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The Key to Surviving the Global Monetary Crisis
There is an inextricable link between our academic system and the failure of citizens worldwide to understand the dire negative financial consequences of the coming second phase of the global monetary crisis. To help you understand the huge gap of knowledge that is missing from all business curricula today that is necessary to foresee the coming consequences of the second phase of this crisis, I have posted a brilliant speech below by educator Sir Ken Robinson that illuminates all of the deliberate flaws of our current academic system today imposed upon us by the very financial oligarchs that founded our academic system. These flaws in the system immensely contribute to the ignorance of the masses regarding the severity of the crisis that exists today. The below video is a must watch and there is a reason why it currently has more than one million views.
At 5:50 of the video, Sir Robinson states:
“If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you will never come up with anything original, and by the time [children] get to be adults, most kids have lost that capacity. They have become frightened to be wrong, and we run our companies this way. We stigmatize mistakes. And we’re now running national education systems where mistakes are the worst things you can make. And the result is that we are educating people out of their creative capacities.”
Sir Robinson goes on to explain that the roots of the vast problems in our educational system are relatively new. The standardization of the hierarchy of academic curricula to value mathematics and languages at the top, then followed by the humanities, and then the arts, something that has only happened within the past century, Mr. Robinson claims, is why we have an academic system today that churns out millions of students that have lost their capacity to create. Mr. Robinson argues that there is not a single country in the world that makes dance classes mandatory though he believes dance is just as important to a child’s development as mathematics. Creative arts stimulate the brain in ways linear sciences cannot. And the stimulation of creative right-brain dominant functions that can happen through the arts, Mr. Robinson argues, is absolutely critical to a rich, fulfilling life.
I would argue further that stimulating creative right-brain dominant functions are also paramount to breakthroughs in analytical left-brain dominant tasks. For example, I’ve often had some of my most important breakthroughs in developing the investment strategies I’ve successfully employed to outperform the S&P 500 by nearly 30% to 40% for 3 years in a row while absorbed in a totally non-related task – sometimes while watching a thought-provoking film, and other times, when training in a close-quarter defense technique under the tutelage of my martial arts master.
Seven years ago, when I was still employed by a Wall Street firm, I discovered that many of the firm's prospects desired the old-school 50-60 something-year-old person that had been in the investment business their entire life to manage their money. Only when I left the corporate investment arena and founded my own niche wealth consultancy company, SmartKnowledgeU, LLC, did I realize the enormous limitations and low utility of the investment concepts employed by large commercial investment firms. When confined and surrounded by hundreds of employees that held similar investment beliefs, I could not see the motivation behind investment concepts like diversification and ten-year buy-and-hold strategies. However, once I left an environment in which I was bombarded with daily investment propaganda, I immediately recognized how nearly all strategies at large commercial investment firms are squarely centered around gathering assets FROM clients rather than earning profits FOR clients.
Institutional academics operate in the same manner to serve the same dark lords – the global financial oligarchs. As Sir Robinson explains in the above video, today, students with independent, active, and creative minds that refuse to conform to the traditional confines of academics are often misdiagnosed with attention deficit disorder (ADD) and subdued with medication rather than celebrated for their creativity. In the past, before the diagnosis of ADD existed, these students were able to fulfill their creative potential. Today, this would not occur under our current system. If we explore the historical roots of academia even further, and there are voluminous works that do so, we will discover that the standardization of the academic hierarchy was facilitated by the financial oligarchy at the very same time as the industrial revolution with only one purpose in mind – to provide a literate, debt-burdened, and obedient labor force for the new moneyed elites of the industrial age.
In the United States, two of the richest families in America, the Rockefeller and Carnegie families, donated vast sums of money to help establish numerous US universities, while millionaires Cornelius Vanderbilt, Ezra Cornell, James Duke and Leland Stanford all founded universities in their own names. The majority of these families did not do so with philanthropic values in their heart, but with the aim of controlling the goals of modern day academia to serve their purposes. Consequently, the financial oligarchy standardized the hierarchy of academia courses with the intent on providing themselves with an endless supply of indebted, literate, obedient factory workers.
