Fred Reed says what he thinks and doesn't give a fuck, which is a rare trait at least in people who will put their name to things. (I keep mine off of here for work reasons; when I'm retired it'll be full attribution if this place lasts that long). I don't agree with everything he says, but it's rare that he says anything that I couldn't make a case for, and the linked post is well worth paying attention to:
The night closes in. Read the surveys of what children know, what students in universities know. Approximately nothing. We have become wanton morons. As the intellectual shadows fall again, as literacy declines and minds grow dim in the new twilight, who will copy the parchments this time?
No longer are we a schooled people. Brash new peasants grin and peck at their iPods. Unknowing, incurious, they gaze at their screens and twiddle, twiddle. They will not preserve the works of five millenia. They cannot. They do not even know why.
Twilight really does come. Sales of books fall. Attention spans shorten. Music gives way to angry urban grunting. The young count on their fingers when they do not have a calculator, know less by the year. We have already seen the frist[sic] American generations less educated than their parents. College graduates do not know when World War One happened, or what the Raj was. They have read nothing except the nothing that they read, and little of that. Democracy was an interesting thought.
This hit a chord with me because I read a LOT and I notice two things. One, I can never read enough to know all that I wish I did, and two, hardly anyone else even cares what's going on unless they see it on TV or Facebook. I don't do small talk worth a damn, because it's BORING. I want an exchange of ideas (the partial purpose of this blog, alas unrealized) and I want people to THINK.
We are a highly specialized society, at least the parts of it still doing anything but it's difficult for students to even get those specialized skills let alone know much general history and a smattering of philosophy to round them out. I'm not big on philosophy myself except as it helps us to understand how and why we understand/believe things, but ignorance is no virtue.
Fred of course is particularly referring to the US, but the same rot is apparent across most of the Western world. High School is irrelevant to the job market, so kids spend four years + to get a piece of paper that will allow them to pay tens of thousands of dollars/pounds/whatever and several more of the best years of their lives for a shot at the job market. Sounds to me like indentured service, without the guarantee of work and a chance to pay it back.
More Fred on education:
Home-schooling, it seems to me, becomes a towering social responsibility. I have actually seen a teacher saying that parents should not let children learn to read before they reach school. You see, it would put them out of synch with the mammalian larvae that children are now made to be. Bright children not only face enstupiation and hideous boredom in schools taught by complacent imbeciles. No. They are also encouraged to believe that stupidity is a moral imperative.
Once they begin reading a few years ahead of their grade, which commonly is at once, school becomes an obstacle to advancement. This is especially true for the very bright. To put a kid with an IQ of 150 in the same room with a barely literate affirmative-action hire clocking 85 is child abuse.
If I win the lottery, my kids are going to private schools unless I can find a good paedagogue for home, but I would pull them out of the public school tomorrow if I had an affordable option. Stupidity and regimentation is moving into Canadian Public schools, but MY 7-year-old at least knows what a Monotreme is (because I told her and looked it up to make sure I was right); I wonder if her teacher does? We're not at the pass Fred describes yet, and I hope we can keep it that way.
Everything you could ever hope to know is available online; the only thing a teacher is required for is to guide students to knowledge and teach them to think and ask real questions. In my experience, there are few people who have those traits, so the odds of getting a teacher like that are slim. There is as Fred says still hope for bright kids, especially the bright motivated ones. Even the less-bright motivated ones (like me) can do a lot of damage with what they can learn from the net, though us older types still like books. I have enough books on certain topics that I can cross-reference stuff and can now (at least try to) use the Internet to resolve discrepancies.
Fred laments the passing of a sound general education, and that is a Bad Thing, but if we're honest about it, how many people ever got that much out of theirs? It was a particular segment of the bell curve, the same segment which can sort itself out today if it is even pointed in the right direction.
I'd like to think of myself as doing my part to keep civilization alive on the 'net, and I may retract (with new information that proves to me that I was incorrect), but I will never apologize for saying what I think. Evey little bit helps keep the civilization's lights on, and I'm raising my kids to do the same, i.e. THINK, not regurgitate catechisms of whatever provenance. With luck I'll succeed, and with more luck my kids will be able to find friends they can actually talk to.
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