American Education?
 

So i saw a new thread in my local forum and someone saying that the government has fulfilled all fourteen points of Fascism.

http://www.couplescompany.com/Featur...Structure3.htm

so i read this, and seemed a little odd, but this wasn't it.

i read on this site some more and read that some gentleman by the name of
John Taylor Gatto, also believed that the Education system was built to make us into "robots" and to not question things, and to abide by the rules and the ones who did, got to be leaders, and the ones that questioned it, didn't get anything. they didn't teach us to think, or to ask or anything. they taught us to LISTEN.

now i know that once everyone reads this, or watches the videos below, are going to say things like, "wow, you are a tool." or "wow, this is propoganda." and i say, well so is the rest of the things that go on around us, but you question the good and the bad that happens everyday goes untouched? All I am asking is for you all to be opened minded about this all. this has had me up all night thinking of ways that i can do MY part to not let this happen to the ones i love.

Now i know I am not crazy, so all the posters that are going to just reply with things that have nothing to contribute, or anything. please stay away. but other than that, i would welcome anyone here to post maybe something i am missing.

thank you.


http://www.couplescompany.com/Advice...ound041507.htm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ogCc8ObiwQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZKOD...elated&search=

oh and one last one of many videos of him speaking:

http://www.edflix.org/gatto.htm

I'll admit that I'm not knowledgeable on the government stance for fascism. So, I'm not going to comment on that except to say that something is going on in this country and it's creeping in so that one day we're going to wake up and say, "What the fuck...when did this happen?"

My expertise is education and John Gatto is one of the people I admire. He was voted teacher of the year for NYC. In his speech, he denounced public education for the ruin is has caused our younger generation. His book Dumbing Us Down is one that I have read on several occasions and used as a reference for my Master's thesis paper.

If you look at the history of schools, it was set up on a bell system (like factories). It's very formal telling the kids what they should know by a certain grade. There is little room for deviating from the curriculum and the testing is too much for the poor little guys sitting in desks 6+ hours a day. One of my favorite stories is about a 4th grade boy that was taking his 6th standardized test of the year. I believe it was in February. For the extended response, he ignored the question and filled up every line on the 3 page answer sheet with "This is a waste of time, I want to learn from my teacher."

Schools are dropping the ball and there is a thread already about how students are not taught to think. They are taught to sit, listen, respond, and read. Philosophy and creativity are missing components. Look at Plato's Republic. The first step to a perfect society is the elimination of art, thinking, and individuality. I see this happening daily in the public schools.

As for what I could tell you to put your mind at ease. Home school, charter school, or private school the kids. I left the public sector because I didn't believe in what I was doing anymore. I was a piece of the system and the system was failing. You have to do your part to educate and culture the young people in your life. Stand up and do your part to help a small population of the people if you feel that you must.

I hope this helped a little bit. It's a rabbit hole going through educational policy. I enjoy reading about it, but it's a big mess once you get to the underbelly of it.

While I agree that the system is setup for failure to some degree, a large part of the problem with education over the past few decades is simple apathy towards doing anything useful. The teachers don't much care, the students don't much care. When was the last time you saw a high school junior say, "Hey Mr. so-and-so, what else can we learn about?" Sure it happens, but it's definitely not the norm.

Voting, public service, education... most of what's falling apart around us is driven by apathy. Instead of targeting schools as a conspiracy, I'd go for the water. Of course, I'm MOSTLY joking... but why the fuck are kids so lazy these days? There has to be some underlying cause.

While said generalizations might be true in your area, they're most certainly not true in all of the United States.

That's all I've got to say about that.

that wasn't my experience with the public education system. It helps to have a little self motivation, a skill your parents should be teaching you in the first place...

well xepherys asked and Basmoq answered. it has to do with parents!
that is why the kids are lazy, because parents dont plan for kids, and feel that it was a mistake, so they just live with it so they wont let anyone know about it.
or something to that extent. but when i ahve a kid, i will be damn ready and the kid will be my life. not just a tag along on me being without a kid.
Basmoq had parents to motivate him prolly.
my parents were too busy working trying to put food on the table. (we were immigrants with papers, but tried hard to make it.) that they didnt have time to teach me what the schools didnt. but i remember after school. i would work with my dad, till like midnight every night. this was from kindergarden all the way to junior year.

seriously, i haven't seen any evidence of "kids these days" being more lazy than kids 10 years ago--within the self-selecting populations that i deal with in a university.
what i do see that i dont like is intellectual passivity and political dossility.
lots more tiresome good boys and good girls.
personally, i think they've in the main been scared into adopting this posture.
this a function of the social management/control functions of secondary schools reinforced by parental status anxiety.
play it safe, dont question things, be a good boy.
it's so lame. and self-defeating.
this is one of the few generalizations i have developed based on 10 years of teaching. there are no doubt others who have more experience here.

i think alot of these kids i encounter are in for a hell of a midlife crisis and will likely be totally unprepared to deal with it. if you are already doing something that you dont want because mummy and daddy are effectively forcing you into it because they are worried about downward mobility for all the obvious reasons, it doesnt take a rocket scientist to see the above looming somewhere for alot of these kids.

anyway: i also think that the flight into private schools is a joke. it addresses nothing--it serves only to depoliticize education. the idea that private schools are necessarily better than public is a conservative sham--in both public and private, what seems to matter is resource availability, both in the money sense and--perhaps as importantly--the sense in which schools replicate some floating sense of class position by enforcing class-specific sense of limitations on what kids imagine they are allowed to hope for.

and it isn't exactly a new thing to see schools as warehouses for children. its how the system as a whole is organized. the mystery is why this isnt obvious.

seems to me that if you have kids and want them to do well in school, it would make sense to fill them in on the game early and often. but that's just me.

Actually, the education system was developed in response to child labor issues in the age of industrialization. Kids needed something to do until they were old enough to work. One thing they could be taught is to listen. Another to answer the bell and do what you're told.

The elite kids went to elite K-12 schools and later to Ivey League universities. They were the ones being taught to run everything and all the other kids were learning to be the workers.

Things really haven't changed much over the years in the grand scheme of things. Those born into the good life had a much better chance of maintaining the good life and running everything.

However, the dot com boom gave other people an opportunity to buy a ticket to the world of running everything. And a few made good. Many others appear to make good but really are doing so through the grace of the ones really running everything. It's an illusion of power. For example, there's no way someone could become president on their own; they need the blessings of the puppetmasters and must do their bidding. And they are handed treats for their tricks in the form of some sense of power. Why else would a top lawyer want to cut their income and be a senator? Heck, that's why so many leave politics like they are leaving Bush now. Tony Snow even said he couldn't afford to live on the low wages. He apparently wasn't getting any of the treats, I suspect.