, listen to the teacher pontificate for 50 minutes, repeat the next day. When the education was interactive and I could be creative, then I liked it.

Beyond fixing the educational system there's one thing, even more important, that everyone can do. I challenge everyone, whether they're in school or not, to stop watching television for a continuous six month block of time. If you can accomplish this feat, and you'll find out that it really is a drug once you begin the effort, then after you’ve kicked the habit, TV will look so profoundly asinine and mind-rotting that you will never perceive it in the same positive way again. You’ll also discover, and this is perhaps the most insidious aspect of TV, the ubiquitousness of it. The complete pervasiveness of television is stunning, and most people don’t even realize how thorough the invasion really is. Go into a restaurant, bar, waiting room, or an office lobby and chances are you’ll find a TV there, and what’s even worse, it’s a TV that you can’t control!

Stop watching television for a continuous six month block of time. If you can do it your IQ will probably go up 20 points too. I wouldn’t be writing this if I hadn’t done it myself, it works.

The Problem of Overcrowded Schools in the U.S.

If you put your kids in a zoo then there’s no telling what kind of animal will attack them. And a zoo is what the US public schools have become over the past 20 years. The major troublemakers are not being isolated and removed with any consistency or permanence, they just circulate back into the system and continue to limit the rest actually trying to learn something without fear of harassment. Consequently, the students, and especially the ones causing most of the problems, see authority as ineffectual or impotent and act accordingly. 

The primary source of the problem is overcrowding. Since at least the Reagan years the federal government has been divesting itself of financial responsibility for supporting public education. The federal government has moved responsibility down to the state and local level and this, in conjunction with a steady increase in the population, is why in many places throughout the country public schools have been forced to pack more and more students into the same, or smaller, spaces. Just as a prison will erupt in riots when it becomes overcrowded, so will a school or any other confinement-facility spontaneously erupt in unrest and violence. 09.09.06

We often hear it said that a child's will should be "broken" that the best education for the will of the child is to learn to give it up to the will of adults. Leaving out of the question the injustice which is at the root of every act of tyranny, this idea is irrational because the child cannot give up what he does not possess. We prevent him in this way from forming his own will-power, and we commit the greatest and most blameworthy mistake. He never has time or opportunity to test himself, to estimate his own force and his own limitations because he is always interrupted and subjected to our tyranny, and languishes in injustice because he is always being bitterly reproached for not having what adults are perpetually destroying. - Maria Montessori

Trained to Perform Evil

11.09.05 The public will typically complain in retrospect, how could this happen, how could this tragedy, war, or mass-murder occur? Blame is apportioned to some singular dictator or mystical deity, yet the public remains oblivious to the institutional nature of the ‘evil’ as it repeats itself over and over. The public is quick to express moral disdain, to boo and hiss at the one-dimensional, fictional caricatures of mass-murderers and malevolent dictators packaged and delivered to them on the TV screen and in the movie theater, yet they consistently reelect the real ones to public office.

Under practically any definition George W. Bush (the self-proclaimed ‘war President’), Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney are mass-murderers given their multiple wars on innocent civilians fomented through lies and fraud. But because these politicians successfully manipulate public opinion using the symbols of nationalism and fear, they can exploit the legitimacy of public office to not only remain immune from logical criticism but to even become paragons of strong leadership! Some contradictions and double standards are so routine and habitual that few are even aware of them, yet the contradictions are far from harmless or benign.

Of course, there's an element that's right in this as well - in that there are principles for which the United States presumably stands that are good. It's just that people confuse the principles with the policies - and so long as they can keep those principles in their heads (justice for all, equality, and so on), they are very reluctant to accept the fact that they have been crassly, consistently violated. This is the only way I can account for the stopping short when it comes to looking at the president and the people around him as war criminals. - Howard Zinn

Searching for the Source

Our entire moral order is totally flawed because it's built upon an authoritarian mindset that defines ‘good’ as following orders and ‘bad’ as disobedience. This mentality is not natural, it's learned. Most children are taught through the dictates and actions of their parents that they're ‘good’ when they follow their parent’s orders and they're ‘bad’ when they do anything else. Instead of being taught to discern right from wrong on their own, or according to objective criteria, they have it handed down as a set of absolute rules and dictates in the same spirit as the Ten Commandments were handed down to the Israelites. This flawed mentality makes authoritarian wrongdoing in such a culture not just a random occurrence  but a systemic one.

Further, when personal actions are compartmentalized then individuals working for a larger entity, such as a nation or a corporation, are neatly absolved of personal responsibility for their individually heinous, acts. This process allows for the completion of a larger task that requires multiple actions that would be unthinkable outside of the compartmentalized, authoritarian system.

Think of the military, or the government, or a corporation, or any other large body of people working together for a plan or purpose motivated in a way that contradicts or usurps the interest of the individuals within it. Think about how those machines, such as the government, are chronically vilified as being corrupt, predatory, destructive, and so on, yet the general impression of the leaders, CEOs, Generals, and foot soldiers within those machines is generally quite positive, even highly esteemed! For example, public officials are frequently criticized for their inability to deliver, and other failures, usually blamed on foolishness or venality. Corruption is a problem but nonetheless most public officials are actually of above average intelligence and sincerely want to serve the public good. This presents a contradiction, for how can an employee of an evil institution or company be a nice, well-meaning person? The problem is that despite noble intentions these public officials are locked within a system that generates its own structural incompetence.

In fact, what we're witnessing is, by accident or intent, the product of a very potent method of manipulating individual logic and motivation and usurping it to serve a larger operation. I call this the Compartmentalized Authority Structure (CAS). Film-maker Stanley Kubrick made a brilliant film depicting this concept. Released in 1964 it's titled Dr. Strangelove Or: how I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb. This film portrayed the latent insanity behind the unnerving, compartmentalized efficiency of the Cold War military system for nuclear self-destruction. Read: Finding perspective in a mad world.

The CAS preys on two fundamental human vulnerabilities:

1. Desire to minimize personal responsibility.
2. Desire to be ‘good’ by following the official rules. 

Hence the characteristic phrase uttered so often as a personal excuse for the results of CAS: ‘It’s not my fault, I’m just following orders’.

