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The Hidden Dark Agenda of Public Education
“An alien collectivist (socialist) philosophy, much of which came from Europe, crashed onto the shores of our nation, bringing with it radical changes in economics, politics, and education, funded - surprisingly enough - by several wealthy American families and their tax-exempt foundations. The goal of these wealthy families and their foundations - a seamless non-competitive global system for commerce and trade - when stripped of flowery expressions of concern for minorities, the less fortunate, etc., represented the initial stage of what this author now refers to as the deliberate dumbing down of America. Seventy years later, the carefully laid plans to change America from a sovereign, constitutional republic with a free enterprise economic base to just one of many nations in an international socialist (collectivist) system (New World Order) are apparent. Only a dumbed down population, with no memory of America’s roots as a prideful nation, could be expected to willingly succumb to the global workforce training planned by the Carnegie Corporation and the John D. Rockefellers, I and II.”
- US Department of Education Senior Policy Advisor Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt
Yesterday I released an article, “Lack of Critical Thinking is Key to the Corrupt Status Quo Maintaining Their Power”, on my blog and at ZeroHedge and it generated a lot of comments including those that stated they don’t believe in conspiracies or the existence of a “big bad wolf” that deliberately is “out to get us”. However, for those of us familiar with the works of John Taylor Gatto, we know that there are literally mountains of evidence that indict former Presidents and corporate businessmen with deliberately steering the global education system towards the singular mission of producing obedient factory workers to serve the corporate industrialists during the Industrial Revolution. Furthermore, there are mountains of evidence, direct from the horse’s mouth, that their continued mission for the academic system today is to produce obedient servants to the State and to kill any individualism and critical thinking that may lead to an awakened state among the masses that would challenge the moral authority, or rather lack thereof, of those in power.
John Taylor Gatto, one of the most well-known and outspoken critics of the public education system, quit his 30-year teaching career in 1991, because confined within the system, Gatto believe he was hurting children more than helping them. He stated the following as his reason for leaving institutional academia:
“I feel ashamed that so many of us cannot imagine a better way to do things than locking children up all day in cells instead of letting them grow up knowing their families, mingling with the world, assuming real obligations, striving to be independent and self-reliant and free...I don’t mean to be inflammatory, but it’s as if government schooling made people dumber, not brighter; made families weaker, not stronger...the training field for these grotesque human qualities is the classroom. Schools train individuals to respond as a mass. Boys and girls are drilled in being bored, frightened, envious, emotionally needy, and generally incomplete. A successful mass production economy requires such a clientele. A small business, small farm economy like that of the Amish requires individual competence, thoughtfulness, compassion, and universal participation; our own requires a managed mass of leveled, spiritless, anxious, family-less, friendless, godless, and obedient people who believe the difference between Cheers and Seinfeld is a subject worth arguing about. An executive director of the National Education Association announced that his organization expected ‘to accomplish by education what dictators in Europe are seeking to do by compulsion and force.’ You can’t get much clearer than that. WWII drove the project underground, but hardly retarded its momentum. Following cessation of global hostilities, school became a major domestic battleground for the scientific rationalization of social affairs through compulsory indoctrination.”
I precisely stated in my article yesterday, “Refuse to accept something as fact just because an authority figure, whether a professor, the Vatican, or politician, told you to believe it, and automatically many amongst the sheep will accuse one of pandering to conspiracy theories, even when one can present many facts that support one’s opposition view much more strongly than the widely accepted view” in the hopes that people would read this line and digest historical facts before dismissing the main points of my article. Yet, from reading the comments posted below my article yesterday, it seems as though some may have dismissed my argument before even examining the facts.
Mr. O.A. Nelson, retired educator, recounted a December 1928 meeting in which he spoke to the American Association for the Advancement of Science. His recollection of the meeting below addresses some of the comments posted on my article from yesterday regarding the importance of sciences.
