Minutae And Intersections

What is wrong with modern education systems?  Why can't we turn out smart people?  And what kind of system created the giants of history?

Modern education has become the domain of "educational theorists" who spend their time worrying about techniques and feel-good pablum that does nothing to educate.  Silly little trust exercises, group think workshops and rote jingoism are not education.  They are indoctrination.  Indoctrination does not teach one how to think, but what to think.

Students graduate with no framework on which to build a lifetime of learning.  In fact, most come out of school thinking they now know everything they will ever need to know.  This is a horrible and frightening fact that serves only those who need button-pushers and lever-pullers.  The biggest problem is that the corporate world is fast replacing the pushers and pullers with a far more (so they think) malleable and controllable workforce.  And even bigger problem is that these poor folks have no tools to think their way out of the coming wave of mass worker displacement.

It is a fact that many of the giants, on whose shoulders we stand, did not receive the standard 16-year education we consider necessary today.  People like Thomas Edison, Edgar Allan Poe and Albert Einstein had only the most cursory educations, by our current standards, yet they changed the world with little more than the ability to read, write and cipher, and a strong impulse towards autodidacticism (self-learning).

One thing notably missing in today's world of corporate education are schools of thought, even though the idiom still exists.  Once upon a time, different schools had different approaches to learning and the belief systems they espoused.  A quick look at art history shows that most of the great movements in art came out of specific schools with innovative approaches to the philosophy and techniques that creates art.  The Bauhaus, for instance, distinguished itself by merging handcrafts with fine art, and teaching a "form follows function" philosophy of art and architecture.  Aristotle, Plato and Euclid all created schools to promote their unique views and interpretations of the real world.

This approach had the advantage of allowing students to choose for themselves which philosophies best suited their own weltanschauungs and created a true marketplace of ideas.  Professors survived by having world views that were more actionable than another.  One chose a university, not by success on the football field, but by which one taught the most successful ideas and processes.

In the modern system, there is little difference in schools anywhere.  One is taught the Big Bang, Evolution, Electrical Theory and so on as if it is all set in stone, with no room for improvement or, especially new ideas.  Instead of reading the giants and discussing their propositions, and then arguing with the professors, one sits quietly in lectures, memorizes "facts" and vomits them onto bubble forms, never having learned why or whether there are competing ideas.

In Western education (Eastern followed a similar track), there were the Trivium and Quadrivium.  The Trivium we all know as Grammar, Logic and Rhetoric (input/processing/output).  The Quadrivium consists of Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, and Astronomy (observation of the Natural World).  Together, these are the seven Liberal Arts that every educated person was required to know in order to think critically and express their ideas coherently.  Only after mastering the Liberal Arts could one go on to specialize in the Practical Arts (law, medicine, etc.) or Trades (finance, manufacturing, etc.).

This is radically different from the namby-pamby Educational Theory approach.  Educational Theory seeks the simplest and most effective means to stuff information into a brain.  It does nothing to teach processing and expression (at least non-emotional kinds).  It is experiential rather than intelectual, and focuses on "approaching a child at their developmental level," rather than challenging the child to rise up to something greater.

No wonder the vast majority of kids today are deathly bored in school.  No challenges to learning and a future of drone living pulling one specific lever and pushing one specific button.

On top of these radically different approaches to learning and content, there are no options in schools of thought.  The information at Harvard is the same as the information as Cal Tech, with the only possible differences in the organization of the chapters of the "professor's" textbooks.

Even worse, there is no sense of connection between disciplines.  In other words, there is no philosophical connection between the arts and sciences.  Cosmology and Philosophy are just credits on the transcript, not a means of uniting diverse information into a coherent picture of the Universe.  Without the tools of critical thinking, kids can't take new information, analyze it and plug it into a resolved tapestry of understanding.  And without that ability, there can be no new ideas, processes or insights.

The current technique of education presents a finish picture to young minds.  When new information comes along, the mind tries to fit it into the finished picture.  If it doesn't fit, it is discarded without any attempt to modify or interpret the information with a basic set of tools.  Thus, radically new ideas are thrown out because no one can analyze the structure of the idea or express it with any kind of coherence.

I was lucky.  I had some very intelligent teachers, beginning with my parents.  My teachers spent a lot of time showing me that class work was only a taste of what is available.  I was taught how to be an autodidact, a self-teacher.  I was given the tools to analyze and express new ideas, and incorporate them into my weltanschauung.

People are amazed at how many languages I speak (17 with 4 fluent).  It's easy, actually.  Once you master grammar, the rest is plugging in vocabulary.  Grammar is more or less the same in every human form of communication.  There are subjects, verbs, objects, qualities, quantities, and time.  That's it!  The rest is just learning how to say "green" with different words.

Grammar teaches framework.  Logic teaches structure.  Rhetoric teaches expression.  Music teaches harmony.  Geometry teaches Nature.  Astronomy teaches place.  Arithmetic teaches quantification.  Together, they form a complete image of the Universe we call Philosophy, and Philosophy leads to Cosmology, which is speculation on how it all began and how it will all end.

What a sad, tiny little Universe today's students must inhabit.  They are presented with a complete story.  The walls are already built and they only need to run around touching up the plaster and paint.  Nothing to discover.  Nothing to invent.  No room for changing the world.  WYSIWYG.  And the only thing you are allowed to see is what "they" tell you to see.

Without the basic tools, these poor young minds have no way to teach themselves, and worse, no desire, because they believe everything is "settled science."  They resign themselves to a lifetime of pushing and pulling, never knowing how vast their potential truly is.  With a steady steam of cinematic history and "unreality" (a.k.a. Virtual Reality), they can't even distinguish between what is real and what is complete fantasy.  How can you evaluate a film "based on a true story" if you have never studied history and don't know what a book is.

