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Dumbing-down of the educational system?
Renegade:
Thanks!
I think I found the whole thing as a single piece -- a couple of options:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43-Zr2tbX9Y
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQ77AJUENCQ
-ewemoa (October 15, 2012, 04:36 AM)
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Even better! The first link has 720p HD~! (Downloading it now.)
And yes - it's the one I was thinking of before. Quite good. It's one of those that is worth watching again.
app103:
I think my father summed it up best when he stated, "The primary purpose of the public school system is to teach students to sit down, shut up, and do what they are told."
And the big threat to those that refuse to learn this lesson is a career where they get to stand up and talk all day (would you like fries with that?)
This is all in preparation for their future, where no matter which direction they go (sitting or standing) they will be expected to allow themselves to be exploited for profit, by working for someone else.
In other words, schools are factories that produce obedient drones. The rejects are still, for the most part, just drones.
Most people do not have the luxury of being able to afford to send their kids to a school that has a goal of producing anything other than obedient drones. It is very expensive to send your child to a school where they learn how to be the drone controller, the one that exploits the drones for profit.
Take a look at the wealthiest people in the US, the ones that own the big companies, the ones that are founding the companies that will be big in the future. How many of them went to an ordinary public school? How many of them went to one of the less expensive public colleges and universities? Why do the rest of us aspire to become smart enough to be accepted to one of those expensive colleges and universities? Why do we hope for scholarships to be able to pay for it? Because it's the difference between being a drone for the rest of your life and having much better.
The dumbing down reflects the need to have your drones only know enough to do their drone jobs well, and not enough to rise above their status as a drone. Drones do not need to know how to think...just need to know how to do, do what they are told, do what the drone controllers want.
It's the drone controllers that must know how to think. By knowing how to think, and especially knowing how to manipulate how drones think, they can stay in control of the drones.
Politicians usually have law degrees. Law is an area primarily based on being able to manipulate a jury of drones into thinking a certain way, to get the results you want. A pretty good skill to have to get yourself elected by the masses of drones that you will be controlling, for the benefit of the other controllers. They rarely ever have law degrees from the same schools as the lawyers that advertise themselves on TV. No, they go to much better schools, where controlling drones is raised to a very high art form, comparable to the works of Leonardo Da Vinci; with the TV lawyers pretty much at the level of coloring book scribbles.
IainB:
I just came across this:
http://www.edu-lu-tion.com/
...They have a poster there, that I think you'll really enjoy, Iain:
(see attachment in previous post)
I did anyways. :)
-Renegade (October 15, 2012, 01:38 AM)
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Yes, thanks. It's quite a good poster! :Thmbsup:
Back in April 2012 I had found that website and copied the posters as a teaching aid:
My favourites to watch out for are:
* argumentum ad hominem (argument against the person)
* argumentum ad baculum (appeal to fear).
* argumentum ad ignorantiam (forwarding a proposition without any certain proof).
* argumentum ad misericordiam (appeal to pity; to arouse pity for getting one's conclusion accepted).
* argumentum ad populum (appeal to the people/consensus, popular sentiment - appeal to the majority; appeal to loyalty).
* argumentum ad verecundiam (appeal to authority; conventional propriety).
* ignoratio elenchi (a "red herring" or genetic fallacy) - assuming a perceived defect in the origin of a claim discredits the claim itself.
* non sequitur ("it does not follow"; orrelevant conclusion: diverts attention away from a fact in dispute rather than addressing it directly:
Example:
Argument: Billy believes that pigs can fly, therefore pigs can fly.
Problem: Billy can be wrong. (In particular this is an appeal to authority.)
The record for me is when I once spotted someone to have made 6 (six!) logical fallacies in one go. At another time, I pointed out that someone had used a logical fallacy or two (and which), and was answered with "That is your opinon" (OWTTE). Go figure.
You probably don't need to dumb anyone down for them to demonstrate this really - just denying them a decent education could likely do it. Just don't train them to develop thinking skills (De Bono) and in particular critical thinking. CT was/is now an "O" Level in UK schools - not sure whether it is compulsory/optional. Apparently it developed "transferable skills" that enabled students to improve their performance in most other subjects studied. What a surprise (NOT).