"We were 13 at the meeting. Two things caused Dr. Ziegler, who was Chairman of the Educational Committee of the Council on Foreign Relations, to ask me to attend...my talk on the teaching of functional physics in high school, and the fact that I was a member of Progressive Educators of America, which was nothing but a Communist front. I thought the word ‘progressive’ meant progress for better schools. Eleven of those attending the meeting were leaders in education. Drs. John Dewey and Edward Thorndike, from Columbia University, were there, and the others were of equal rank. I checked later and found that all were paid members of the Community Party of Russia. I was classified as a member of the Party, but I did not know it at the time. The sole work of the group was to destroy our schools! we spent one hour and forty-five minutes discussing the so-called ‘Modern Math.’ At one point I objected because there was too much memory work, and math is reasoning; not memory. Dr. Ziegler turned to me and said, ‘Nelson, wake up! That is what we want… a math that the pupils cannot apply to life situations when they get out of school!’ That math was not introduced until much later, as those present thought it was too radical a change. A milder course by Dr. Brechner was substituted but it was also worthless, as far as understanding math was concerned. The radical change was introduced in 1952. It was the one we are using now. So, if pupils come out of high school now, not knowing any math, don’t blame them. The results are supposed to be worthless."
While I agree that sciences are critical for learning and also critical for the development of reasoning skills, Dr. Ziegler’s comments reveal that men like him, men that helped shape our academic system, clearly did not want sciences to be taught in a manner that would improve critical thinking and reasoning skills, but instead, in a manner that was completely inapplicable to real life situations.
It is not a coincidence that after I graduated from university, I often would comment to my friends, “You know what, there is not one thing I learned in school that I apply in life today.” In fact, the inapplicability of schooling in life reaches far back from even my university days. When I was 14, I had already completed two years of advanced calculus, and believed in a typical teenager bout of self-delusion, that I was some sort of mathematical genius. But in reality, outside of the praise of my teachers, what was the point of my mathematical "progress" back then? Yes, it enabled me to score a perfect score on the math portion of the SATs and then gain entrance into an Ivy League university. However, in retrospect and in complete absurdity, I cannot think of one instance since my educational career ended that I have ever applied, in real life, anything that I learned during my years of mathematical schooling. It is as if the purpose of my institutional mathematical training was solely to enable me to gain a higher score on a standardized test, a ridiculous purpose if there ever was one. And today? Because all I did was memorize advanced mathematical formulas back then, I have long since forgotten them all, and nothing is applicable to my life today just as Dr. Ziegler of the CFR had desired.
In great irony, it was the very inapplicability of education that allowed me to excel through the system. The advantage I held over all my peers was that I had a photographic memory. I recall even as early as the 6th grade when I could read a passage about the Civil War a single time and remember exactly how many soldiers died from each side in each battle and on what specific date in history. Because the academic system stressed rote memory and regurgitation without any true learning, my photographic memory served me exceedingly well and my teachers labeled me as “gifted” and heaped extra attention upon me, even though I never really began to learn how to critically think until I read books on my own outside of the academic system and after I had already graduated from university.
But what if sciences were taught in a manner that developed critical thinking and reasoning skills? How much easier today would it be today to actually convince people of the fact that the global monetary and Central Banking system is a criminal, immoral system deliberately designed by corporate thieves to harm people instead of help people? How much easier would it be to convince people of State run false flag propaganda such as the bogus enemy engagement of the USS Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin at the time it happened instead of 40 years later? How much easier would it be to convince people that the two-party system in America is just an illusion to con people into believing they have a choice when no real choice is ever offered to people in elections? Of course, the answer is that it would be infinitely easier.
The lack of developed critical thinking skills in the institutional academic system is also the reason why people continue to falsely believe the propaganda of banker shills that a gold standard helped cause the Great Depression and why it is so difficult to convince Westerners of the value of gold and silver but infinitely easier to convince Asians of the value of gold and silver. The stark dichotomy is due simply to the fact that people believe what the State tells them to believe. Logic, reasoning, and critical thinking are all meals on the menu of threats to the power of the status quo. And this is why the goal of academic education by the elites is to strip away reasoning skills from subjects such as math that inherently rely on reasoning. This is also the reason why institutional academia will never change and that those that wish for it to change find that they cannot work within the system but have to leave it. My friend, Alyssa Gonzales, decided that operating outside of the system and serving as a founding teacher of her own school, Los Feliz Charter School for the Arts, was the best solution to be able to encourage, instead of suppress, the development of critical thinking and reasoning skills of young children. If you live in Los Angeles, please visit her school and support Ms. Gonzales’s efforts, described at their website as the following:
"In contrast to curriculum found in a traditional public school setting which stresses teaching and learning in the areas that can be most easily assessed by standardized testing measures, arts-integrated curriculum develops the whole child: kinesthetic, musical, spatial, interpersonal, intrapersonal and natural intelligences. At LFCSA, we challenge children to construct their own meaning from complex ideas and concepts. Acknowledging that students learn and demonstrate what they know in a variety of ways, our instruction allows children to see, hear, and express according to their individual learning styles."