Joel Spring, in his book Education and the Rise of the Corporate State, wrote, “the development of a factory-like system in the 19th century classroom was not accidental,” a reference to the financial elite’s goal to discourage dissent through academia and to mold students into literate but very obedient workers that would provide the backbone for the ongoing Industrial Revolution. In 12 years of primary and secondary school, four years of university, and three years of graduate school, I can recall only two teachers out of more than a hundred I encountered during that time span (when counting teaching assistants, lab instructors, etc.) that encouraged dissent in the classroom. In fact, because most of my teachers “hammered down the nail that stuck out,” I can easily recall those two professor’s names, because to this day, they still stand out from the rest – Professors Renee Fox and Mercedes Lynn de Uriarte.
Given the inflation in academic degrees that is being reported worldwide today where master degrees are now required for jobs that five years ago only required bachelor’s degrees, people are misinterpreting this degree-inflation in the employment arena as an indication of a need to pursue a higher degree. Unfortunately, this is a choice that, I believe in the long run, will hurt people much more than it will help them. A greater amount of the wrong kind of knowledge will not adequately prepare anyone to survive the second phase of this monetary crisis. And traditional forums of education only teach the “wrong kind of knowledge” when it comes to understanding today’s global monetary crisis. This is precisely why in five years, we will have a proliferation of PhDs and MBAs unable to secure employment and simultaneously burdened with the double handicaps of massive student loan debt and an inadequate knowledge of how to survive the global monetary crisis.
Though the below story was reported in mid-2009, I believe that millions of students will unfortunately suffer the same fate as Trina Thompson over the next several years because they are pursuing the wrong type of knowledge in their academic pursuits:
In New York City, a Monroe College grad wants the $70,000 she spent on tuition because she hasn’t found gainful employment since earning her bachelor’s degree in April, according to a suit filed in Bronx Supreme Court on July 24. The 27-year-old alleges the business-oriented Bronx school hasn’t lived up to its end of the bargain, and has not done enough to find her a job. The information-technology student blames Monroe’s Office of Career Advancement for not providing her with the leads and career advice it promised. “They have not tried hard enough to help me,” the frustrated Bronx resident wrote about the school in her lawsuit. “She’s angry,” said Thompson’s mother, Carol. “She’s very angry at her situation. She put all her faith in them, and so did I. They’re not making an effort. “She’s finally finished [with school], and I’m so proud of her. She just wants a job.” The mother and daughter live together, but are struggling to get by. Carol, a substitute teacher, has been the only breadwinner. “This is not the way we want to live our life,” the mom said. “This is not what we planned.” As if being unemployed weren’t enough, Trina’s student loans are coming due, saddling the family with more debt, the mom said.
The type of knowledge one pursues will be intimately linked to one’s ability to not only survive, but also to prosper during the second phase of this global monetary crisis. If educator Sir Ken Robinson is right, and traditional institutions of education are killing creativity and intelligence because they offer incomplete or the wrong kind of knowledge, then it becomes incumbent upon everyone to seek the right type of knowledge to survive the second phase of this economic crisis. Among the right types of knowledge are the following subjects: Austrian business cycle theories, how the fractional reserve banking system operates, the relationship between increasing government taxation (income taxes, global warming carbon taxes, etc.) and the creation of money as debt, and the importance of gold and silver to sound monetary policies. Ultimately, seeking and understanding the right type of knowledge that allows one to understand the root causes of this current monetary crisis will be a million times more beneficial to your financial health in the future than a PhD in economics from Harvard ever could be.
About the author: JS Kim is the Chief Investment Strategist for SmartKnowledgeU™, LLC, a niche, independent wealth consultancy company, Currently SmartKnowledgeU™ is running a contest to give away 8 free memberships of their Wealth Secrets program, an online education course designed to bridge the gap of knowledge that financial oligarchs have deliberately withheld from all business academic curricula worldwide and that is essential to remaining profitable during this global monetary crisis. To learn more, visit http://www.smartknowledgeu.com/contest.php
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One of the elements of creative genius is admission of error, which seems to be missing throughout our leadership. How else, could you tweak your path so that you arrive at your solution?