New Education: Counteracting the Madness

Children have to be allowed to make small decisions and learn from the small mistakes, because if they don't then later in life they'll be faced with big decisions without the experience to know how to deal with the big mistakes that follow! A true, robust and healthy understanding of right and wrong, the functional and the self-defeating, comes from learning about the natural consequences that emerge from personal actions, not from the arbitrary dictates of authority, no matter how seemingly correct or benevolent those dictates may be. And in order to learn about the reaction to the action the individual must be granted the freedom to act based on their own motive and impetus and then to receive the fair consequence of their action, be it a benefit or a detriment. Only then can a natural sense of morality emerge in the mind of the individual, and concomitantly in society through the collective actions of the multiple individuals within it.

In the absence of a natural system of learning we can see this diseased way of thinking that emerges from the tragic failures of childhood education stretching long into adulthood. So many people act deathly-afraid to make mistakes because they don’t want to deviate from the established rules and become a ‘bad’ person, never realizing that a mistake is very often the only way to really learn how to behave in the first place! So many people endlessly search for the one book, the one master plan, or the one spiritual guide that will finally solve all their personal problems and put everything wrong with their life into perfect harmony. Religious rules, mystical practices, rigorous self-help guidelines, the public consumes an endless supply of these modern day Ten Commandments yet none of them ever fulfill any of the core moral needs; they only paper over the gap for a short time. This is because no master plan for personal salvation and no singular guide for moral correctness exists, since a successful, rewarding, and healthy life is not about adhering to orders or matching personal behavior to a prescribed list of values and mandates. Life is about acting and responding and learning from the results in order to make wiser and more productive actions afterwards, to learn from the consequences and act again, and again, and again.

The pattern for successful living doesn’t come from God-given rules, it’s a process, a methodology. Act, receive, think, respond, learn from the process and then begin it again. This allows for learning and moral awareness to come from experience and the personal interaction with reality, just as it should be. It sounds nice and simple but this freedom runs up against intense opposition from the forces of established authority be they in the Church, the home, or even in the government. Authority always wants its own view of events forced onto everyone else, it wants its values and moral codes forced on everyone else, and it will not allow individuals to form their own methodology for interfacing with reality because that methodology may be different or contradictory!

The Mistaken Search for Universal Morality

Prescribed morality stems from the firm, archaic belief that children must be molded or formed, that they must be something they are not already, and something that external authority deems they must become. This errant motive comes primarily from the erroneous view that everyone else should be just like “me”. This mistaken attitude when put into practice highlights the difference between real education, and learning versus rote memorization and obedience training. You can study it from a historical or geographic perspective but whenever or wherever education is dominated and controlled by men, to the exclusion of women, it gets turned into a tool for inculcating authority-beliefs into impressionable minds through brute repetition and the intentional negation of personal independence in brain and body. Wherever patriarchal culture reigns you’ll find systemic educational failure, and no better contemporary example exists than the madrassa religious schools that operate throughout the deeply patriarchal Islamic countries where young students do little else besides memorizing the Koran and being indoctrinated with militant religious fundamentalism.

The patriarchal worldview doesn’t allow for alternative explanations, views, or experiences, and must use force, and inevitably violence, in order to achieve its self-righteous aims. This is why patriarchal society is based on fear and obedience to authority. Violence, be it physical or psychological, is necessary to enforce obedience, to force a disparate set of minds to fit into one preset mold defined as the universal apex of correctness. Violence is an inextricable part of every society that is built upon patriarchal rule.

Too many parents want subservience but instead get rebellion. Too many parents want a moral and ideological clone in a child but instead create a radical or an intellectual vegetable incapable of decision. We seem to want a universal objective moral code but no matter how much we search we won’t find it as we would a lost tribe in the Amazon or an unknown law of physics. Morality won't be discovered because it does not exist as it is traditionally conceived; all that we will ever have is cause and effect - causality for morality. The universe was never designed for humans; humans adapt to fit the universe!

The Essence of Non-Patriarchal Education

We have to strive to build our perceptions of reality through the synthesis of multiple sources, and not just from a single source, because to only take evidence from one point is the essence of belief, of a faith-based interpretation of reality. Lacking a comparison we are forced to accept a statement as truth without any means of verification. Faith is essentially mindless obedience to the official rules of authority.

This process of synthesis requires another critical capacity, that being the ability to discriminate, because we are constantly being bombarded with lies as well as truth and at some point we have to determine one from the other. Life is a process of decision making, of discrimination; if we didn’t discriminate then we would be dead! More to the point, how are we discriminating? Are we using beliefs or facts for our metric? Assumption or analysis? Discrimination is the highest task of any sentient being. To not discriminate is to not think, to be a vegetable or a slave. And this is why, besides teaching the methodology of independent thought and learning, the true purpose of education is to expose students to as many valid and legitimate explanations and views as necessary in order for the student to be able to form a functional synthesis.

Epic Failure of Education

09.07.05 The current concern is no longer over how Iraq will turn out in five years; rather the outcome from the Iraqi invasion fiasco is already a foregone conclusion. The real concern now is, who’s next? Syria is clearly a weak regime and rumors have already placed religious fundamentalist insurgents on the ground in the country beginning operations to take down the secular, socialist, Ba’ath party in charge.

But Syria is a small and mostly inconsequential country within the larger geopolitical context, and where’s the oil in Syria?! No, you want to talk about oil supplies and nightmare scenarios you’ve got to go south, to Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is ground zero for revolution Osama bin Laden style. The question to be asking today is, what if the western-friendly regime in power in Saudi Arabia falls and is replaced by a religious fundamentalist theocracy? Clearly, that's a totally unacceptable outcome from the standpoint of the United States, but even Japan and Europe would be hurt too since they;re even more reliant on Saudi petroleum.

Just to the north of Saudi Arabia, Iraq is now breeding and training radicals and violent fundamentalist fighters. These rebels will inevitably bleed out into neighboring countries to attack the regimes that they also disagree with, namely Syria and Saudi Arabia, but Egypt, Turkey, and even Jordan are unsafe too. [4] Further, given the lack of training and experience on the part of Saudi counter-terrorism forces, for instance, especially when measured against the battle-hardened status of the terrorists, the eventual conclusion does not look to be in the Saudi government's favor. After all, if the most powerful military in the world cannot subdue insurgent forces in Iraq, then how will the other countries in that part of the world do it?!