Truly, the only answer is to become an autodidact first, then teach your children, as well.  We cannot depend on ANY schools in the modern system to actually educate anyone.  They are pusher-and-puller factories.  If you want children who will change the world and have any hope of becoming true leaders, then the process begins with your own habits.

Turn off the teevee.  Use your computer for research and reading in your spare time.  Write a blog to clarify your thoughts and challenge others to think about new things.  The place to start is HERE.  It's never too late to improve yourself.

The rest will follow.

Readin', Ritin' n Cypherin'

You've been with the professors
And they've all liked your looks
With great lawyers you have
Discussed lepers and crooks
You've been through all of
F. Scott Fitzgerald's books
You're very well read
It's well known.

But something is happening here
And you don't know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones ?
-Bob Dylan, Ballad of a Thin Man

What is education?

Looks like the current, near-global paradigm is stuffing kids into a room and filling full of the exact same information, sprinkled liberally with propaganda. At some point, they are encouraged to 'specialize' into so field or another and then spend the remained of their matriculation focusing on one thing.

Seems to me this is completely bass-ackwards.

Once upon a time, there were different schools of thought. There were platonics, aristotelians, nihilists, religionists, and scientists. There were weltanschauungs and competing viewpoints. That model produced legendary thinkers who drew upon multiple disciplines to gain insight and inspiration.

Somewhere along the line, we got derailed into this conformist model, where everyone must learn the same mountain of 'facts' and the same interpretation of those facts, and then, to the exclusion of all other information, begin a career building walls to protect just certain 'facts,' to the exclusion of all other 'facts.'

From where I sit, this seems to have produced legendary morons.

During my college days, the most memorable moments were when I tied some historical event to a scientific break-through or social change. One really good writer to this kind of thinking is Daniel Boorstein, who could effortlessly connect the invention of sewing machines to the development of credit cards, or so it seemed.

Things like transcepts and flying buttresses led to explosions in architecture and grand works such as the Hajia Sofia and Chartres cathedral.

The concept of the photon led to pointilism and ultimately to digital photography. Photography freed paitners to explore impressionism, cubism and geometrics.

Knowing little things can be fun also, like knowing that 'terrific' comes from 'terror,' which comes from the Latin, which equals the Greek 'deimos,' which is the root of 'demon' and a moon of Mars. The moons of Mars are called Phobos and Deimos, which can be translated as 'fear' and 'loathing,' which was a popular title for Hunter S. Thompson stories. Not to mention that the names were suggested by Johnathan Swift in 'Gulliver's Travels,' 200 years before the discovery of the moons.

Swift also wrote a famous essay called "A Modest Proposal," in which he advocates eating the children of Ireland as a means of alleviating poverty and unemployment in 17th century Ireland, which oddly sounds like the EU's current proposal to fix Ireland's current economic crisis. Thus, the 'war on terror' is a 'war of the worlds,' and a war on the children of Ireland, and everyone seems to think that just terrific. Reductio ad absurdum ipso facto annuit coeptis.

See how much fun it is?

One can successfully argue that thinkers such as Einstein, who was mired in his focus on calculations, has done more damage to physics than the Newtonian/Keplerian schools ever did. But what's worse is that schools teach Einsteinian space/time as gospel, when in fact nearly every observation of the Universe dispels the theory. Yet, competing schools of thought, such as Eletric Universe are roundly dismissed because the people who conceived of it weren't physicists.

Modern banking and economics, the core and root of the global money mess, are the product of a man called Keynes, whose mental masturbations have become dogma, thus trapping economists into thought boxes from which they can not escape. The Austrian school, on the other hand, is derided and ignored, though its paradigm makes far more sense and is historically sound.

And so the Box Paradigm is perpetuated across time. Schools pound one viewpoint into a child's head, and then for life they are trapped in an artificial construct of someone else's making. If they dare think outside the box, they are failed and relegated to ditch-digging for the rest of their lives.

Finally, not only do we force children to constrain their thoughts within narrow boxes of perception, but we do so by stuffing them in boxes 8 hours a day. No wonder we can't seem to produce great thinkers any more. The most exciting thought exercises in a modern school occur when globalist change agents come and pretend to have think-tank like sessions, but where conclusions are masterfully steered towards pre-ordained 'facts.' Case in point: Al Gore.

With the judicious application of multi-media and internet, combined with platonic dialogues and true investigative thinking, we could be producing Leonardo da Vincis by the hundreds. We could realize a tremendous New Age of Wisdom by teaching children to really think, to investigate multiple lines of inquiry, to open themselves to new connections and conclusions.

Instead, we close their minds, lock them in Schroedenger's Box and throw away the key. We continue to bus them into boxes and stuff them full of 'that's the way we've always done it' and hope for a better future. No wonder we are mired in one pile of stupidity after another.

Given the modern tools available, and simple discussions that cost nothing, children could be taught to really think. They would be encouraged to make connections where none existed before. They would stretch their minds to apply a 'fact' from one discipline to solving a 'puzzle' in another. The most prized degree would become a PhD in Everything, rather than some increasingly narrow line of thinking that leads ultimately to a cul-de-sac. Children would join dots rather than separate them, thus causing an explosion in true understanding of the Universe!

But, alas, perhaps that's the point: we can't have people thinking now can we? They might devise some way to extract energy from the ether for eternal free power. They might devise modes of transportation that are cheap, private and don't require vast infrastructures to operate.

They might become free individuals, sovereign and whole, answerable to their own God and unhindered in their exploration of our vast and wonderous Universe.

We can't have that, now can we?