Politically, it is not acceptable to admit you messed up. Hence, we get absolutely no creative progress. Take global warming, please. Obviously, some enormous errors have been made. We must admit that we don't know, but we are trying to understand. We may well have an AGW problem. Maybe not. But treating science as a politics, just for the sake of grant money or hogging up at the corporate-govt trough is not going to take us where we need to go.
Ditto for our "War on Terrorism". The truth of the problem is likely a lot more grey than black and white.
Ditto for economists destroying our capital base to create it, with our attempt to inflate cyclical deflation. It will work some times, not all times. I think Ritholtz had an interesting point when he said that Greenspan's biggest error was assuming his actions in the post '87 crash "cured" it. They were merely coincident. It became his solution to non-problems.
Last night I was watching Jon Stewart and he had the Congressman on from NY and they were discussing the "Success" of Medicare....they wanted to make it bigger. I don't get it. It is the most underfunded liability on our federal balance sheet. How could it be a success? Why can't they state that it works for now, yet is completely disastrous long term, which is the truth? Why can't they admit its error? Using the government's data, the Medicare liability is $75 trillion at this moment. Success? are you guys high? That liability is greater than the entire world's worth.....
As traders, you recognize error early and often. Sometimes you are right, but timing is wrong. There is no escaping the financial reality of your balance. The light of truth is blazed on everything at all times.
If you can teach your kids one thing I think you must teach them that it is okay to make mistakes....however, you must learn from the mistakes. Be aware of risk in mistakes and don't make them fatal. Don't ridicule error. Teach them to solve problems by looking at the whole system. Teach them to try to understand the difference between cause and coincidence.
Home school has been so rewarding, working with my third child. Only wish I had homeschooled the first and second child.
I disagree with this video entirely. The video is pure fluff, and exactly the kind of shallow socialist thinking that put our educational system so far behind the rest of the world over the course of the 20th century.
Look: The REAL failure of our educational system that contributed to the financial meltdown is that Americans don't understand finance and most of Wall Street (particularly upper management) doesn't understand math, doesn't really know how to do risk management, and doesn't have a clue how to use the financial weapons of mass destruction it's been handed.
Teaching Americans interpretive dance and finger-painting us NOT going to help us compete with China.
Continually telling students that they're "special" and "just as smart as anyone else" really didn't do us any favors in the 20th century. Why should we think it would be anything but a disaster in the 21st?
As far as I can tell, many of our Wall Street CEOs have already learned plenty about interpretive dance and finger-painting.
"Creativity" would not have helped Bear Stearns, Lehman, and Merrill Lynch. These companies (and particularly their upper management) lacked a solid understanding of finance, math, and risk management.
Maybe after everything we've been through over the last few years, we should be teaching people more about that ...?
Their MBAs were fluff degrees, and this guy wants to make them even fluffier!
Here's an idea: why don't we teach our students to balance their checkbooks?
... And how to not take out subprime mortgages?
... And how to not vote for political candidates whose entire platform is based on deficit spending?
"Creativity" is exactly the problem, particularly with regards to finance.
"Creative accounting" and "financial innovation" are a big part of what got us into this problem in the first place.
Teach them discipline and a solid understanding of finance so they can stay out of debt and become viable economic citizens.
THEN, if they learn that, maybe they can take the interpretive dance and finger-painting courses.
SO TRUE...AND ADD TO THAT THE CORROSIVE EFFECTS OF POWERFUL OMNIPRESENT 24/7 AUDIO-VISUAL POP CULTURE WHOSE INFLUNCE IS FAR GREATER THAN ALL THE SCHOOLING THERE IS.
"I had never questioned the value of extending obligatory schooling to all people. Together we have come to realize that for most men the right to learn is curtailed by the obligation to attend school." ~ Ivan Illich
Great video and totally agree with the speaker on why the education system we have today exists, to feed the machine!
Having lived in Europe for over a decade I agree with the premise that people who have been constantly invaded must learn the invaders language to survive. I recommend all Anglo-Americans start learning Spanish now!
The plethora of degrees being awarded is interesting, you still need at least a 4 year degree but also specific job-related industrial certifications are of more value than a master's degree to stay in demand in todays world.
