The Middle Is NOT the Lowest
The current union and Democratic propaganda campaign is to convince the public that the middle, and even upper middle class, is the poorest, lowest and most abused class in society -- and therefore, they are entitled to even more -- at the expense of the truly poor, as has been increasingly and alarmingly noted by the most conscientious people working in the fields of public service. Programs and money initially designed to serve a targeted population, instead go largely to serve an infinitely expanding bureaucratic class that uses their intended beneficiaries as justification for their own wage increases -- while decreasingly fewer dollars trickle down to the intended beneficiaries. And in fact, as more money is expended, the problems grow infinitely worse requiring evermore more money and the creation of even more highly paid expert jobs.
Eventually, the original intent of the function is lost and the institutions become largely a self-sustaining self-interest dedicated to the perpetuation of these problems as their job security -- rather than as it was originally hoped for, that such massive mobilization of time, energy and money, would eliminate the condition. Education was originally intended to eliminate ignorance -- and not create an ever increasing demand for more education, and more high paying jobs for the education "professionals."
With today’s new technologies and understanding of human behavior, it is evident to those learning at the highest rate of new capabilities, that learning must now be self-directed and enabled in order to keep up with the voracious demand for learning -- that rightfully should outstrip the reliance on teachers. In fact, this very reliance on teachers, limits the freedom to learn and know -- all that is possible now. So the problem of education now is actually the forcing of the learning of only one politically correct and socially approved version of what needs to be known -- while ignoring and actually suppressing the natural impulse of virtually everyone to learn, when not constrained only to learn what somebody who claims to know better, demands that they learn.
You don’t see those commercials on the television, radio, newspapers -- because no richly-funded self-interest is paying for it. So people have to come to see the value and truth of these things for themselves -- without the infomercials. Learning is not about subjects confined to narrow categories and turfs anymore, but is limited by one’s own interests. A person vitally interested in learning, can devour the entire library on that subject matter in virtually no time -- while those who have no real interest and motivation, will not not learn the subject matter no matter what manner of inducements and coercion.
Learning is not the problem; learning what one wants to know, is never a problem. Learning what somebody else decides one should know, while suppressing what one truly desires to know, is the surest prescription for creating insurmountable problems in the education institutions.
Obviously, the insurmountable problems of education, is this tradition of education -- to do it as it’s always been done, by the education "experts." When there are no education experts, everyone will have to learn for their own benefit -- and not for the benefit of the education industry.
posted by Mike Hu @ 10:27 AM
6 comments
6 Comments:
People learn not so much from watching other people teach -- but from watching other people learn.
And that is the failure in most education institutions -- the people who teach, don't know how to learn.
That's why they are so fearful of change -- how could they themselves learn something new?
So contmporary education becomes increasingly about teaching the old -- when the students are eager and anxious to learn the new. The education establishment will then insist, you can not learn the new, without first learning the old. But the new implies the old -- and doesn't need to be consciously revived as though it were the still the best of the known.
One doesn't need to teach the evolution of the computer before one divulges which button to push to turn the latest model on. But that is the strategy still used in education to ensure that there is evermore to learn -- nd create more high-paying jobs for education professionals!
The entire learning process needs to be deprofessionlized -- so that everyone can learn all their lives, without having to pay onerous tuition for that right. The right to know, to learn, should not be controlled by any self-serving interest group.
The challenge is the same for all the information and communications institutions (media, schools, and universities) which have established themselves in a permanently esteemed position in society. The new technologies and ways of interaction, level society to a more egalitarian playing field -- and so those people who in the past, took it upon themselves to think and speak for everyone else, cannot presume that right -- with the possible exception of surrendering the right to speak for themselves to the union spokesperson.
But in doing that, they surrender their own control over how to determine the work gets done -- and then complain that they have no control over their own classrooms and how they can do the job best. That’s what collective bargaining is all about -- and why all the whining and complaining about education comes almost exclusively from the unionized public education employees. The others have only themselves to blame -- or credit.
The newspapers like to bemoan the fact that people are reading newspapers less -- as an indication that people are reading less, when most are actually reading much more -- but less of the newspapers, or newspapers less as a percentage of their total reading volume.