Students ignorant of or without CT skills will probably be forever mentally crippled. It's avoidable. Why would you do that to children? I have met people - and some of them seemingly quite intelligent - who have come out of the education system apparently without the discipline/capability to be able think logically/rationally. Easily manipulated. Gullible. Unthinking, "obedient drones", as @app103 so depressingly puts it.
IainB:
In The Hindu there is an interesting and well-written article (copied below) which probably provides a very good example of the sort of loopy thinking that can go on and may even be acceptable when a culture, for whatever reason, might prevent a sizeable proportion of its population from having access to a decent education and which is thus left lacking in training in the development of critical thinking skills.
To put it in context, this is in what is arguably a third-world country, a non-secular class-structured society, where universal suffrage is not necessarily a given, and where democratic freedoms may thus be seriously limited - so it is probably not something to be too surprised about.
The example shows that, in this context, not only can you find irrational proposals being seriously put forward by a former Chief Minister without apparent concern for being challenged/ridiculed, but also that those proposals may even be met with some mute acceptance and treated as being serious/valid, though they bear little relevance to the facts/truth. To that extent it seems to share similarities with the hypothesis of Anthropogenic Global Warming being foisted on the planet from those in the Western world, though it is on a completely different subject - effectively, the legitimisation of rape.
Interestingly, it seems that it is left up to a journalist to rationally analyse the proposals, and to spell out the idiocy therein. There may arguably be something there that journalists in the Western media (MSM) might be able to take a lesson from... ;)
There are some interesting comments from readers, but remember that this readership population would probably generally be characterised as a select minority - i.e., literate middle-class people who can read/write in English and who have ready access to the Internet, the leisure time to read the article online in the first place and the leisure time to make a comment online in the second. One suspects that probably not many (if any) of them would be of (say) the Dalit (untouchable) caste, for example.
The rape of reason
October 15, 2012
It is not unusual to hear people talk of fighting fire with fire, but is it appropriate to recommend fighting crime with crime? Former Haryana Chief Minister Om Prakash Chautala apparently thinks it is. Endorsing the regressive views of some khap panchayat leaders in his State, Mr. Chautala suggested that the growing incidence of rape be addressed by relaxing the laws relating to child marriage (an offence under Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006). This is a rape of reason, based on a dangerous and completely false idea that masks the distinction between sexual desire and rape. While the first is a natural human desire, the second is a violent act borne principally out of an aggressive urge to dominate the victim; power and humiliation are integral to this act of violence rather than sexual fulfilment. The belief that there will be a radical reduction in rape incidents if men and women were allowed to marry before they turn 18 is easily disproved by some basic facts about this and other forms of sexual assault. It is stupid to assume that only single men are perpetrators of this crime; married men are rapists as well. Similarly, married women are frequent victims of rape. Finally, the idea that rape will be dissolved by marriage ignores the fact that it can — and does — take place within marriages as well.
There has been a spate of rape incidents in Haryana recently — as many as 17 in a month — in which a number of victims have been Dalit women. Already under pressure, the Haryana government and the Congress party at the State and the Centre must also contend with the ridiculous statement of a State minister explaining away most rapes as the outcome of consensual sex. Apart from taking action against the minister for making light of a serious problem, Congress president Sonia Gandhi, who visited Haryana, ought to have led from the front in condemning the child marriage ‘remedy’ for rape. It is hugely ironic that this argument is raised in a country where child marriages frequently take place. Recently, four U.N. agencies estimated that more than 40 per cent of the world’s child marriages take place in India; also that in eight States of the country, over 50 per cent of young girls are married before they reach the age of 18. Mercifully, the Jat Mahapanchayat, which comprises khap panchayat leaders from across Haryana, has distanced itself from the demand of some members that the marriage age for girls be brought down to 16. Child marriages are a violation of fundamental rights and a major impediment to the empowerment of women and the establishment of gender equality.
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SeraphimLabs:
That's interesting, because what this shows as Math A was definately material from my Math B class in 2002 or so.
This dumbing down must have happened in the last 10 years.
Then again I was the student that got punished for doing college level engineering in 8th grade. And one of my designs from back then actually worked too, although it wasn't practical enough to have a marketable value.
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