BTW - My mother was a dance teacher for 45 years. Went to RADA (Royal Academy of Dance) never made enough money to support herself but had a great life. That is the trade-off.
Thanks for posting the video. I think you diverted the message to your own little economics box, though. To survive the challenges of the future, I believe people will have to learn to think for themselves within a larger system of moral and rational criteria that schools are probably not helping build, and many parents lack the ability to perceive the lack of their or their childrens' formation. If we rely on the information our schools, media, and 'leaders' bombard us with, to give us bases for action, we will continue to be the sheep we have become, processing quietly to the abbatoir.
Admittedly I did want to use Sir Robinson's thoughts to make my own points about business curricula but as every writer always writes from a subjective place, I don't believe that my subjectivity in this matter invalidates the points I wish to make. Industrialism gave rise to global standardization not only of the educational system but also of the global banking system as well. Industrialism was certainly a key component to the desire of the financial oligarchs to control the world banking system through the implementation of a fraudulent fractional reserve banking system whose principles they have since extended into other markets such as commodities as well. These events all evolved for the mutual benefit of the financial oligarchs.
There were many false concepts I learned in university at an Ivy League school and in the business graduate program I attended regarding the monetary system, the banking system, stock markets, real estate markets, commodities, capitalism and economics. If creativity and individuality were encouraged, people might recognize that just as debt is crucial to the monetary system, debt is a crucial component to education as well. I believe that creativity encourages dissent and that dissent is often able to expose the truth about many matters, especially in matters of finance that the financial oligarchs wish to conceal from the masses.
In my opinion, I believe that the encouragement of creativity in education would allow students to realize that they are being taught many false concepts about money, banking and the economy in school and that creativity would allow a significantly greater number of students to not only truly understand the origins and roots of this monetary crisis, but to also understand how it will play out in the future.
Creativity can be encouraged in school but it can't be taught. While it is sad that the arts and sports programs are always cut first from the budget, to suggest that creativity is being intentionally stifled is a stretch. Parents and businesses demand more emphasis on reading, writing, and arithmetic. Most teachers I know would love to allow creativity into the classroom. A creative mind will always be active. Placing the sole responsibility of the lack of original output on the education systems relieves the individual of responsibility. I certainly don't outsource my children's imagination to the school. I keep the home unbounded. As a creative person, I will say that it takes many unsuccessful attempts to get it right. I'm prepared 'to get it wrong'. I'm not prepared to blow my budget doing it and I suspect many businesses suffer for the same basic reason. Mistakes often cost money and creativity doesn't always yield financial success. Risk is the name of the game.
"The vast majority of British and American citizens that I know only speak English.
Compare this with people in Germany or the Netherlands, where everyone speaks at least their native language and English"
They learn several languages in the Netherlands because, to varying degrees, Flemish, German, French and English are spoken in the home. The multi-language phenomenon is the result of frequent occupations by the Frogs and the Huns as they fought each other over the centuries. It sucks to be a weak nation on a natural invasion route between regional superpowers. But it does help a people hone their survival skills --- like learning your occupiers language.
America's homeland has never been invaded so naturally there is but one dominant language. (Although some would argue America has been invaded from the south for years. In much of southern CA and the southwestern states there is more Mexican / Spanglish spoken than English.)
Bollocks. The dutch are good at foreign languages for 2 reasons:
1- it's always been a country that has a large proportion of GDP via international commerce. Since they can't expect the french or english to speak dutch, they better make sure they cover the extra mile in order to get their goods sold.
2- subtitles. There has never been a dubbing industry in the netherlands, so english is flowing out of the television sets day and night. You'd be suprised how quick you pick up words in a foreign language when the translation is shown at the same time.
The country has been occupied twice of the last 2 centuries. The last one by the germans in fact led to noticable dislike of the german language. Today, more german students study dutch than dutch students study german.
Education in the 70's was so much more realistic; standing joke at the frat house..."we are here to learn how to bullshit, bluff, and cheat". Sad thing is, during 10 years in investment banking, those were the most valuable skills I got from the place.
Anton - I think you are mistaking Language as in English lit/comprehension/grammer with languages as in multi lingual learning. The first (one might call it by its old name of Letters) is prioritised, the second gets a poor crack of the whip.