In the meantime, public approval ratings of the United States and its foreign policy in the Middle East have sunk to record lows, in the single digits for most places there. The only thing keeping countries like Saudi Arabia and Egypt supportive of US government policies is the fact that those countries are run by despotic authorities that are either bribed or cajoled into supporting the U$A, and if those regimes collapse the aftermath will inevitably be more democratic in supporting domestic opinion over foreign! Indeed, what if President Bush really did bring freedom and democracy to the Middle East as he claims to be trying to do? Such a democracy would hardly be pro-US since it's the policy equivalent of being pro-Israel!

The scenarios that can be foreseen are troubling at best and downright catastrophic at worst. Saudi Arabia is, after all, the primary source of the world’s oil, the prices of which have already hit record highs of over $60 per barrel. Just imagine the Saudi regime under direct attack from insurgents in two, three or five years from now. Small scale but very daring and violent attacks have already occurred throughout the kingdom. Even if Saudi counter-terrorism police and intelligence forces can neutralize the immediate insurgent threat, that problem is only the least strategically significant of many facing the kingdom. Saudi Arabia has an explosive growth rate fueled by unbelievably high birth rates. “The average Saudi Woman bears more than six children.” Riyadh, the capital, has grown from 60,000 people in 1950 to over 4.5 million today. [3] Unemployment is already a serious problem, exacerbated by the large population of young people in the country. A work ethic that disdains menial labor doesn’t improve matters either. Economic expectations are very high in Saudi Arabia; the mindset is, 'why work when you can just import a Palestinian or Filipino laborer and get them to do everything?!'

But even though Saudi Arabia has massive oil supplies now and record revenue from the sales of petroleum, that oil and the money it provides won’t last forever, and when this inevitability is combined with population expansion and rising expectations, a real crisis is in the making. At least one petroleum resource analyst has concluded that Saudi oil supplies are drying up much faster than previously thought. Consider these four points: 

Most of Saudi Arabia's oil output is generated by a few giant fields, of which Ghawar - the world's largest - is the most prolific.

 

These giant fields were first developed 40 to 50 years ago, and have since given up much of their easily extracted petroleum.

 

To maintain high levels of production in these fields, the Saudis have come to rely increasingly on the use of water injection and other secondary recovery methods to compensate for the drop in natural field pressure.

 

As time goes on, the ratio of water to oil in these underground fields rises to the point where further oil extraction becomes difficult, if not impossible. To top it all off, there is very little reason to assume that future Saudi exploration will result in the discovery of new fields to replace those now in decline. [1]

With worldwide demand for oil steadily increasing and Saudi Arabia already pumping it out at near maximum volume now, who will replace them when they dry up in the near future? A Saudi Arabia without oil is a problem for the world but it’s a catastrophe for Saudi Arabia since nearly their entire revenue is derived from the sale of that one commodity. Saudi Arabia has essentially no plans to diversify their economic base, so what are they going to do for income 10, 20 years from now when they need it even more than today to hold their young, poorly educated, and very angry population together?

Young, angry and religiously bigoted Saudis have already been blamed for forming a major percentage of the insurgent forces in Iraq, not to mention the 9-11 Pentagon and World Trade Center airline hijackers. Now comes word that Saudi Arabia may even have acquired nuclear weapons from Pakistan via the infamous Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan. [2] Ruminate on that one for a moment.

Pakistan is another very unstable regime that is nominally pro-U$ but again only because of a compliant dictatorship that has little popular support. The current Pakistani military dictatorship could collapse and be replaced with leadership much less friendly to American interests – and the country already has nuclear weapons.

Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are two examples of a catastrophic failure of education, robbing both nations of a viable and progressive future and endangering the entire world in the process.

Pakistan, with a crushing defense burden, only spends 1.7% of gross domestic product on education (compared to 4.3% in India and 5% in the United States). An estimated 15,000 religious schools provide free room and board to some 700,000 Pakistani boys (ages six to 16) where they are taught to read and write in Urdu and Arabic and recite the Holy Koran by heart. No other disciplines are taught, but students are indoctrinated with anti-American, anti-Israeli and anti-Indian propaganda, and encouraged to engage in jihad to defeat a "global conspiracy to destroy Islam". These schools supplied thousands of recruits for the Taliban militia in Afghanistan and are still being used to recruit militants to fight the US-led forces and Afghan troops in that country. [2]

Some have compared the situation of the Islamic countries today to that of Europe 600 years ago in its dark ages. Yet centuries ago Iraq and Iran, Babylon and Persia, were once the repositories for the accumulated wisdom of Egypt and ancient Greece, but now they languish in the darkest backwaters of ignorance and superstition; while the remainder of the planet is progressing, these people are regressing! This isn’t due to an inherent incapacity to learn and adapt but rather from the stranglehold of religion on their societies and the ignorance and superstition perpetuated by an education system dominated by theology.

So, if you think events in West Asia are already violent and out of control, just hold on to your hat because you haven’t seen anything yet. The Bush administration correctly recognized the potential of Islamic radicals to destabilize friendly and compliant regimes in the oil producing Middle East but catastrophically erred when they equated Saddam Hussein’s socialist, pseudo-secular regime as being a part of that problem. In reality Saddam, as despotic and brutal as he was, actually served as a critical stabilizing force in the region! Saddam’s Iraq was the keystone holding the weak but stable structure of pan-Arab nationalism together as a bulwark against Islamic fundamentalism. In the fiery aftermath of the toppling of Saddam the only viable or functional authority alternative was, and still is, Islamic fundamentalism. Osama bin Laden got exactly what he wanted when George W. Bush launched his invasion of Iraq, while Bush himself has initiated a chain reaction that neither his administration, nor anyone else, has the power to stop.

Suspicious minds think that this is exactly what many planners in the state of Israel wanted to begin with: to create a totally polarized conflict featuring an intractable foe that cannot be reasoned or negotiated with, thereby undercutting the overtures towards peace from the United Nations and the European Union that have for years vexed Israel’s belligerent, expansionist aims in the occupied territories and against its many Islamic neighbors. Manufacturing a maniacal Islamic enemy drags the west into an unavoidable large-scale conflict wherein they cannot adopt a neutral stance, but instead must fight alongside Israel and the Jews. Yet one only needs to contrast the diminutive size of Israel in population and geography with a ballistic missile-armed Saudi Arabia with nuclear weapons to realize the sheer absurdity of pursuing this course. No wall, no matter how tall Israel builds, can stop this coming wave of terror.

