Is Education Just Training for the Business Mills?

Where did the idea come from that all over the world people have to be assembled in specific groups of not less than fifteen humans , not more than forty,for not less than 800 hours, not more than 1,100 hours, for four year periods by somebody else who has undergone this for a longer time. How did it come about that such a crazy process like schooling would become necessary?

Since when are people born needy? Since when do we have to learn the language we speak by being taught by somebody?

This project of social engineering we call "education" is not only unnecessary for true learning but is an obstacle for independent ideating and creative thinking. Consider the institutions that turn out countless bodies that are sent into and churned up by the business mills. Consider the engineers that turn winding rivers into streamlined channels of commerce. Consider the bright eyes and minds of young people whose energies are turned into marketing and marketable commodities.

The system is broken.

Our current university system is the result of a couple of centuries of trial and error, and the basic concepts behind "lectures as education" go all the way back to at least Socrates.

of those who controlled the education system in US in the early 1900's and read the words of who control the present day curriculum. You will see striking similarities. To set up stratified society has been the main thrust of the capitalist education system from day one. It continues.

More to the point look at our "heavily educated" society. In fact look at "the best of the best" the Ivy League. Amassing amounts of info does not make for knowledge.

How much independent thought do you see out there? It's logos and SUV's in the over-educated-indulged Ivy League.

Like you said, this is a capitalist society. Would there be this many SUVs if there wasn't a market for them? I sincerely doubt it. In fact, we're seeing less of them now that gas prices are going up -- sales of new SUVs are anemic, and the market is responding (for the record, I own a Honda Civic. The gas mileage is suh-weet! :) )

And you can say that college is just about amassing massive amounts of info, but what's your point? If you want to be an astrophysicist, shouldn't you know what has gone before in the field of astrophysics? (just to use one small example)

not" just because" but due to heavily managed and manipulated techniques of persuasion that control how people perceive the world and what they "should" be doing to gain an identity in this world, like buying that rolex and Land Rover.

One would think it would be to make people less ignoarant (i.e. MORE EDUCATED)
Either that or ban advertising -- which would in turn destroy the global economy in a matter of weeks

Too much focus on process, routine busywork and theory and not enough at all about creation and invention. Sometimes I think the schools and MNCs are in cahoots to keep us like this; then it gives them the justification to hire Asians, who get trained using the MNC's newest technology and business methods.

The American worker then ends up on depression medication because he/she prepared for a life that's a flat-out meaningless waste and very similar to the environment they learned in - assembleages of 15-20 humans doing electronic busywork to gain paper recognition and in turn make money for someone else. There's less and less security every year, making the worker fearful of losing their job, and causing him to turn life into work. They could strike out on their own, but good luck finding a start-up that doesn't initially cost 5-6 figures or can't be done cheaper and faster by a big box. Raises don't mean shit anymore either, since it's painfully obvious wages haven't been keeping up with the Cost of Living for at least 6 years now.

This is what happens when you give corporations the keys to the country - they just turn it to shit, and WHO CARES? "I got's MINE! I WIN!" says Jack Welch and Larry Ellison.

John Taylor Gatto??

I am reading various things from Ivan Illich and watching how the students form and shape their perceptions of what learning is on the campus where I teach.

I've read several of Gatto's essays. You can read his work and go out your door and see the truths in what he says.

in this article.

http://www.21learn.org/arch/articles/dalton_gardner.html

It almost sounds like this guy is trying to figure out how to "unschool" in school.

Do you completely unschool? We're sort of eclectic/semi-unschool hs-ers.

Most people do not learn as quickly or as deeply from reading books. Think of a teacher as an intelligent book. Of course, it would be nice if some of them would start acting that way.

Now you are right about one thing -- the curriculum in many places is designed to shove students into a perceived job role. This hurts us in the long run because the longevity of those jobs doesn't always last for the time necessary to retire from a career, and the education given isn't broad enough to make that person interchangable with another job.