In support of spreading awareness of the true intent of corporate businessmen that have “donated” billions of dollars to shape the curricula of the most “prestigious” schools in the world today, here is a video titled “The Dark Secrets of Public Education”. Certainly, this video deserves a thousand times more views than the current 9,900 views it has thus far received. If you would like for our communities to be more thoughtful, more open-minded, and more co-operative in the future instead of obedient to the powers that be, please send this article and video to everyone you know so we can foster a more honest and open debate about the State’s goals of institutional academia. Thank you.
Read Part I of this series here, Lack of Critical Thinking is Key to the Corrupt Status Quo Maintaining Their Power
Read Part III of this series here, Business School Curricula Today Lacks Real Critical Knowledge to Survive the Global Economic Crisis.
About the author: JS Kim is the Founder and Chief Investment Strategist for SmartKnowledgeU, a fiercely independent investment research and consulting firm with a mission of helping to stomp out Wall Street fraud and to reinstitute sound monetary principles and sound money worldwide. We sincerely appreciate all of you that continue to “like” our Facebook fan page and "follow us" on Twitter. Through these mediums, we will keep all of you aware of some major campaigns we will be launching in early 2012 to raise global awareness of monetary truth and our proposed solutions to institute sound money that CAN serve as a viable and implementable solution to the financial ills heaped upon us by the global banking cartel.
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I don't think its out of the realm of possibility to think that a politically sponsered standardized test (meant to gauge a flawed system) would be ripe pickings for those who created both.
The greatest cons ever devised always leave the victim not knowing who really fleeced them.
Witness the young people running around now with massive amounts of student debt still clamoring for politicians to give them yet more debt financed education.
Its remarkable really.
Marxists are evil.
unfortunetly, in the efforts to fight fire, many people resort to.....more fire
Marxisms fundamental premise is the individual is subserviant to the collective. ie ultimately everyone is a slave. socialists are just more sophisticated then their commie brothers. Instead of overt use of force, they tend to use lies. but make no mistake, if pushed, they will use them. all welcome the technotronic police state.
Instead if 1984, they use "Brave New World" as the template. If people are incapable of formulating the idea of freedom, there is no need to suppress it.
I'm not sure what you people think socialism is. When I think of socialism I think of those Nordic European countries that have high taxes which are redistributed through very good and extensive social services. Kinda like Norway, Sweden, Finland. I'm cool with socialism like that.
"ie everyone is a slave..."
Nonsense.
Troll.
A deep, complicated, and provocative subject. In my state, Standards of Learning (SOLs seemed a more than appropriate acronym) were implemented about 15 years ago for public schools. They were intitially set up primarily to satisfy political and bureaucratic pressures - "year end tests" were given in early May so that they could be sent in and scored by state officials before the end of the school year. That meant teachers had to try to cover everything, and do a review, six weeks before the actual end of the school session. It was a nightmare for teachers and students, but made state bureaucrats, local officials, and even most parents happy because it gave them a "benchmark" for assessment. The tail wags the dog. The brainpower of our children has always been our most precious and valuable resource, and yet we treat education like a football that is kicked back and forth every few years with the current mode de jour of instruction and administration. Kim's remarks are right on target, but there are many other factors applying pressure to the system besides political philosophies.
Higher education is a secular religion in this country. As such, it should be smacked around now and then.
In some fields, notably accounting, engineering, and computer science, success in school is a good predictor of whether you can do the work. That says nothing about whether you WANT to do the work. Ask any lawyer, and she will tell you that law school was fun, being a lawyer, not so much. I've always admired the German apprentice progams. Show the youngins what they are getting into. It can save a world of grief.