The same is true of schools: learning has increased dramatically, as one notices with every purchase one makes requiring some assembly and directions, but the percentage of learning done formally or institutionally, has decreased, and in the best of learners, is done minimally under formal instruction. The best of academic scholars have always done it under those conditions -- of learning the new without someone else teaching it to them. Those are the creators of knowledge or the new, which virtually everybody is now in a world of the constantly created new.
That kind of capability has now reached into the realm of most people -- just as many products formerly available only to a few, are now available to virtually everyone. Some people don’t like that because it undermines their position of status in a society in which they wish to remain a permanent entitlement of privilege over all the others.
What is ironic is that many who call themselves “democrats,” are the very ones who wish to make such inequalities permanent -- now that they are in those positions of advantage. In order to do that, they have to use the institutions that information and communications that everything that is false is true, and vice versa.
The fact that one is walking, or breathing, doesn’t provide much information of how one is doing it -- which many people assume, is as well as any other person is doing it, or that it could be done any other way, because nobody has suggested that possibility to them before -- that walking, breathing, and any number of vital living skills, can be done any other way than they’ve presumed is “normal,” which they also believe to be optimal.
There are actually certain disciplines of exercise and self-improvement, that are just the practice of consciously and deliberately breathing more effectively, walking with a better posture and alignment, sitting thoughtfully, resonating with healing vocalizations, etc. Yet much of what we do and take for granted we are doing properly, can often be the source of many of our problems. The person not breathing properly is likely to have respiratory problems. People not walking properly, may have foot, knee and back problems -- which explains/excuses the rest of their out of shape condition.
Many things that are essential skills in our society, are untaught -- while many things unnecessary to learn, are drilled into us and tested for unmercifully, for the sheer reason that teaching those skills are arduous and time-consuming. Latin would be one of them. Fully 90% of those learning trigonometry in high school will never find one application in their lives in which to use that knowledge -- which they will have forgotten long ago.
It is safe to say that one doesn’t need to learn something until he actually requires it -- because that which can be learned is nearly infinite. That one can learn anything at all - is their base learning skill, that can be transferred to learning anything else. So it is important to have one area of learning expertise -- whatever it is for each individual, which provides the base and learning prototype by which they can learn any other skill.
Unfortunately, many are not presented with the opportunity when young to learn anything they really wish to know about -- but are instead, forced to learn what some education “expert” determines that individual “should” learn -- because they know better. Of course there will be tremendous resistance and resentment to that approach to learning -- and cause many to swear off learning for the rest of their lives as soon as they can leave school to do so. And that is the failure of education -- and particularly, public education -- in which the self-serving professional interest determines the curriculum and measurement of success -- rather than the consumer, which is the student. The student must determine the proper extent of learning -- and not the teacher, obviously.
Otherwise, we have the joke of the doctor proclaiming proudly, “The operation was a success! Unfortunately, the patient died.” And that is the familiar response one has upon hearing that the person devoting much time and energy with poor results, thinks that everything he did was perfect, but somehow things didn’t turn out as hoped for, and are outraged at the suggestion that, maybe, the execution was not what it had to be to obtain optimal results.
These kinds of cognitive dissonance (fragmentation of thought and actuality) has been not only permitted but often encouraged -- that wishful thinking is the same as independently verifiable reality (results). For this purpose, some people have created another identity to corroborate that what they said was true was verified by their other identity as true -- as though that was all that was required to make it true.
You can only give people a decent chance; you can't guarantee a particular outcome -- that's liberal/leftist thinking -- that they can control every aspect of human behavior, or should, to get their preplanned outcome.
And so the results always do not match the expectations, or their good "intentions," which they then have no problem forgetting or denying. At that point, thoughtful people accept the outcome satisfied -- that they have done their best -- and that is all one can expect of oneself and others.
Demagogues insist, on the other hand, if they were given full charge, the world would be perfect -- according to their plan, which is aggrandizing evermore power. It's not meant to produce better results but only to place themselves in power -- or consolidate their own power.
That's why there is so much of this talk by the demagogues of the world that nothing goes perfectly as they would, if they were in charge of the world, as though that was all the world needed to be a perfect place.
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