(And in addition, in certain occupations like medicine and engineering, the curriculum also serves as a way to break the spirit of the student and turn them into a workaholic with no time for a broader community participation.)

Part of the problem is that corporations have sought to offload certain things that they should be teaching entry level employees onto the education system, making the students/taxpayer foot the bill. These courses rob the curriculum of other courses and activities that are needed to train good generalists and community members.

is appropriate.

How many doctors have gone beyond one or two classes in understanding nutrition's role in health (the most important thing in healthy bodies) due to the compulsory avenues of study foisted upon their minds by a specific pharma-educational agenda?

We don't need jobs, we need right livelihoods and work as a sacred componenet of who we are.

"Since when are people born needy?"

Since about, oh, forever. When was the last time you saw a month-old baby do anything for itself?


"Since when do we have to learn the language we speak by being taught by somebody?"

Since, again, just about forever.

"How did it come about that such a crazy process like schooling would become necessary?"

About the same time that people wanted to learn something that their parents didn't know.


"This project of social engineering we call "education" is not only unnecessary for true learning but is an obstacle for independent ideating and creative thinking."

Oh, it is? Got proof beyond your ravings? And what the hell is "ideating?"

You're just being ridiculous.

Redstone

"Got proof beyond your ravings".

Appreciate your contributions to the discussion.

Have you read any John Taylor Gatto?

Are you familiar with Deschooling Society by Ivan Illich?

Have you ever heard of a book called "The Great Training Robbery"?

Are you familiar with the work of John Holt?

Do you know about the Albany Free School?

Are you familiar with The Unschoolers Network?

Our society doesn't only produce artifact things it produces artifact people.

The evidence is on every campus, look around.

Anyone who proposes that we, individuallly or as a society, would be better off without any kind of formal education is clearly a lunatic.

Think you'd have that computer you're typing on, to send posts via the Internet, af there were no schools?

I kinda doubt it.

Redstone

Well, to "educate" yourself.

Start with John Taylor Gatto an award winnig teacher in the NY public schooling system who left when he realized how damaging the system is to children.

You don't need to speculate on what the educators wanted, as posted below. Education was not the priority.

I propose that we individually and as a society would be FAR better off without any form of compulsory formal education. Education is a form of social control and conditioning and has a total grip on the withered mind of the Americanus Consumerus.

With no system of formal education, would you have the computer you're typing on?

If you answer yes to this question, how exactly do you figure that would have come about without schools for people to pass on their knowledge so that other people can build on it, and advance the state of technology?

Can I have an answer this time? Seems you want to enjoy the fruits of formal education, but you don't want other people to have the same benefits.

Redstone

if you will re-read your post.

Now here is my answer. Part one-there is no way of knowing.

Part Two- It is possible we would be better off without computers in a different world created by different modalities, less formalized, less organized.

Part Three- It is easy to imagine that the computer would/could come about without compulsory government schooling.

Who use the most resources in the world and thusly creae the most damage? By and large "the highly educated".

How about all those brainy scientists doing their thing in Biotech? Who would you rather rely on for your sustenance these bioengineers from the Ivy League or uneducated Vietnamese farmers?

Our definition of what an education is is completely distorted.

You win. If there was no formal education, computers would have just happened along, by some kind of magic or something.

But I have to ask: If you feel that we all would be better off without computers, why aren't you taking the first step, and confirming your beliefs, by not using one yourself?

Redstone

you are not reading or paying close attention to what you read.


I am talking about possibilties.

It seems odd and a little frightening to me that one cannot imagine creative thinking and inventiveness outside of "formal schooling'. i would suggest that kids are at their best when mildly guided in a way that fits their particular genius rather than lined up in a row and force fed a narrow curriculum, as is the case with public schooling.

Sitting in a desk for 6 hours a day listening to a demigod churn out "facts" is a form of punishment for perpetual motion machines which is what kids are if nothing else.