When I was starting out, about half the managers did not have college degrees. They always felt they had missed something along the way. Well yeah, football weekends, getting hammered, getting into the coed's panties..., but that's most of it. The odd thing was, back then, there was always someone in the room who knew how the loading dock worked, why you didn't want that kind of truck, or that some proposed "client" had always been a crook and an ass-hole, and we didn't want to deal with him. That experience saved a lot of grief. Now we have "affirmative action". Gawdhelpus.
You think that the admissions that affirmative action may contribute, which may add to a grand total of 3% to the overall attendance at any given university, are somehow the problem? I'm so fucking tired of you racist dickhead, balless, no heart to stand by what you really think and would never say in the real world pieces of shit ruining this site with your anecdotal at best whiny diatribes. I could almost respect it if you'd ever even experienced half the shit you whine about as well as if you had the heart to say 95% of the nonsense you engage in on here in public but you won't. You claim to be smart but then engage in the lazy man's reasoning of generalizations. It's pathetic. Do you work on an admissions board? Or are you just a bitter fuck who thinks he didn't get ANOTHER break he didn't deserve in the first place?
I don't know much about Germany's program, but it sounds like a good idea. It wasn't until my senior year of college that I realized I had made a horrid mistake majoring in computer science. I was firmly into my core classes and I simply could not stand the thought of spending most of my waking life around computers, whether programming or networking or what have you. Fortunately I fell into a field that I love, still uses what I learned in school, and allows me to be outside the majority of my days. It was pure luck, and not everyone is that lucky. An apprenticeship program seems like a no-brainer to me.
Do you mind me asking the field you fell into? Your story sounds similar to a lot of the people I got to know majoring in CS, we liked technology but computer theory put me to sleep quicker than inhaling a good dose of chloroform.
Not at all. I'm a land surveyor. It's a sweet gig, especially if you can manage to work for yourself.
In one of my majors, a semester-long internship was mandatory. When I changed majors to one where it wasn't a requirement, I still voluntarily worked a summer and fall in a non-credit internship. Real world experience combined with being taught how to think is invaluable. The best instructors not only have a gift for teaching, but have also practically applied what they are teaching outside of academia. It's not a coincidence that those instructors are the ones who had the best lessons.
Our education "system" is just that, a mass production enterprise. We're indoctrinated with the idea that we are unique, while our education mimics a mass production line where any variance from "spec" gets one tossed into the scrap or reject bin.
Always loved the twist on an old saying: "That's all fine in practice, but it will never work in theory."
http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/when-less-means-more
Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity?
Worth watching...also humorous.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY
Socialists the new Communists.
General Jack D. Ripper: Your Commie has no regard for human life, not even of his own. For this reason men, I want to impress upon you the need for extreme watchfulness. The enemy may come individually, or in strength. He may even appear in the form of our own troops. But however we must stop him. We must not allow him to gain entrance to this base. Now, I'm going to give you THREE SIMPLE rules: First, trust NO one, whatever his uniform or rank, unless he is known to you personally; Second, anyone or anything that approaches within 200 yards of the perimeter is to be FIRED UPON; Third, if in doubt, shoot first then ask questions later. I would sooner accept a few casualties through accidents rather losing the entire base and its personnel through carelessness. Any variation of these rules must come from me personally. Any variation on these rules must come from me personally. Now, men, in conclusion, I would like to say that, in the two years it has been my privilege to be your commanding officer, I have always expected the best from you, and you have never given me anything less than that. Today, the nation is counting on us. We're not going to let them down. Good luck to you all.
Tony Montana: I kill a communist for fun, but for a green card, I gonna carve him up real nice.
I'm having exactly this problem with my two youngest kids at the moment. The school sucks, but when I tried to address this, I rapidly got a visit from social services and the cops. So now I'm having to attempt to rectify their lack of education at home, because I was pointedly, if subtly, told that my sprogs would be off into foster care with a rapidity that would create a sonic boom if I didn't shut the fuck up and stop complaining.