1. The Saudi oil bombshell, by Michael T Klare, Asia Times Online, June 29, 2005.

2. Where terror and the bomb could meet, by Amir Mir, Asia Times Online, July 7, 2005.

3. Kingdom on Edge, Saudi Arabia, National Geographic magazine, October 2003.

4. Iraq seen emerging as prime training ground for terrorists, by Warren P. Strobel, Knight Ridder Newspapers, July 4, 2005.

Trekkie Tube-Jockeys Watch & Learn

Star Trek the original series was an innovative and creative concept show. Star Trek was one of the best-written shows ever put on television, as well as one of the funniest! Although much of it was purely lighthearted entertainment, often overlooked are the serious philosophical and ethical issues that were showcased. Here are some of my favorite, and most recommended, episodes as well as their significance:

In The Devil in the Dark the crew is called in to aid an underground colony mining a badly needed mineral after a mysterious killer appears and threatens to shut-down operations. Planning to kill the monster Kirk and Spock confront the wounded creature and discover it to be both intelligent and in need of help. They realize the violence was caused by a misunderstanding and though direct communication they find that cooperation is far more beneficial to both sides than war and conflict.

In Who Mourns for Adonis?, the crew is captured by a mysterious force while inspecting yet another standard Earth-like ‘Class M’ Planet’. Greeted by a being who calls himself Apollo while appearing in the form of a Greek god, the crew are not amused by the show but forced to play along anyway. Eventually the crew discerns the secret to Apollo’s energy strength and use the Enterprise to shut the arrogant bastard down after he demands they stay forever and worship him. As a result of the story we are shown that ‘gods’ are simply those able to command great technological power. Kirk says, “We’ve come a long way in 5,000 years.” So, the message is really about outgrowing the need for god figures.

The brazen ambition of power-hungry leaders, like eugenics creation Khan in Space Seed, are only productive when placed in proper social context and environment -- such as a harsh and austere frontier in need of taming and a centralized command necessary for survival.

“This is the first time I’ve heard a malfunction threaten us.”
- A surprised Sulu in Wolf in the Fold as Redjack the ‘demon’ threatens the crew with death after taking over the computer system.

The episode Mirror Mirror, #39, where the crew switch dimensions with their evil parallel counterparts, has more than its share of hilarious moments, but it demonstrates the illogic of Empires and that systems of imperial despotism and exploitation aren’t sustainable. Empires only lead to revolt and collapse since they rely on escalating tribute and subjugation of other people rather than their own development and growth. “In every revolution there’s one man with a vision.” - Kirk to ‘evil’ Spock

The Return of the Archons, #22, is a classic Gene Roddenberry storyline. This episode uses an entertaining allegory to highlight the degrading and stifling influence of faith on the human mind, such as how religion attempts to regulate and control natural urges only to have them leak out in unnaturally extreme behaviors, in this case at the 'festival'. The peace and tranquility that comes from absorbing dissidents into the 'body' of Landru (the God) is merely a façade, with the actual result being the nullification of individual personality and creative motivation. The result is a social order that may contain the peace and predictability of a machine, but at the cost of being unable to deal with unexpected events or situations; Kirk concludes: "Landru must die".

Spectre of the Gun, #56
In the episode Spectre of the Gun, the crew are taken hostage by a self-righteous alien and sentenced to a creative death for trespassing. Near the end of their life, in a recreation of an old West gunfight, the crew knows they will lose so Spock logically ascertains the true nature of the situation and deduces a way out of it. Spock's conclusion: "Physical reality is consistent with universal laws. Where the laws do not operate, there is no reality. We judge reality by the response of our senses. Once we are convinced of the reality of a given situation we abide by its rules."

In the process of their perceived life or death situation the Star Trek crew learns the importance of distinguishing between illusion and reality, as well as the means of using and comprehending the critical separation between mind and substance. The obligatory morality lesson is attached to the end, of course.

Catspaw, #30
Isn't it enough to just accept the way things are, to accept the illusion?! Catspaw is an enlightening episode dealing with levels of consciousness in the human mind and the necessity of seeking an awareness that goes deeper than superficial sensations. The crew encounters two nefarious aliens that use a blend of subterfuge and tricks that play upon human fears and superstitions in order to try and steal the knowledge and resources they need.

One of the aliens (in human form) offers the crew riches and happiness, but then complains that Spock (the logical one) ‘sees everything around him but doesn't believe’.

And what is the poignant message? Why do we need to see through the superstition and illusion even when it seems so convincing and to our immediate benefit? Watch the show and find out! (Answer *)

The Enemy Within
Highlights the necessity of simultaneous good and evil within the framework of existential metaphysics, including shades of Zoroastrianism, when Kirk gets duplicated into amiable and sinister halves. Don't tell me you didn't catch that message?!

The Changeling
Learn from the robot probe Nomad the proper application of the term 'non sequitur', then use it during dinner parties and other social occasions. Be sure to employ a monotone voice! The lesson is the impracticality of ultra-rigid doctrines and adherence to principle regardless of the situation. A machine run solely by a fixed programming, no matter how powerful it may be, still lacks the capacity to adapt like humans can.

A Taste of Armageddon
Two societies electronically calculate and execute war casualties to maintain a perverted sense of sustainability, but Kirk and crew demonstrate that war shouldn't become a painless mechanized 'push-button' affair because random slaughter becomes acceptable conduct. Probably intended as a Cold War parable; when the horrific consequences of war are palpable, dialogue and disarmament becomes the only sane alternative to the mutual suicide of war.

This Side of Paradise
Demonstrates the futility of placid, pleasure seeking and hedonistic lifestyles. Without challenge and discomfort humans stagnate, creating only a vapid continuation of stasis.

What are Little Girls Made of?
Poignantly demonstrates, within an ironic subtext, the differences between man and machine by creating android duplicates. Even with mental consciousness implanted into robotic corporeal likenesses, without emotional decision-making and that error laden fuzzy-logic humans excel at, one is reduced to merely an inferior machine.

By Any Other Name
Simply by existing within a human body one assumes certain flaws, traits and characteristics, which cannot be ignored or avoided, merely regulated with benign acceptance at best or left to run amok at worst. Also note predictable reactions, the ease of 'button pushing' - a social engineering lesson to be sure.

* Seeing though superstition and illusion is necessary to prevent being exploited in life.

< For An Audio Response Click Here >

21.02.03 If the educational system was really about learning then it would actually teach students the process of learning - how to learn - rather than idle facts and lectures. Facts and figures are easily forgotten, but the actual process of learning, training and the ability to go out and find for yourself, stays with you.