Oh, please, give me a break - most Americans I know have never read Steinbeck or Hemingway. They are totally ignorant even of their own culture. Most foreigners I know have a better command of English than even the natives! And thank you for proving my point: it's "grammar" and not "grammer".
My in-laws used to work in private international schools in Europe (Austria/Switzerland)
Each year they would get students coming from the US (parents on secondment to corporate european division was the usual reason) who were being treated for ADD.
Of course, not every country smiles on kids being pumped full of ritalin and unless their parents were very determined and smuggled drugs back from the US, the kids usually had to come off it.
In nearly every case, they were better at schoolwork, more attentive, participated more and socialised more with their peers. In the other cases, it turned out that the drugs were covering up malicious minded little pricks. But we don't drug malicious minded pricks later in life, we just make them head of the company...
Like the absolute rash of "bi-polar" disorder, the wave of depression and "restless leg" syndrome, ADD is by and large, an excuse to sell drugs which have dubious effect as best.
Interesting logo on his website. Always makes me mistrust a company. However I agree with some of his statements that they don't want us to be educated about things they want to hide from us. Interesting article again on ZH!!
Yes, maybe our logo causes too much confusion so perhaps we should change it. However, if you had spent some time on our website, you would see that we explain our logo:
"This is why our corporate logo consists of a keyhole in the "all-seeing-eye" as it illustrates our strategy of carefully watching those key banking families that operate on Wall Street and in the City of London for clues to future market behavior."
Our strategies originate from watching those that manipulate all capital markets...
I wish this place had the integrity to post my original comment.
Lets hear it
The Author is absolutely correct. Look at the influence my hometown Uni has! The BIGGEST central banking apologists are at the University of Chicago. Started by Rockefeller-with the profits he made from selling us all gasoline!
Hey Anton LV, I am going around the world soon, will you come with and be my translator? HA!
You missed the point, Anton LV. Just look around at the schools in budget trouble. What is the first thing to be canceled? The Arts!
Umm.....yeah, those outside the Anglosphere MUST learn English,
to get a J O B -that's why they learn it.
And furthermore, whatever most anglos are missing in the geography department, is even more lacking in the cultural department.
Tell that to the snotty French people I work with - even though the company is nominally american, most of them are incapable of going beyond atrociously-inflected kindergarten English... And that's the top management, for crying out loud!
I used to be a translator and interpreter (and I still do some translation stuff on the side), so if you have the dough, I am game, baby! But a warning is in order: I am not cheap, and I charge by the hour.
Agreed.
Bullsh*t. The vast majority of British and American citizens that I know only speak English.
Compare this with people in Germany or the Netherlands, where everyone speaks at least their native language and English.
For that matter, most British and American citizens that I know also seem to be strangely lacking in the mathematics department. And, please, don't get me started on the average Geography knowledge of the "anglo-saxon" world.
The truth of the matter is, a well-rounded education and a minimum of intellectual curiosity are absolutely linked. No education/rote learning will always produce intellectually stunted people.
(Full Disclosure: before you start attacking me, remember that I know English, French, Spanish and some Italian. I also know at least a few words in Russian, Japanese, German and Portuguese).
"The type of knowledge one pursues will be intimately linked to one’s ability to not only survive....."
And this is why people are afraid of making a mistake. Interesting article. Thanks.
Guys I am from India and follow this blog and trust you me --- you guys are the best brains till today in the world ...all other countries are cheap replicas of America ....so just dont demoralise yourselves due to this Crisis ....I believe America , Russia and Germany are the three countries wich God gave the Supreme power of Free Will or free thinking which even challenges God .
However historically in our Indian Epics (Bhagvat Gita) we have read that there are two forms of Kowledge - Gyan (Inner Knowledge/Art of living ) and Vigyan (Outer Knowledge/Science ) . And while VIGYAN be it in field of Science , Finance , Business can help you accumulate material wealth , build a city of Gold it is only GYAN (inner knowledge ) that can make for a happy , fulfilling and joyous life .Also the inner knowledge is the knowledge from the divine and more or less is bestowed the same to everyone but its outer manisfestation looks different on each human being ....sometimes people may confuse it to be madnesss and recommend medicines for it .
sai ram
Well, as an American, allow me to offer you a lesson.