I have something to say to the people that invented and promoted the current system: There are two reasons why you want it this way;
a) You like having the power to tell other people what to do and how to live.
b) You could never attain, or keep, this power if the playing field was level, fair and honest.
Wealth, social status and influence would accrue to the most intelligent, industrious and capable if we levelled that field. And you can't have that, can you? Because most of you really aren't that smart! Nearly all of you are totally fucking lazy and never do anything for yourself if you can coerce or pay someone to do it for you. And that whole capable thing just smacks of learning actual skills, doesn't it? And we all know that real, productive work is for the serfs, not the masters.
Just remember, though; We cook your meals, we haul your trash, we drive your ambulances.....
Escape the school. Protect your children.
It's why we homeschool. It took me about 15 years to get over my public school education and way of thought. And now I'm twice as dangerous in that I'm a university professor.
My students freak out on the first day of the semester when I tell them that I don't want them to believe a word that I say the entire semester. If they are only taking what I say on faith, they understand NOTHING. And, sure, they'll get some piece of paper that they can frame and sit on a wall to collect dust. But an education would be so much more valuable. I give them the opportunity to get both. And many of them are hungry for this, while others drop my class.
I happen to teach mathematics. But I want to teach the students more about thinking than anything else. For anyone who is truly interested in what math is about, you can look up the history of R.L. Moore. Yes, some believe he was a racist. He may well have been. But his methods of getting his students to think are great. Other good words are "inquiry-based learning," "Moore method," or "Texas method."
I read a little about the Moore method, actually. Will do some more research on it.
I must confess that, despite most of my formal qualifications being in engineering subjects, I'm not the world's greatest mathematician. I can do it OK, but it doesn't come easy to me. Guess my mind just doesn't work that way all that well, so I was forced to substitute hard work for natural ability.
When it comes to knocking up a working device out of whatever junk is to hand cheaply, or ideally for free, though... I'm your man! ;-}
Practice and repetition can produce great skill sets. When we are in motion we move according to the Laws of Motion; The Calculus is in everyone that has crossed a busy Street. Creativity is in everyone who has sought to reduce error.
I would pull them out yesterday and find a homeschool network to join. Why are you playing their game?
Easier said than done, over here (the UK). But I am looking into it. There are ways, but not easy ones.
Then move. These are your children.
Mitzibitzi
"Wealth, social status and influence would accrue to the most intelligent, industrious and capable if we levelled that field."
Fucking eh baby, I groove on your support for Cartels and ruthless dope dealers. Tony Montana was the shit baby, the most capable.
I've seen the Wire and Breaking Bad, I can dig how you need that strong hand out there bitch slappin and pimpin.
As opposed to the Government forcing you, on pain of imprisonment, impoverishment or even death, to hand over a good proportion of the fruits of your labour to pay for things you don't actually want? And these days, to indirectly hand your money over to obscenely rich and powerful people who otherwise couldn't stay rich on their own, because they just HAD to gamble on the markets, at insane risk levels, because they STILL weren't rich enough? Tough fucking shit, Mr. Bankster! You gambled, you lost the fucking lot! Deal with it! Go work at McDonalds like all the other poor bastards that you stole the livelihoods of when your gamble went wrong and they lost all THEIR money. But no, that would be unthinkable wouldn't it? It's against your basic human rights, Mr. Bankster, that you should have to suffer such a drastic drop in your standard of living due to one simple error?
Forcing you to send your kids to a school that is expressly designed to make them more stupid and compliant? So they'll happily pay up to keep these rich fucks rich, despite them plainly not deserving it due to their own greed, venality and stupidity?
Forcing you to obey laws that you don't agree with (in some cases laws that nearly no-one agrees with!) because you're told to, or else it's jail, jail, jail, do not pass 'Go'.
Forcing you to pay for permits and licenses to do even the most trivial thing, even on property that belongs to you?
And on the subject of drug dealing... don't get me started! If we really wanted to win the war on fucking drugs we could have done it in five minutes flat. Legalise them, without exception, and sell them in high street stores, subject to taxation, same as any other item, to anyone who is old enough to make the rational (well, theoretically, at least!) decision to buy them. Decriminalise it and you wipe out the crime. Simples!