The modern educational establishment is based upon ruse and hypocrisy because it claims to be one thing but is actually another, in practice it's just a means of soaking up the youth population to keep them out of the labor pool, minimizing unemployment and job competition. The government could just pay everyone from 18-28 to vacation in Florida and it would be just as economically effective, and probably about as educationally effective as well.

The education of the senses makes men observers, and not only accomplishes the general work of adaptation to the present epoch of civilisation, but also prepares them directly for practical life. We have had up to the present time, I believe, a most imperfect idea of what is necessary in the practical living of life. We have always started from ideas, and have proceeded thence to motor activities; thus, for example, the method of education has always been to teach intellectually, and then to have the child follow the principles he has been taught. In general, when we are teaching, we talk about the object which interests us, and then we try to lead the scholar, when he has understood, to perform some kind of work with the object itself; but often the scholar who has understood the idea finds great difficulty in the execution of the work which we give him, because we have left out of his education a factor of the utmost importance, namely, the perfecting of the senses. I may, perhaps, illustrate this statement with a few examples. We ask the cook to buy only 'fresh fish.' She understands the idea, and tries to follow it in her marketing, but, if the cook has not been trained to recognise through sight and smell the signs which indicate freshness in the fish, she will not know how to follow the order we have given her.
From: The Montessori Method by Maria Montessori, 1912.

Many things seem odd or perplexing when removed from proper context.

Connecting these isolated pieces into a larger picture is a critical part of understanding the puzzles in life.

08.09.02 One thing about education most conveniently ignore is the fact that it can put anything into peoples heads, and that information is not necessarily useful, edifying, or even helpful. Indeed, the line between 'education' and 'indoctrination' is rarely distinguishable. Education is like a syringe and learning is like the chemical substance in the syringe. The education process is injecting those substances into the mind, but what's actually being learned may well be poison, a wonder drug, or just a placebo.

And just because your mind is being injected with information inside a school, state run or private, doesn't necessarily mean what you're learning is healthy for you just as 'shooting-up' poison in a hospital or a back-alley won't change the fact your harming yourself.

Everyday, students are being injected with the syringe of education and the harmful chemical of useless and erroneous information that clouds the mind, and crowds out legitimate knowledge. What public action is being taken over this?!

Education today more than ever, amidst dwindling budgets, falling test scores, violence, and highly-charged political battles, deserves a thorough and critical reevaluation. The first question to ask should be - is anyone really learning? The second would be, if so is it actually beneficial to the student and society, or just make-work and resource-wasting? Third would be a sober and objective assessment of what students really be learning that will actually be of practical use and lifetime value.

Defeating the Sucker Society

03.09.01 It's remarkable how poor the average person is at judging human character, and not just movie stars or politicians but typical peers or superiors. Such a crucial skill when not picked up quickly through trial and error points to a distinct intellectual limitation, one that a wise society would directly work to correct through education at a young age. Instead we get the usual one line story -- trust police, parents and authority and distrust everyone else, black and white, get it got it good next ...

The attachment to fantasy and myth promoted by the entertainment society doesn't help either, merely exacerbating the popular tendency to see what's desired or the popular perception delivered through the eyes of mass-media fears and stereotypes. Adherence to the world of fantasy erodes the fundamental like-skill of being capable of distinguishing between facade and inner substance. No wonder P.T. Barnum said a sucker's born every minute. The inability to accurately judge character and trustworthiness creates an easily exploitable opportunity for charlatans, crooks, and the dishonest to fleece, rip-off and burn financially or emotionally. Should we be surprised at the high rate of divorce (50% and up), the high rates of spousal abuse, and a general inability to successfully socialize within Americanized cultures?

The solution isn't just about training disbelief or belief, it's about utilizing an algorithm for cleaving the trustworthy from the disingenuous and generating a clear understanding of why. For example, people that consistently act on what they verbalize are more trustworthy than ones that promise grand things and then fail to follow through on them. This is a very important aspect of the education process receiving scant attention except through the simplistic reflex of tradition. Of course, between now and then authorities can sleep easier when they know the general populace has neither the desire nor the capacity to critically analyze the righteousness of their positions of power.

Maria Montessori, a brilliant Italian woman known for Montessori schooling, was on the right track here because she sought to improve the methodology of teaching. She's even on, what is it, the 50,000 Lira note? I don't remember, but the point is there's a likeness of her visage gracing Italian money -- she's there and you're not. So even regardless of the process or success' of the Montessori method, it does seem to be a good idea that works well, if nothing else it points toward a profitable path of social reform, because to really change the world you've got to give people the tools to improve themselves. And of course I'm referring more to adults than to children but hey, we all start at the same place anyway.

Illiteracy was a major obstacle to defeating the slavery of agrarian society. Once people learned to read, even if it was only the Bible and church hymnals at first, they could improve their lot in life and get better paying jobs living in a crowded polluted city instead of a dung-reeking dilapidated shed on the flood plain below the castle. And their descendants even had credit cards!

Television is a very effective communications tool, but all tools can be misused and this one is no different. TV, as it is almost always used today, is nothing more than a means of inculcating ignorance into the general populace. Television is an ignorance generator.

The Dumb and The Dumbed-Down

30.04.01 Although the phrase "dumbing-down" is frequently used within the context of the educational system, it's actually not a valid term because the contemporary education system doesn't make students dumber. Education can't make a person smarter, nor can it make them less intelligent. This is a common but dangerous myth, that education creates intelligence, or in this case, has the power to destroy it. This is simply impossible unless the brain is physically damaged. Instead, the fallacy is manifest that rote recitation of drivel and similar meaningless facts are defined as intelligence. In other words, the best mimic of teacher-inculcated information is the smartest. Still, the phrase makes even less sense since this would only make the students less capable of being indoctrinated with 'corrupt' ideas and 'propaganda'. Nonetheless, the education system is still letting down both society and the students.

The primary purpose of education, largely overlooked today, is simply to build a framework, a personal algorithm on how to learn. It's imparting successful methods of learning, not teaching raw facts and figures, because most material itself is always forgotten in a matter of weeks or years anyway! Algebra anyone? This way people that want to learn can do so more quickly and with greater effectiveness, and those that don't can get on with their life counting coupons or sewing mailbags. Intelligence defines education returns, not the other way around, because a smart person will learn regardless of the ineptitude of the teacher, the opacity of the textbooks, or the distractions of the classroom settings. The only thing a school needs to be a school is a quite room to read and a voluminous library with access to the Internet. How does the parable go? Give a hungry man a fish and he's full for a day, but teach him to catch fish and he's good for a lifetime.