Do you really think America, Russia, and Germany were specifically chosen and blessed by some diety with the power of free thinking? Or is it possibly just the result of a number of random points in history, one after another, which laid the framework for such thinking to be possible?
I've yet to watch the video, maybe at lunch I'll get to it. It's obvious though that the US education system is fucked and has been for sometime now. We really do reward conformity. How many moronic MBAs do you know pulling in six figures that can barely spit out a grammatically correct e-mail? It's difficult to fake one's way through the disciplines that matter (math, chemistry, physics, etc.), but for most other areas it's unfortunately all too common.
Show up to class for a few years -> act somewhat interested -> pass -> collect your PoS degree -> grats you're still stupid
I think the discussion on ADD is standard clap trap. My wife has been teaching for 30 years and brings a great deal of creativity to the learning process. Every creative kid is not smeared with the diagnosis of ADD. That is complete nonsense by those who know nothing about the process. To the point, of the literally 1000+ students my wife has taught, those with ADD jump off the page and they are a very small segment of what she sees in the classroom over a period of many years. Further, there is a rather extensive evaluation that must occur before a child is diagnosed with the problem.
Children with ADD do not exhibit creativity as is so often asserted. For the most part, what they do is create chaos in the room so that other children cannot learn.
I don't even know where to begin with this...
First, thank you for bringing up an important subject, and thank you for being correct on about 25% of it.
"while millionaires Cornelius Vanderbilt, Ezra Cornell, James Duke and Leland Stanford all founded universities in their own names. The majority of these families did not do so with philanthropic values in their heart, but with the aim of controlling the goals of modern day academia to serve their purposes"
That claim is so deceptive and over-the-top that you instantly lose all credibility. Are you saying Duke and Stanford etc. are not altruistic, as opposed to... you, for instance?
What thinking outside the box have you accomplished while watching movies and playing karate master? Some new investment strategy? Wow!
As far as outperforming the S&P the last 3 years, well... anyone with a fucking job, or even paid once for anything outperformed the S&P for a long stretch of those 3 years.
If you want to be real creative, figure out how to get paid by the government for giving your vaunted knowledge away for free to the poor, huddled masses. You knock the deporable state of education (and rightly so) and then ask for $7800 for some vague and probably vapid advice.
+10 And my scale only goes to 10.
BRAVO
Dont want to break on your commercial strategy but if the guys who designed CDSs and stuff were not creative, what were they? You know, that bunch of mathematicians brought to WS to design original products...
The re-direction of math talent from science to finance is a big part of the heavy sadness we feel.
Human capital is one of societies most valuable resources. Too bad our society educates its population to play the role of a hamster, made to run as fast as it can for as long as it can without care or concern for the world that surrounds it provided it is adequately fed, watered and warm. When the hamster is all used up it is replaced with a fresh, young, eager hamster to continue the process without let up.
Homeschooling is the only way to go...get the kids out of the socializaton machine. Guide them in their exploration of the world.
Nice in theory; however for most, undoable due to lack of time and lack of the ability to teach.
CC: +10
In my life experience, teaching, properly done, does not significantly impair a person's creativity. What is the world like outside of their own household is an important part of education. If their experience is only through their parents' "prism" of thought, they are likely to be forever shaped by it.
Teaching is a full time job requiring an education to have something to teach. A child might learn creative ways of communication being taught to write by someone who can't write but it would likely cripple them for participation in the larger modern society.
If you want to see creativity in action, come to Detroit City, or (through my limited prism) LA city. People who avoid the harsh discipline of the three "Rs" have few options gaining their means of survival. Many are "restored" to a creative life of "hunting and gathering". I suppose it went pretty well while the price of copper and other metals came down and the small businesses that couldn't afford security protection left the city.
There are special minds, like Bill Gates, who quit Harvard to follow his dream, that do not need continuing education, and families where self schooling works. But most, living in the real world, formal education is a vital tool in dealing with that real world. The laws of natural science or mother nature or God’s laws, whatever you want to call them, will be obeyed. No one has any other choice. Creative use of those laws is up to the individual.