It is the CHOICE of anyone stupid enough to take drugs (or drink, smoke, skydive, sleep with skanky hookers, etc) to do so. It is THEIR life to do with as THEY choose. It has nothing to do with anyone else, least of all Government, provided their action does not harm any other person.
But we can't do that, can we? Oh, no! Because governments and rich psychopaths can make more money out of law enforcement, prisons, fines, penalties, border security and, lest we forget, actively aiding in producing and smuggling the fucking drugs in the first place!
Yeah...the very same pols who support the "war on drugs" simultaneously prop up big pharma....the biggest dangerous drug pushers on earth! The height of hypocrisy, IMHO
I don't do drugs, I don't smoke weed, I don't even drink anymore....it almost ruined my life. Everyone must make their own choice regarding mild altering substances and self-medication. I feel so much more empowered and sane now. But I love liberty more than telling others what they should do, or what I think is healthiest.
My only remaining drug of choice, COFFEE, however, is something they will have to pry out of my cold, dead, fingers! lol
Sadly, I'm mildly lactose intolerant and don't like coffee without milk / cream very much, so I'm limited in the number of cups I can drink. I did find a non-dairy creamer a few years ago that tasted great in coffee; then I made the mistake of reading the ingredients! Ignorance is bliss but glucose-fructose syrup as the majority constituent still causes diabetes, nonetheless.
Trust me on this piece of advice: Switch to raw (unpasteurized) milk from cows that are grassfed and organic, and you won't be lactose intolerant! In our house, we only drink raw milk and it is the best stuff you have ever tasted! I drive 30 minutes every other week to get our supply from a co-op. It's still legal in TX...for how much longer, I don't know. I don't know what the sit is in the UK. Is it legal there? The raw revolution is HUGE in the states! The disinfo on raw milk as dangerous is prevalant, but it is pure BS. Know the cleanliness practices of the dairy farmer, and you are good to go.
Raw milk, amongst many other beneficial ingredients, contains glutathione, which is a tremendous substance which boosts immunity, grows muscle, and innumerable other things. The pasteurization process kills the glutathione. Check out all of the great internet info on the benefits of raw.
Ahhh...I see that I have been down-arrowed by an FDA/USDA gestapo troll....good for you, little brownshirt....whoever you are!
Yes, apparently it is. But only from a farmers market or directly from the farm. Our local farmer's market isn't actually that far away, though, at least while diesel for the car stays this side of mortgage payment territory. Too far to cycle or walk.
I'll try it out next time I'm over in that direction.
I think the way school fails students the most is tied to classroom/lesson format. You have 30 or so kids, all with different ability levels and expect them all to follow a single pace and succeed. Nowhere in nature do you see this happening. Some kids are going to better at math, some at reading, some at music, some at science, which is mostly abstract in grade school.
I was always slower at math, but I did get to my peers, when I was allowed to slow the pace and absorb the material. It took me more time. But at the same time, I was reading 12th grade English in the 6th grade.
Additionally, if don't use it, you lose it. The brain is constantly rewiring connections to make the most used tasks and information the most accesible. How much calculus do I use today? None. Can I remember the atomic weight of Einsteinium? No.
So the schools need to focus on critical thinking, logic. Teach kids how to learn.
Kids know how to learn... it is their main business from birth until the system pounds it out of them, and pounds in the often static description of the world in their cultural context. Posters here for example uphold their own idea of "educational success" as the correct one. A liberal education, although not perfect by any means, at leasts attempts to expose the student to diferent fields of study. Religous or xenophobic models, tend to indoctrinate as opposed to challenge and restrict learning through ommision
The proof of the pudding is in the cake... universal, high standard, science and logic based systems such as the Asian countries have and America once had... are clearly graduating the best educated. (at a much lower cost per unit).
"There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance ---- that principle is contempt prior to investigation." -- Herbert Spencer
www.greedion.com
"clearly did not want sciences to be taught in a manner that would improve critical thinking and reasoning skills, but instead, in a manner that was completely inapplicable to real life situations."
Wow. See I told Mr Hedrichs there was no way I would ever need to know rote algebra.
Bastard. HOW DEEPS DOES THIS CONSPIRACY GO IF EVEN HE WAS INVOLVED?