Burn the textbooks, they're riddled with errors yet they cost a fortune, how can anyone learn anything valid from them? I rarely if ever did and I doubt anyone else has either.

Fire the teachers, what the hell good are they? If one needs a taskmaster to be forced to learn something, how much concept retention is that going to generate? And what is the point of teaching kids what they don't want to learn? Does anyone retain what they find dull or uninteresting - hardly. What we retain most what we like and find interesting. Teachers create nothing but higher tax rates for the citizenry, resentment, and lack of respect by the students, and the questionably useful skills of how to survive in a violent prison environment.

Dull minds find fewer things interesting than brilliant ones, ergo the role of the role model or teacher is to broaden awareness of available subject material, not minutia and figures or dates. The benefit of a teacher comes not from revealing new ideas and information, and then explaining how to learn more about it. It's true that dull topics can be made intriguing, but only to a point, and this is largely predicated upon the enthusiasm of the teacher and their creativity in presentation, both of which are totally lacking in the majority of punch-clock, underpaid educators today. School just wastes time and teaches the wrong things, like cynicism, violence, violence abatement techniques, and escapism.

Education should be voluntary because otherwise it's forced and it will never have any positive lasting value to anyone. This is rudimentary psychology, anytime something is made mandatory, after being voluntary, its value to the individual plummets a million-fold. So the task is not to increase mandatory obligations but to minimize them to the absolute basics essentials. The only thing that should be mandatory, because it's so critical, is how to read, how to gain and utilize information, and how to adapt to new circumstances. The mental framework and valid methodologies are what everyone can use to learn and understand on their own.

Even the slowest student can pick the necessary basics of how to read, how to write, and how to communicate by grade six.  Beyond that level it's the individuals role to pursue their own interests, if any. And here the options are manifest, work as in community service until old enough to work independently for pay or study and seek skills through appropriate programs based on interests and goals of the individual and of course employment opportunities as appropriate. Provide the time and freedom to learn on your own, but for those that can't and some structure give them the role models, goals, and feedback, they need to learn and to gain the skills necessary to do what they want to do.

Furthermore, teachers, parents or whoever is best as a role model(s), should use their position responsibly and avoid becoming didactic and autocrat by suggesting what to read, what to write about, what to paint, to give new ideas and new topics to learn about in the personal quest of every student to improve themselves.

The rest are details seeking solutions at the appropriate time -- after the entire contemporary educational system is abolished.

The Root of All Evil

16.04.01 If one examines the profiles of those most successful in business, and other ambition-driven competitive endeavors, they all approach with a diametrically opposed viewpoint to the popular notions on the prevalence of fairness and honesty. They expect to find dishonesty, they expect to be cheated and to reciprocate, because they have a fundamentally negative and adversarial view of human nature. Indeed we even have an axiomatic phrase to describe this phenomenon - 'nice guys finish last'.

This isn't necessarily false altruism or disingenuousness, it's just an awareness that life isn't the pink and blue pastel-shaded padded nursery that Sunday school and many formative role models teach children at a young age. But the few groups who've excused themselves from such nonsense, either through acquired wisdom or slavish devotion to archaic moral codes, have a distinct advantage.

Through the largely successful yet misguided efforts to create a fair society, human nature has responded with the expectation of honest and straightforward reciprocal behaviour. Human nature as primarily superficial and fair, with just a few bad apples thrown in, is the erroneous interpretation permeating western culture. This complacency allows for the easy exploitation by those who hold the opposite view. Altruism is a dangerous display for all parties involved due to the enormous potential for misinterpretation of the other parties motivations. While the receiver generally interprets the gift as magnanimous generosity, the giver may well be using it as a tool of leverage for buying favors.

The soft majority watch the nightly news and expect it to be completely factual and evenhanded - after all why would someone with a facade as respectable as Peter Jennings lie? How could a paper as legitimate as the New York Times have ulterior motives and an agenda not patently obvious and openly stated? How could a person be something different from what they say they are!? Inculcated naïveté? Or just trained simpletons mostly too stupid to think otherwise? More than anything else trained expectations dictate future actions because they form habitual methodological social responses.

There can be no misunderstanding here, the supreme enemy of healthy behaviour and a healthy society is the desire to morally impose theologically warped concepts of fairness, otherwise known as the sick, self perpetuating sympathy system. This is enemy number one, the root of all evil, the entangling thorn covered week that must be ripped from the soil and consumed in fire before anything meaningful can improve.

Shakespeare Unmasked: The Life of a Rip-Off Artist

24.10.00 & 02.09.01 I always knew something was just not quite right about that guy. Turns out one of his most famous (and now exponentially trite) plays, "Romeo and Juliet" is the exact same story as that of Thisbe!

Thisbe a maiden of Babylon, was forbidden by her parents to marry her beloved Pyramus. The two lovers defied their families by exchanging vows through a chink in the wall which divided their houses, and plotted to elope together, fixing upon a white mulberry bush at the tomb of Ninus as the appointed spot. Arriving at the site, Thisbe was surprised by a lioness, fresh from the kill, and, in her haste to escape into a nearby cave, let slip her veil. The lioness mauled the veil, coating it with the blood of her prey. On his arrival, Pyramus discovered the cloth and believing it to be stained with the blood of his love, stabbed himself through the heart. Thisbe, coming out from hiding, found Pyramus' body and overcome with grief, threw herself upon his sword. Their mingled blood seeped into the ground and turned the fruit of the mulberry tree black as a sign of mourning for them.

Come on! One is forced to wonder what else 'The Bard' has plagiarized, hmm?

I think the appeal of Shakespeare resides in the fact he wrote for the actors rather than as a detached narrator. The endless exposition and open-ended opportunities for soliloquy have provided the unparalleled vehicle for the insecure and flamboyant to feed their starving egos and showboat in front of a crowd. Many other issues come to mind as well, such as the consistent popularity of misogynism, incest, regicide, subterfuge, and the murder of fowl. And of course the ultimate question - could all this have been avoided if instead of Shakespeare they'd had HBO to watch? And what about those terrible phrases and allusions, I mean, "now I am worm food", is that funny? Is it romantic? Oh I'm just desperate to know. Yeah nice play Shakespeare ...

All right, you've been a great audience, thanks! I'm outta' here!

