Category: Society

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“…ready to dump our schools…”

From Robert Cringely:

…we’ve reached the point in our (disparate) cultural adaptation to computing and communication technology that the younger technical generations are so empowered they are impatient and ready to jettison institutions most of the rest of us tend to think of as essential, central, even immortal. They are ready to dump our schools.

And about time! Cringely’s of my generation (well a little younger) and makes his point well about the chasm between technology use by different generations. While I may sometimes chuckle and wrying shake my head when my octogenarian father describes his (do note: successful) struggles to master his computer and make it a useful part of his lifestyle, my children, I’m sure, chuckle to themselves and wryly shake their heads at my abandonment of my cell phone and lack of any desire whatsoever to “text”.

But Cringely goes beyond the obvious divide in different generations’ integration of new technologies as genuinely useful parts of their lives and notes a specific impact of the effect on education.

These are kids who have never known life without personal computers and cell phones. But far more important, there is emerging a class of students whose PARENTS have never known life without personal computers and cell phones. The Big Kahuna in educational discipline isn’t the school, it is the parent. Ward Cleaver rules. But what if Ward puts down his pipe and starts texting? Well he has.

Speaking about the shift from knowing stuff to Googling stuff–yeh, who hasn’t “put down” that eBook to do a quick search on “Albegensian” or whatever? *heh* I picked that because I already knew a bunch about that word’s historical implications from “old guy” stuff rattling around in my head… and still did a search on the term some months ago. Google is sometimes better than memory, you know–Cringely notes:

This is, of course, a huge threat to the education establishment, which tends to have a very deterministic view of how knowledge and accomplishment are obtained – a view that doesn’t work well in the search economy. At the same time K-12 educators are being pulled back by No Child Left Behind, they are being pulled forward (they probably see it as pulled askew) by kids abetted by their high-tech Generation Y (yes, we’re getting well into Y) parents who are using their Ward Cleaver power not to maintain the status quo but to challenge it.

Read the whole thing for a twist you might not see coming… 😉

h.t. Jerry Pournelle’s Mail. Drop by. Read. And wish Dr. Pournelle well.

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What’s the matter with kids today?

From a wide array of socially destructive interests affecting youth today, one stands out as the 500-pound gorilla: prisons for kids, AKA public schools. While I have some arguments with some of his sub-points, John Taylor Gatto’s The Underground History of American Education is a book every American should read… those that are able to, that is. *sigh*

Why, in the face of readily, easily, available source information, free courseware (here and elsewhere, as well), tutorials, literature and direct interaction with Wise Men is the electorate of our democratic republic ever more stupidly uninformed (as can be inferred from the candidates it votes for)?

I think I can assuredly assert that at least a major part of the reason is our nation’s prisons for kids, AKA public schools.

As Gatto asserts,

Exactly what John Dewey heralded at the onset of the twentieth century has indeed happened. Our once highly individualized nation has evolved into a centrally managed village, an agora made up of huge special interests which regard individual voices as irrelevant. The masquerade is managed by having collective agencies speak through particular human beings. Dewey said this would mark a great advance in human affairs, but the net effect is to reduce men and women to the status of functions in whatever subsystem they are placed. Public opinion is turned on and off in laboratory fashion. All this in the name of social efficiency, one of the two main goals of forced schooling.

Gatto’s book, linked above, is available in full on the web. I’d like to reorganize his website to make it easier to read, but if you stick with it (and do open links on the TOC page in new tabs–that’ll help) and read the whole thing, you’ll soon be foirwarding the link to everyone you know… especially those in your addressbook who are teachers.

Don’t expect politicians to read the thing. They don’t have the time or inclination to read things that would tell ’em how to actually fix what they’ve broken (and the record shows they do not have to fear an electorate holding them accountable for the child abuse they encourage–and in cases outright dictate–in the classrooms across our country). You’ll have to read it, spread the word and build a grassroots groundswell of “take your damned hands off my kids!”

*heh*

Trackposted to Nuke Gingrich, Faultline USA, Allie is Wired, Woman Honor Thyself, Shadowscope, Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, Cao’s Blog, Leaning Straight Up, Right Voices, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

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T-13, 1.29: Thirteen Lessons from Politicians *spit*

[NOTE: the link on #11 is fixed and now points to, “How to Avoid Going to Jail under 18 U.S.C. Section 1001 for Lying to Government Agents”]

“The funny thing about life is that it is a schoolroom in reverse. It gives the tests first and the lessons afterward.”

[Warning: not exactly a “happy” T-13. *sigh*]

13. A. A politician’s *spit* list for “How to Boil a Frog.”
Q. The following items (among others) are found in a “how to” list for what? Misapply the Fourteenth Amendment; “Interstate Commerce” means anything we want it to mean; “Equal Rights” means discrimination in favor of select “minorities”; “cultural diversity” means suppression of the culture that made the U.S. strong, productive and free…

12. A. TSA, et al.
Q. How do you transform citizens into subjects?

11. A. Fifth Amendment rights? What Fifth Amendment rights?
Q. When innocent, how can one still manage to stay out of jail when questioned by LEOs?