Sadly my public education will keep me from ever deducing that.
De-duce
E-duce.
See? I'd rather be a deducer than be edumacated.
ori
the largest public institution in America the public school system..now why would sociopathic elite want to target that? naw they are all there for the children. even the pediophiles are there for the children..hmm why did that comparison come up?
Education in US citizenism has only been the road to more consumption.
The more you are educated, the more a US citizen society welcomes your education, the more you consume.
So once again, the same old, same old US citizenism mantra.
The cure to the ailments of US citizenism is more US citizenism.
The cure to the collapse of the consumption potential is more consumption.
More education, more educated people, more consumption.
Such is the eternal US citizen nature.
I'm sick of you whiny bitches blaming everyone but your goddamn selves. First maybe your kids are just dumb fucks, maybe it isn't ADD, or the Socialist Education agenda, maybe they are just as dumb as a box of rocks.
Second. any of you fucking morons know who John Ogbu was?
http://www.eastbayexpress.com/ebx/rich-black-flunking/Content?oid=1070459
Rich, Black, Flunking Cal Professor John Ogbu thinks he knows why rich black kids are failing in school. Nobody wants to hear it."
Ogbu concluded that the average black student in Shaker Heights put little effort into schoolwork and was part of a peer culture that looked down on academic success as "acting white." Although he noted that other factors also play a role, and doesn't deny that there may be antiblack sentiment in the district, he concluded that discrimination alone could not explain the gap.
"The black parents feel it is their role to move to Shaker Heights, pay the higher taxes so their kids could graduate from Shaker, and that's where their role stops," Ogbu says during an interview at his home in the Oakland hills. "They believe the school system should take care of the rest. They didn't supervise their children that much. They didn't make sure their children did their homework. That's not how other ethnic groups think.""
(Following me so far)
"
The gatherings were cordial, but it was clear that his conclusions made some people quite uncomfortable. African-American parents worried that Ogbu's work would further reinforce the stereotype that blacks are intellectually inadequate and lazy. School district officials, meanwhile, were concerned that it would look as if they were blaming black parents and students for their own academic failures.
But in the weeks following the meetings, it became apparent that the person with the greatest cause for worry may have been Ogbu himself. Soon after he left Ohio and returned to California, a black parent from Shaker Heights went on TV and called him an "academic Clarence Thomas." The National Urban League condemned him and his work in a press release that scoffed, "The League holds that it is useless to waste time and energy with those who blame the victims of racism." The criticism eventually made it all the way to The New York Times, where an article published prior to the publication of Ogbu's book quoted or referred to four separate academics who quarreled with his premise. It quoted a Shaker Heights school official who took issue with the professor's conclusions, and cited work by the Minority Student Achievement Network that suggested black students care as much about school as white and Asian students. In fact, the reporter failed to locate a single person in Shaker Heights or anywhere else with anything good to say about the book."
( See folks those Black parents are JUST LIKE YOU! They fucking REFUSE to accept RESPONSIBILITY for their CHILDRENS education! They chose to blame EVERYONE ELSE! Blame the schools, blame the banks, blame consumerism, blame socialism, BLAME EVERYBODY AND EVERYTHING BUT NEVER FUCKING ASSUME RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR OWN GODDAMN LIVES!)
"First maybe your kids are just dumb fucks, maybe it isn't ADD, or the Socialist Education agenda, maybe they are just as dumb as a box of rocks."
Given that I've got an IQ of 154 and their mother of 139 and 3 out of our 4 kids are clearly and obviously brighter than either of us, somehow I doubt that.
The reason I know the school is not adequately teaching my two minor children is because I took the time to read the curriculum and the textbooks they are using to do it. It's trash, mainly due to omission of critical facts that would change data into information.
My IQ is 156. I am more intelligent than you and your family.
we read and discussed Ogbu in my university teacher prep program, he's not as ~underground~ as you make him sound
Whoa....calm down! I don't think that discovering/analyzing a bad system is NOT the same as "whining" or not taking responsibility for their own lives. One cannot take responsibility for the curing of disease until one has discovered a diagnosis.
I am not focusing on the Ogbu study, but your comparison of this thread's discussion to the Ogbu study.