A New Labor-Education Nexus I

19.10.00 Here's a novel idea: government should pay for college schooling with one condition: the students must spend the summer months doing agricultural work (like helping with crop harvests). Which, believe it or not, they used to do anyhow but now the agribusiness conglomerates hire thousands of unskilled and underpaid migrant laborers. The beauty of this idea is that it would remove much of the need for farm subsidies, since their highest expense is usually labor, and remove the need for importing labor. Not only that but it would keep the kids out of trouble, and give them a sense of community awareness and participation. So, instead of going to a beach, jumping out of windows stoned, and generally getting fucked-up in various ways, they could actually be doing something productive and get a free, or at least subsidized, education too! Not only that but they might figure out that milk comes from a cow and not that disembodied hand that puts it on the shelves from behind the dairy case. Imagine that.

A New Labor-Education Nexus II

10.02.01 A novel solution for the national labor and education dysfunction would be to establish a job pool for 18-25 year olds as an alternative, or in addition, to college. This system of opportunities would consist of short or long term positions with participating employers, allowing students to try out different jobs, work in any field they like for a time, anything from a few weeks to months. The idea is to be able to freely choose the work field or employer. This would give people a unique chance to learn what they want to do for a career, as opposed to merely hearing about it or getting advice, when they don't even know what the work is really like. It would also provide a large supply of labor, although perhaps unreliable, for companies to draw skilled and ambitious workers, and also a good way to recruit smart and capable employees.

Cooperation, organization, planning, foresight, where is it anyway? The lack of interface between education and employment is terrible, the U$A doesn't coordinate any of this except federal financial aid. In the UK for example the higher education system is centrally coordinated. The U$A is enormously larger, yet it has a chaotic system of separate colleges, sub-colleges, universities and polytechnics all with their own standards, acceptance hurdles, loans etc. Confusion and dumb chance is, not surprisingly, the outcome.

The Importance of Education

12.06.00 Mass social control relies on numerous underpinnings, manipulation of the whole may seem daunting but patience and persistence, as well as a repetitive and singular approach, will yield results. Once you control the media outlets no one will realize how bad things really are, and without a reference point they won't ever be sure things could be better, or realize who is at fault and start creating trouble. Control the teachers, control the schools and produce the course material. First subversion, then conversion as the VietCong always said. Once the kids are convinced of the righteousness of the establishment they'll become useful allies to the system. They can be used as spies in the household, monitoring the grumbling and secret anti-establishment desires of parents. Good cop bad-cop, the teacher is a friend because they don't have to discipline, the parent bad because they say 'no'. The kids gravitate towards the one and resent the other.

Control the workplace, nationalize industry, and control wages to keep costs low and productivity high. Liberate the sexes thereby doubling your workforce. This has the added benefit of weakening the family and moving that nuclear force from the hands of the parents into the hands of the educational system (see above). Both sexes become worker drones with long hours and minimal pay to waste on frivolous diversions, seditious movements, and unhealthy influences, drugs, booze, shopping, and so on. Control the police and military, abuse of power on an unsafe population instills a sense of paranoia and legality. Keep them busy, tired and hungry, then they'll be too weak, destabilized, and fearful to mount outright challenges to power.

Blame all the people's problems on national enemies and anti-establishmentarians. Everything that the system does that's deemed bad or unpleasant by the people blame on enemies too. Say anything enough times and everyone will believe it. Good-cop bad-cop again on a wide scale. Enemy states are the ones perpetrating all the evils upon the people, not the government providing benefits and luxuries in small doses, all of which are trumped up and cleverly magnified, scraps become feasts.

By vilifying seditious and anti-establishment elements fear of association and herd mentalities kick in, neatly dividing the masses into supporters and enemies. Carefully pick from the herd of national enemies and toss them into tightly-scripted show trials based on black and white morality. Build a behaviorist feedback loop demonstrating the indomitable forces of the regime and the inevitable grim fate of national enemies. Just as long as you drown out the voices of dissent it works fine. And when public grumbling reaches uncontrollable proportions just initiate a 'revolution', via official channels and official people of course. Find a few high level officials (fall guy) you wanted to get rid of anyway and set them up as symbols of the old, failed order being eliminated.

Change the name repackage the product - they never figure it out because everyone's too busy trying to scrape-by and earn a living. Fill in the blanks, connect the dots, mass-produced authoritarianism, it works anywhere on any group.

Regardless of culture, the difference between education and indoctrination is often indistinguishable

And the ones that think they're immune are the easiest to co-opt, because they never see it coming. But the best part is that even the ones that should know better, the intellectuals, are actually the easiest to convince because they think they'll be the new elite after the revolution when a system of 'reason and enlightenment' are established.

Communism has such a scientifically rational approach to behavioral control of the masses, I have to appreciate the simplicity of it all. The tactics aren't anything new historically speaking, just distilled down into reliable maxims and rational approaches. For control of the many by the few it works quite well. The amazing part is how successful brazen lies are in convincing the public of the righteousness of the regime. Dictatorships is called democracy and freedom is called Imperialism; for example North Korea is officially known as the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea. But then democracy is fundamentally a communist concept so let us not muddle the picture with our class-centric bias'.

None of this is made self-evident by reading Marx, but words really don't matter anyway. What we see is the classic schism between ideas and practice, the ideological disconnect I've already beaten to death before. Use the dialectic, think the opposite, and always remember: "The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it." -Karl Marx.

Education and Negative Evolution

08.01.00 Educators and legislators continually decry the declining standards of state sponsored primary education. Reactionary maneuvers and dumbing-down seem the most popular response to this perceived failure to educate properly.

The logic goes that if the standardized test scores are not acceptable the solution is to simply lower the difficulty level of the tests. Yet that reaction consistently fails to achieve the desired results. The unchallenged students have even less desire to pay attention, while the students that have difficulties usually don’t care, or don't try anyway, so the results are the same.

Government run schools are experiencing a negative evolution similar to what's occurring in certain ossified sectors of corporate America and federal bureaucracy. The ‘good’ people leave (in this case for private schools, at least the ones that can afford to) because they’re concerned and unhappy with a grim situation, while the ‘bad’ ones stay because they don’t care and have lower standards anyway. As the majority demographic see-saw tips the other way within these institutions the overall values also change to reflect the new levels of accepted standards.

Something must be done! Legislators spring into action, setting new policy to appease the unhappy sectors of society, yet simultaneously avoiding offending the increasing numbers of uneducable and undisciplined students (and parents).