10. A. The lesson taught by the Martha Stewart case.
Q. What is, “Do not cooperate with Federal investigators”? (See #11)

9. A. The lesson taught by Waco.
Q. More firepower and ammunition; thicker walls/better bunkers; artillery!; save the women and children, cos you never can tell when the feebs will want to toast their flesh over (in!) a roaring flame…

8. A. The lesson taught by Ruby Ridge.
Q. Never “threaten” a remote, hidden, body-armored sniper with a woman holding a baby. She’s a deader if you do.

7. A. C.
Q. What’s three feet tall with a stench that will knock a starving buzzard off an offal wagon at 50 yards?
a.) an unsealed container of mostly-decomposed medical waste.
b.) raw rewage.
c.) a Congressional appropriations bill

6. A. That silly sh*t-eating grin.
Q. What do dung beetles and congresscritters have in common?

5. A. There’s a difference?
Q. What’s the difference between a murdering, savage, liar, thief, rapist and slaver and a genuine, observant Muslim?

4. A. They’re the ones stabbing the U.S. in the back.
Q. How can you discern the true friends and loyal allies of the U.S.?

3. A. To hire and pay government workers. (What? You thought it was to be public servants? Bwahahahahahahahaha!)
Q. What’s the mission of government bureaucracies?

2. A. To keep their cushy positions so they don’t have to go to work in a real job.
Q. What is the goal of politicians *spit*?

1. A.“¿Hablan español?”
Q. “Do you, our elected representatives, intend to ignore the express will of the vast majority of the elctorate and erase the sovereignty of the U.S.?”

Noted at the Thursday Thirteen Hub and Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, Perri Nelson’s Website, The Random Yak, DeMediacratic Nation, the so called me, The Pet Haven Blog, The Amboy Times, Pursuing Holiness, , stikNstein… has no mercy, The World According to Carl, Pirate’s Cove, Blue Star Chronicles, The Pink Flamingo, Dumb Ox Daily News, High Desert Wanderer, Right Voices, and The Yankee Sailor, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

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Mending Walls: “…holes and gaps, lacks and losses…”

Note” Open Trackbacks to this post Friday, Saturday and Sunday (28-30). Link to this post and track back. More below the post body.

I made allusion (allusion, heck: I linked the thing) to the (musical) Principles of Classicism in “Seven”, earlier this week both here and at The Wide Awakes. Since then, I’ve had a productive email exchange with a commenter at the TWA posting. But first, for those who will not click the link, an excerpt from Principles of Classicism *heh*

One of the primary reasons I am a fan of Classical (and even much classical) music is not just because the music is complex, beautiful and compelling but because it is the expression of a particular ethos which our society sorely lacks.

Aside from technical matters of form, the principles of Classicism as found in Classical Music were

  • balance
  • clarity
  • accessibility
  • expressiveness
  • edification

Although two of these principles are still found in abundance in contemporary music (though not in contemporary “serious” or “academic” music, IMO) it is the lack of the others, especially the last, that has seriously harmful effects upon our society.

The email exchange that led to this post included an excerpt from William Blake’s Laocoön that I think points up several “holes and gaps, lacks and losses” in our society today:

A Poet a Painter a Musician an Architect: the Man Or Woman who is not one of these is not a Christian

Caveat: Blake’s view of Christianity was idiosyncratic. If we take not only the rest of his Laocoön inscriptions but the whole of his body of work into account, what Blake seems to mean when he refers non-ironically to a “Christian” is more in line with his thinking on “true” or “whole, complete, authentic” man (which to Blake in. this sort of context meant simply human, male and female).

Strangely, for Blake, his thought in this and other of his Laocoön inscriptions (viz., “The Unproductive Man is not a Christian, much less the Destroyer” et al) are quite closely aligned with traditional Christian theology as it relates to the imago dei.

Think for a few secs: the traditional Christian view of the imago dei (loosely, the image of God in man) includes the expression of God’s eternally creative nature in mankind. Thus in this model, all human acts of creative nature are indicative of God’s continuing creation… and all destructive or harmful acts are indicative of a marred, damaged, imperfect mankind.

Understanding this fundamental principle as embedded in Western Civilization (and lacking almost entirely in other so-called civilizations–and I use “so-called” in a deliberately challenging tone) leads us to see some of the critical elements that are fading from today’s society, elements we sorely need in abundance to prevail in The War Against the West being waged on many fronts both at home and abroad.

Look, folks, once the fides covenant meme began to fade in our society, many of the other foundation stones supporting our society began to crumble as well. The idea that creation is better than destruction came under assault as soon as good and evil were dismissed as culturally relativistic phenomena. I’ll not continue the litany of woes perpetrated by postmodernism and post-postmodernism and their progeny in the multiculturalists and others. Dig for a few on your own.

Suffice it for this relatively short post to simply point out: absent the values derived from just the Creator/imago dei meme, we have scant chance of turning the tide of barbarism that has resulted in the Academia Nut Fruitcake Bakeries, the Mass Media Podpeople Hivemind and the Loony Left Moonbat Brigade steadily chipping away at our society’s foundations.

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