Posted on 12/11/2013 12:44:35 PM PST by Crapgame
Thank you for the gentle correction. I was at work and I grab my moments when I can, sometimes typing the wrong thing. At least I didn’t blame Wendell Willkie.
Most education is based on reading. I don’t know this for a fact but in my business, when a just graduated college consultant(?) comes in, i usually provide systems documentation and procedure manuals that will help them get up to speed. Most ignore the reading and jump straight to interviews (taking up my time). One guy just quit. I don’t think there is an ability of younger people to read, understand, discern, analyze. Education i think promotes the quick solutions as opposed to thot.
"And when they're really wailing,
Michelle and Cass are sailin'..."
Are Michelle and Cass making noise or hunting whales?
Of course the students probably haven't heard of either the Mamas and the Papas or Peter, Paul and Mary.
There’s a lot of good stuff in this thread. The question as always is, “What is to be done?”And there, since your plaint majors on the deficiencies of your school’s textbook, I have to raise the issue of the KhanAcademy.org website. I honestly don’t know if Salman Khan is the one we looked for, "or look we for another.” But I know that Khan’s lectures in math are good - and that Khan himself says that his lectures do not replace teachers but they can replace textbooks. So whether or not Khan himself is the answer to bad social studies textbooks, he does at least potentially point the way toward the overthrow of the textbook publishing empire. Perhaps you could take up his mantle in terms of teaching history, evaluating Khan’s work on history, and if necessary doing your own series of YouTube lectures as a complement/counterpoint to it.
You are laboring to check political correctness, and I can’t (OK, I won’t) forebear to propose what I consider a deep cause of political correctness. It started in the mid-Nineteenth Century and it is still with us, and still powerful, today. Namely, the Associated Press. Before the advent of the AP, newspapers were about the opinions of their printers, and newspapers were notorious for not agreeing with each other about much of anything. In fact, when the AP was accreting its propaganda power and was challenged on the centralization it entailed, the AP deflected the challenge by noting that it was just a bunch of newspapers with various viewpoints, and the AP itself was - wait for it - “objective.” But there is a principled objection to that claim. Two, in fact.
First of all,
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; much less to render them necessary. - Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations (Book I, Ch 10)The AP consists of a continuous virtual “meeting” of all the important people of the trade of journalism. It has been going on continuously for so long that it is inevitable that the AP functions in the interest of journalists and - to the extent that the two may be different - not in the interest of the public. What might be the difference between the interests of journalists and the interests of the public?The natural disposition is always to believe. It is acquired wisdom and experience only that teach incredulity, and they very seldom teach it enough. The wisest and most cautious of us all frequently gives credit to stories which he himself is afterwards both ashamed and astonished that he could possibly think of believing.Journalists want to be believed, and journalists want to lead. Nothing wrong with that, provided that they tell the (whole) truth, and lead in wise directions. But as the earlier Adam Smith quote points out, the presumption must be that in all their conferring, not about merriment and diversion but precisely about business, journalists will hit on ways to promote themselves at the expense of the public. In order to promote themselves they might practice on the public’s credulity by unfairly playing “the critic” who presumes superiority over “the man who is actually in the arena,” as Theodore Roosevelt famously put it. Thus someone who performs a service to the public by providing, say, food, or water, or clothing might be unfairly criticized for the quality of their merchandise or the cost, or the working conditions of employees, or pollution, the list is endless. And politicians who go along with such unfairness might be given good PR, while politicians who do not do so might be assigned negative labels and otherwise impugned. Not that that would ever really happen. </sarcasm>The man whom we believe is necessarily, in the things concerning which we believe him, our leader and director, and we look up to him with a certain degree of esteem and respect. But as from admiring other people we come to wish to be admired ourselves; so from being led and directed by other people we learn to wish to become ourselves leaders and directors. And as we cannot always be satisfied merely with being admired, unless we can at the same time persuade ourselves that we are in some degree really worthy of admiration; so we cannot always be satisfied merely with being believed, unless we are at the same time conscious that we are really worthy of belief. As the desire of praise and that of praise-worthiness, though very much a-kin, are yet distinct and separate desires; so the desire of being believed and that of being worthy of belief, though very much a-kin too, are equally distinct and separate desires.
The desire of being believed, the desire of persuading, of leading and directing other people, seems to be one of the strongest of all our natural desires. - Adam Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments
The second principled objection to the claim that journalists in the AP clique are objective is that journalists use that claim to precisely the same intent and effect that the ancient Greek Sophists used their claims of superior wisdom: the whole point is to shut down any attempt to debate the claimant’s policy proposals on the basis of facts and logic. In short, while any honest attempt at objectivity is laudable, arguing from a claim actually to be objective is sophistry.
I have to agree with the statistical facts here:
It may be too late. I agree with the phrase "demographics is destiny." Whites (liberals and conservatives) will have declined to 50% of the U.S. population by 2040. Despite diversity training, the 3 tribes, white/brown/black, are not going to unite together in the U.S. "melting pot" for peace. Some whites will attempt to get along with the browns/blacks, but this alignment will only last short term.
But I'm going to try my best to not let the facts cause discouragement, but to view it as a challenge. I'm trying to model my attitudes on how our colonial ancestors would have reacted to these difficulties. We have got to figure out a way to stop the influx of other cultures that refuse to be assimilated, or make it not appealing for them to move here and change the culture to resemble their own. (I do not mind the color of someone's skin, but I very much mind them having a barbarous uncivilized culture that they wish to impose on us.) As you said, if we could create states/areas of conservatism, and then nullify the welfare benefits inthose states, those who disagree would migrate to someplace more hospitable. Those who look different but whose hearts are moral, upright, and want to work hard are welcome! We conservatives are more dedicated, and we believe in our cause more than the Gramscian, Hegelian Marxists, don't we?
LOL!
“-—— didn’t know the difference between wails, Wales and whales.’
I’ll bet they wouldn’t know what wales were either.
Pathetic.
.
Charles Murray has good ideas about certifiable and privately administered qualifying exams. Although his main focus is on college, his ideas could easily be applied to K-12.
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB121858688764535107
How about the models used by our Founding Fathers. That is likely what they had in mind when they spoke about an educated citizenry. This would include:
** Tutoring at home ( homeschooling)
** Dame schools
** One room schools organized by parents who hired the teacher.
** Schools run by the local dance, day care center, or karate studio.
** Schools run on the model used by our outstanding volunteer fire departments.
how do we reverse this?
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Charles Murray has some good ideas regarding certifying exams. Although he focuses primarily on post high school, his ideas could easily be applied K-12/
Encourage as many people as possible to abandon the government schools. All schools need two things: Students and money. Removing the children removes both from the government system.
Let any student of any age take the GED, SAT, ACT or similar exam. If they score a certain number, then award them an official high school diploma from their local high school.
This would motivate ambitious students self educate themselves and encourage engagement in the child's education by the parents.
Each year that a child is not in school is:
** A year less of indoctrination for the child
** Savings to the taxpayer of thousands of dollars per student
** Few Marxist teachers on the payroll.
** A head start in a career, trade, or business for the student that would put thousands of dollars in the young adult’s pocket and taxes in the state coffers.
They wouldn’t know what Wales is, but if vegetarians they would avoid eating Welsh rabbit.
Historiography isn’t History; the jokers who came up with historiography did most of the damage.
Charles A Beard, Karl Marx (Historic Materialism), John Dewey, and the whole rotten lot of Cultural Marxists from Gramsci on.
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