This discussion of how to educate is not new. In my particular engineer factory over 50 years ago, a Physical Chemistry professor, known for his witticisms delivered in country style observed; “Everybody is for teaching the kids how to think these days but what I want to know is; ‘How are the kids going to think if they don’t know any facts to think with?’”
We have a system for formal education with trained teachers so that the kids will be empowered them and have facts to think with in whatever they want to do. Dictators and Warlords need an ignorant populace.
My favorite weapon of civil destruction is the boob tube; shortening attention spans and attacking the psyche to sell the product. My creative opinion is that a law against exposing a child to TV before the age of 7 or 8 should be forbidden. Of course, I would leave it to others to enforce it.
Except that all too often the "schooling" that gets done is religious dogma.
if one is lucky enough to have parents who can teach and have the time and will to do it.
You don't need parents with teaching ability or time. You only need parents with the will. Why ? Go view the video again. Given resources - library, books, tools, access to other people with knowledge, museums, apprenticeship or internship, and the unfettered time to pursue ideas, kids, once they can read, can and will teach themselves anything they want to learn with some guidance from the adults around them.
Go read John Taylor Gatto.
i have to agree. teaching is pushing on thread. learning happens with or without a teacher.
bingo
As an artist I can back up the author: didn't learn a thing in school, other than how to please authority. Out of school I've expanded all of my horizons, artistically, economically - and as a student of science.
But the question I'm always asked is "where did you go to school?" I'm afraid I tell the truth: In school I learned where the tools were. It wasn't until I was left to my own devices that I really learned how to use them.
And, learned that the only limits I have are those I set for myself. Or, I tell them the other truth... about schooling. And, they are impressed... silly sheeple...
didn't learn a thing in school, other than how to please authority.
Obviously you didn't go to an engineering school. I didn't learn much from the required 'core' classes, but certainly did from the math/science courses. Pleasing authority doesn't accomplish squat in a partial differentials classroom. But then again, that does fit with the industrialization theory of the article.
"where did you go to school?"
Amazing, how one simple question such as that can offend the soul of someone who knows better?
beautiful!!!
Well played.
Could not agree more... The educational system is designed to instill apathy... Nationalism, conformity and a false patriotic duty is actively nurtured and encouraged whilst critical thought, individuality and creativity are traits supressed... French philosopher Michel Foucault called this governmentality, policy designed to produce citizens best suited to government needs... There is a reason the wealthy send their kids to private schools, knowledge is power... But luckily for us all, it does not take an elite education to learn wisdom..." Of what use is money in the hand of a fool, since he has no desire to get wisdom" ?
sorry i think you are really hijacking his meaning - i doubt he went through the trouble of a speech to fuel creativity in the arts of chasing each other's money
I definitely can understand why you believe I am hijacking his meaning, but I respectfully disagree. At 11:30 of the video above, Sir Robinson states that all academic systems came into being to serve one purpose - that of industrialism. I have traveled to many different countries and have even studied the educational system as a government employee in Japan. Consequently, I discovered that even in many countries in Asia, as is the case in the US, rote memorization is the preferred method of teaching and educating, and individualism and dissent is often frowned upon.
If one studies the very intimate relationship between industrialism and education, one will uncover much documented history of the financial oligarchy's desire to dominate education boards and the direction of education curricula. Many of quotes directly attributable to the financial oligarchy expose their goals of dulling students minds - to produce students just literate enough to serve their goals of industrialism but yet not intelligent enough to discover their plan and revolt against it.
For this reason, I believe it is a legitimate extrapolation of Sir Robinson's speech to discuss how the dulling of creativity and individualism as a systemic problem in academia is highly correlated to people's lack of understanding regarding the true causes of this current global monetary crisis. I believe that the systemic wide absence of creativity and individualism in business curricula perpetuates the inability of students to "see" the true problems of this worldwide monetary crisis.
If, as Sir Robinson states, we valued creativity in education as much as literacy, I believe that 90% of this world, instead of perhaps 2% or less, would understand the true origins of this monetary crisis.
You may want to watch this movie to fully appreciate 'the system' in various respects...
Zeitgeist, The Movie
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-594683847743189197#