Right, it's called "lack of critical thinking."
Here's a practical example of the banksters' iron fist controlling US public education:
A number of years ago I was the chairman of a board of education in a public school system. When the board attempted to provide math programming at the high school level which would cover basic life-skill math such as balancing a checkbook, servicing a mortgage, etc. pressure was put on the Superintendant to "drop it" by the president of a local bank. If you've ever wondered why few, if any, courses exist like this exist in our public schools, now you know.
That doesn't surprise me at all, rather I've long suspected it. I mean, why else would it NOT be taught anywhere?
As for why people think something like that doesn't need to be taught in class but instead at home - what about sex ed?
People who think nothing but the three 'r's should be taught in school have no clue how useless some peoples' parents are. Especially when it comes to passing on sound financial advice.
Heck, half of what contributed to the housing bubble up here in Toronto I figure is people listening to their dumb ass families instead of their own gut instincts.
When the board attempted to provide math programming at the high school level which would cover basic life-skill math such as balancing a checkbook, servicing a mortgage, etc.
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Indeed, if you need to go through special courses to perform that shit, I suggest you rework your all approach of your mathematics teachings...
If everyone could accurately balance their checking accounts and responsibly service their mortgages the banks would go broke.
Kim, that's a great article to espouse critical thinking. But I think you are forgetting one important factor: Human nature.
You can blame the system, text books, educators, shadowy groups, other countries, and divert blame away from yourselves as Americans love doing when things go wrong, but every individual student who can read does have the option to seek information from entire libraries at their fingertips, or within walking distance of their place of learning. Good teachers always encourage students to use their initiative to seek information elsewhere. May be that is what you are lacking: Good teachers.
As for human nature, most people do not want to think critically. Most people want to be spoon-fed summaries, synopses, and have their politicians bark sound-bites that they can whoop and holler at, or nod sagely to without understanding anything of depth or value. True critical thinking requires time, patience, concentration, and most importantly, opposing views that you agree with simultaneously. Somebody (A Korean guy) once told me that the start of intelligence is when you can hold two or more opposing views at the same time in your mind. How many people do you know who do that regularly in your monochromatic American society?
I cite these two gentlemen often: Solomon Asch and Stanley Milgram, to make people understand that most of us are by nature obedient to authority and conform to the social group even at the risk of losing ones own core values. It is a very difficult step for many to step outside the social norm, and we can use that fact to "hack society", to keep on playing the same message about the true nature of the States, the MIC, and the financial system until it is accepted as the norm. The more people who tell the truth the better, and I applaud anyone who keep hammering away at the foundation of lies which built the present system. Bravo.
Its the lack of good parents.
Teachers can only do so much to compensate for parents that refuse to provide any discipline or structure or respect for learning for their kids, or give them enough proper attention at home.
There are plenty of cops too who think that flat-out, parents should be licensed. I think that's going a bit far but if feminists think women should be paid for raising kids, then there should definitely be a vetting system.
There are also psychologists who speculate (though with some understandable trepidation) that a lot of 'learning disorders' are actually the way a child expresses hostility towards their parents.
Though most parents manage to get it right, the few who get it spectacularly wrong tend to ruin it for everyone around them.
It's not human nature, it's human nurturing. You're just not looking at the world as a specific type of construct, you envision it as the only possible construct. That's not true. The world we live in came from a descendancy of rulers and oppression, so yes, most of the people whose nature you're trying to inculcate suffer from not being able to form their own opinions because that feature has literally been beaten out of them. And that, is nurture, not nature. Once you awaken to that realization, you can see the actual depth of damage being inflicted by the socio economic system we currently live within.
Actually, I think it's a combination of all of the above;
To a degree, the education systems of most Western countries aren't designed to produce rational thinkers.
Some teachers aren't very good. Others are excellent, to the degree that the school system allows them to get away with.
Many parents are not very good.
And I agree that human nature does often play a part.
Oh, and... some kids really ARE as dumb as a box of rocks. Not their fault, except in that the system often puts them into a class with kids of higher ability, where it's reasonable to assume that they are then a drag on the rest of the students.. IF the teacher isn't very good. Or isn't allowed to be.