I give up. See you later.

Redstone

And, let's see: the illiterate and unschooled aren't TAUGHT language, are they? Yet those who aren't mute can speak anyway.

I myself wasn't taught to read or speak; I just picked them up, so to say. Started reading on my own when I was two; shocked the hell out of my mother. I was three grade levels ahead of everyone else in most things when I started school, and it was mostly thanks to learning things on my own (granted, I'm a long way from typical).

And the American system of public education actually WAS designed to condition compliant workers, and not to educate; being minimally literate and numerate makes a person a better worker, in the industrial age; and being conditioned to respond to bells, regimentation, and the arbitrary impositions of authority ALSO makes better workers. The public education movement in the US really started circa the 1830's-1840's, concurrent with the Industrial Revolution. If you look, you can find quotes from prominent educators of the nineteenth century who openly admit that the purpose of education, for the "common man", is not to educate at all.

with the idea of abolishing all formal education as the original poster advocates?

Do the American public education system actual WAS, etc, etc...does that mean it is now? And even if it is, is thatany reason to shut it down?

If you want to learn computer science, are you better off learning it from a computer science professor, or from your dad?

(I taught myself to read as well, but that doesn't mean that other kids shouldn't have had the opportunity to have been taught by a teacher.)

Redstone

Abolition of the public education system is not a very good idea; reform, yes, but even so it would still serve the same ends. 59% of Americans have never been to college; it's those, with a high-school education or less, who are trained to be cogs in the machine, if you will. Of those who DO go to college, a VERY small number are going to be the future Turings and Einsteins and Hawkings; most will go into corporate management, or something similar. But we still need to provide the soil from which those people who will change our world and the way we look at it will grow, nonetheless.

But the original poster is calling ALL formal education unnecessary.

I taught myself to read, and never went to college, and I own a very successful business. But I'm NOT about to use that the fact the I have done well without going to college as an argument that nobody needs to.

That would just be absurd, as is the OP's contention.

Redstone

is unnecessary I am saying it is worse than that- it is stultifying, inhibiting to real learning and extremely damaging to the mind. It is really a form of behavioral modification and has many convinced it is the only path to a lively mind.

Some like a poster below are able to escape the government schooling mindset and probably would flourish in most learning arrangements.

What do you think is more important:

A) Learning to think critically;
B) Memorizing facts.

You can say what you want, but it is one of the best places for being exposed to new and different ideas and people.

When I look at my high school class (small, rural Oklahoma town) the ones who stopped after high school are still uber-conservatie. The ones who went on to college are much more liberal (I'm probably the most liberal, though, which I'm sure shocks the crap out of the rest of them).

is a different question.

What is this thing that we call education? How does it shape folks in such a way that we would have so many dangerous and dysfunctional communities such as your hometown or The Hamptons.

People get stuck as you describe but what type of ongoing learning process could keep people involved and engaged in their mental and spiritual and....growth?

Many, many "educated liberals" are creating way more damage to the world through their lifestyles than uneducated rural Oklahomans. It's a strange situation.

it will be different for everyone. Some people will never discover the "love of learning". It just won't happen. For those people, the best we can do is provide them skills to be self-supporting.

For everyone else, they'll find it at some point. I found it early. And I'm still learning (hence why I'm here). Other people find it in a particularly challenging job.

If education does nothing other than allow you to feed yourself and your family, it's still worth the effort.

For what it's worth, I'm not using my college education for my job. I found that I would have to (metaphorically) sell my soul in order to get a permanent job and I refused. I'm still glad I got the education, I learned a lot of fun things and things I'm passing down to my kids.

Learning to think critically is great for the 2% of the population that actually wants to, but most of the people in this society are very intellectually lazy.

And I wont argue you're other pointes but learning to spell and to speak and to use the basik syntax of you're language is most importantest four clear communication with the other people in seaciety.