"There will be no limits to what can be achieved in the state sector," a naive but nonetheless heavily optimistic statement made by Britain’s Education Secretary concerning their new plan to ‘shake up’ the (failing) education system. This new system features truly revolutionary ideas such as longer school hours and increasing the mandatory age to 19. Exactly what disenfranchised students need, after all, if something doesn’t work it must mean they need more of it, right?

You know, considering how much money and hand-wringing is spent on the issue of mandatory public education maybe we should ask ourselves if we really need this at all? Would our society be any worse off if no one had to go to primary school? Or what about lowering mandatory age for attendance say from grade 12 down to grade 6? Why not set up a public resource bank, something like computer labs, libraries, tutors etc for students that want to learn between age 12 and 20. Hell, why not make this available to 50, 60 or 120 year olds? After all by simply forcing kids to go to school that doesn’t mean they’ll actually learn anything. Why not remove that useless and draconian restriction and let the ones that want to learn actually study the things that they're interested in and at their own pace. Or at the very least cut class times (the absolute biggest waste of time), down to say 3 or 4 hours, and use the rest for network study or one-on-one teacher help.

And screw the damn tests, what does a test tell anyone but how well someone takes a test? Does it really demonstrate a working knowledge of the subject? Rarely. Educational managers are so desperate to quantify pointless milestones that they miss the concept. The purpose is for students to gain knowledge and skills useful and valuable to them as productive adult citizens. Standardized tests don’t educate.

Modern education techniques are flawed because they rest on the assumption that people are all the same, little machines that can be programmed with a book and pencil. The reasoning goes that each kid is interchangeable, and as long as they show up for class and listen to the teacher they'll soak up this information and be able to apply it. Then they take the test, which will clearly demonstrate gained knowledge, and voila – another smart happy productive clone is manufactured. Not likely.

If the government could just relax their death grip of authority on those young minds, and the desperate need to measure and rank everyone from K-12, maybe some real learning could take place. But alas I don’t see that happening anytime soon, and not only that but anything that would involve putting ineffectual teachers, paper-shuffling bureaucrats, and union dictators out of work will undoubtedly meet determined opposition. So, I could spend hours coming up with better ways to learn than the hackneyed classroom-teacher method but for now it’s pretty much moot anyhow. Even after numerous school shootings administrators still don’t have a clue, positive and effective changes are definitely a very dim light on the far horizon.

School is all wrong

26.05.99 When I think back, school should have been 'go at my own pace' rather than at the plodding 'everyone together' pace. The problem was it became a prison sentence where one can either try hard, or not at all, but either way you have to stay there the whole semester! I didn’t care, and felt it was a waste because I was forced into this time-slavery; I had to go at the pace of the slowest member of the team. This is the fundamental flaw of modern education – egalitarian teaching. It's amazing how much more I could have learned if I just went to the library during those five hours a week of class, instead of sitting through algebra lectures. This is the greatest tragedy in America today: a generation of youth whose talent and effort is cynically wasted in a lock-up, time sponge system of stifling, density-based schooling.

Myth #64: Education Creates Intelligence

04.11.98 Our society places far too much significance on ‘education’. Education is this mythical process that somehow turns lifeless, dumb and uninspired blobs of clay into bright and productive members of society.

This is really the opposite of what happens. Education doesn’t make people intelligent, the intelligent are just more active participants in the education process.

Education is an arbitrary framework that our society uses to judge the ability of individuals to be good members of civilization. We could change the name, or even change the rules of what ‘education’ does, and it would still fulfill the same function for society. Much like the mazes for rats, education is a series of rules and tests used to judge social congruency not create it. A lack of education doesn’t make people uncivil. Education is free for anyone who wants it; the education process may be legally mandatory but participation is fundamentally by choice. In other words no one can make you learn.

But the myth continues. Common belief has it that crime, poverty, and nearly every other ill of society stem from a lack of ‘education’. Often an absence of quality (read expensive) schooling is labeled as the reason that the troubled segments of society remain mired in problems. Yet never has any legitimate study shown that the amount of money put into an educational program increased the number of successful students. A school without any money can still teach students, all it takes is the motivation of the teacher and pupil.

The fact is that certain people are more capable of successfully integrating into society and becoming productive members than others. Good or bad, education is the yardstick used to determine this ability. If it wasn’t education it would be something else, because such an instrument is not only necessary for maintaining a civilization it's a hallmark of civilizations itself.

Finally, popular myth states that ‘smart’ and intelligent people are the ones that earn the best grades in school. Indeed this thought process is what drives educators to lower the passing standards in the belief that it will create intelligent students. Education does nothing of the sort! Education standards continue to slide in order to maintain the ratio of successful graduates to failures. But this is not only futile it's ridiculous! Why have a testing system if it doesn't accurately judge ability?

There's a major difference between an educated person and an intelligent person. The classic example is Albert Einstein who was a flop in school and could barely pass math even with intensive tutoring, yet he eventually became a physicist! Einstein had intelligence but he lacked education. Education doesn’t create intelligence, it just highlights it. Even the mortally stupid can be educated, but they can’t be made wise or smart no matter how much money is put into the program.

The Nature of Contemporary Public Education

16.05.96 School, which now consists mostly of tests, is not about learning but about regurgitating lecture and book data. The degree to which one accurately mimics the teacher's opinions as lectured is the straight ‘A’ student. The lower grade student relays the data with ‘improper’ variations. Strongly ego-based individuals alter their [reality] information; they imprint on their memory more than weaker egos. Every memory is interpreted and processed and inevitably altered by the self before it's stored. This affects the ‘replay’ as during tests.

Every teacher grades according to how well the regurgitation compares to their own interpretation. The degree of variance is the degree of failure as viewed by the teacher.

The inert, stupid quality of current customs perverts learning into a willingness to follow where others point the way, into conformity, constriction, surrender of skepticism and experiment. When we think of the docility of the young we first think of the stocks of information adults wish to impose and the ways of acting they want to reproduce. Then we think of the insolent coercions, the insinuating briberies, the pedagogic solemnities by which the freshness of youth can be faded and its vivid curiosities dulled. Education becomes the art of taking advantage of the helplessness of the young; the forming of habits becomes a guarantee for the maintenance of hedges of custom.
From: Human Nature And Conduct, by John Dewey, 1922.

'The Human Condition' by Rene Magritte, 1933