Education can be a brutal, oppressive, brainwashing force that enslaves and creates ignorance or an enlightening and freeing process that imparts knowledge and wisdom.
In a society with education systems that promote strict conformity and obedience to the mores and customs of a society, that society is always at risk of becoming easily herded to war or disasterous policies because dissent will be absent.
However, a society where the education from place to place varies so much that there is hardly any overlapping ontologies will create a society that can not communicate or work cohesively on shared problems. Balance between uniformity and diversity is critical for a healthy society.
The less specialized to each individual's aptitudes an education system is, the less effective and useful it will be to each student. Having grades by age makes less sense than having subjects by aptitude.
For a student taking courses by aptitude, their strengths could be challenged and their weaknesses targeted. There is no reason that a mathematical savant who is severely deficient in lingusitic skills should not be able to take the highest possible level math classes and the lowest possible level english classes at the same time.
That we do not teach multiple languages from an early age in American public schools seems detrimental to our youth. It will be more and more important for our children to learn an Asian language and have some comprehension of the language of our nearest neighboring countries.
We should teach Latin beginning in the 6th grade through the 12th. If we look at the world and what languages are known by how many people, it would be helpful if we began teaching children Chinese as early as possible.
Being able to speak English, Spanish, and Chinese would mean we could talk to more than half of the world and, as world education continues, we will eventually all be able to talk. Mathematics and science education in the United States is largely terrible.
Our schools are more concerned with security than education and the money that could be spent on fences, guards, and metal detectors could be well spent on books, teachers, and facilities for students.
The Pledge of Allegiance ahould be abandoned as a nationalistic and anachronistic tool of propaganda. That we use the word "god" in the pledge and on our currency and public buildings is a clear violation of the separation of church and state. There are many atheists and agnostics whose rights are being infringed upon.
The unfortunate fact about public schools in America, as of 2009, is that the education provided in them is more geared towards indoctrination and social conformity than any actual education. We are taught to memorize, not understand. We are taught how to be quiet, put our heads down, and line up properly.
None of these things imparts real knowledge. The quality of our teachers, as largely products of the same failing education system, continues to decline. Even in private schools, the quality of education seems on the decline in attempt to appease the parents who, in the case of private schools, pay the bills.
The influence of money at even our most prestigious colleges and universities seems destructive to a rigorous and fair education. That George W. Bush was able to graduate from Yale should be a sign that an education from Yale is a joke.
I have heard from many former professors that, because of the Ivy League's academic corruption in favor of legacies and the children of the rich and powerful, a grade of a "C" is failing and a grade of a "B" is a bad mark indeed.
I knew someone who graduated from a high school in the deep south where there were some dozen valedictorians in their senior graduating class.
Either they had a high concentration of geniuses or they had a corrupt grading system that was designed more to please parents and look good on paper.
For the wealthiest Americans, a good education is possible because they can go to the best schools, hire tutors, and twist the arms of admissions people everywhere.
For the poorest Americans, they will often be pushed through 13 levels of education and come out hardly able to read, write, speak, or do simple mathematics. In many places, people have no understanding of the most basic scientific concepts, such as evolution, and ignorance and fundamentalism flourish.
Education is more important than the army for the stability and health of any nation. One day, if we continue to let the minds of the American populace rot, I can rest assure in the assumption that our Union will crumble.
America will not necessarily fail from revolution but rather from the rot and stink of its own ignorant, sheep-like and dull populace.
My own primary education, which consisted of public schools in Florida and then a Catholic high school was largely, in my opinion, a thorough waste of my time.
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"Pawn", 2006, by Anthony Peter Iannini |
This is not to disparage the few exceptional and wonderful teachers who taught me well. But it is to criticize the others who never challenged us, interested us, or taught us useful things about the American government's propaganda.
Why children should be made to pledge allegiance to a flag that represents tyranny, murder, torture, injustice, and war, I do not know. How about we change it to, "I pledge allegiance to peace and justice for all humans, everywhere, for all time."
In middle and high school I could have learned a year's worth of material in a few months and many of my teachers were incompetent and inept.
I was often made to sit in the back of the class and teach myself because there were no advanced classes in my middle school. There were some shining examples of rigorous and intelligent teachers but my suspicion is that these individuals are becoming less and less interested in dealing with the abhorrent politics and idiocy of our educational hierarchy.
I should say that several of my teachers, from all ages, stand out so much that they were often in danger of losing their jobs or, they did, in fact lose their job. Some were interested in how America could become and one, in particular, in high school, who is now deceased, mentioned his anger at the government's handling of Waco and how they had no right to tell people how to live.
There were others in high school that directed me to have a spine and I could not yet have one because I was still scared. Now, here is my attempt at having a spine. I could not stand up, publically, to Catholicism and political injustice then because I was weak and intimidated by the world.
I was afraid of being laughed at or shunned. I wanted to be accepted and this is where all religion, war, and civil unrest comes from- fear. With fear, we are herded by conformity. With courage, we can stand up to injustice no matter the odds or size of the opponent or number of people who will shout you down.
My University education at Tulane was, overall, superb and enlightening. These people were interested and brilliant, though, I wish more time had been devoted to the evils of empire. But, for most people who live comfortably in the spoil-laiden, well-funded, cozy atmosphere homelands of empires, little is mentioned about the suffering of others to any degree that shook me from my then selfish, Americaized, outlook.
Focus on standardized tests is turning our schools into standardized test-taking factories where art, music, history, philosophy, and science are becoming more and more scarce. I am not completely against a reasonable application of such tests, but the current system is crippling any semblance of a quality and well-rounded educational experience.
Standardized tests should cover more areas of knowledge and understanding and, it should be clearly understood that some people's test-taking anxieties cause them to do poorly.
We should look more at comprehension and understanding than the ability to perform on often subjective and irrelevant tests. Albeit, there are some professions, like that of doctors intending to be emergency room surgeons, who must be put through stressful tests in order to demonstrate their ability to perform under stressful conditions.
I did thoroughly enjoy my time at Tulane University and most of my professors were knowledgeable and interested in the complications of the world. I was, for the most part, completely uneducated upon entering University in 1997 but I feel I gained mountains of knowledge and understanding by studying philosophy and the sciences therein.
There were some exceptions and I now see the subtle indoctrinations of even collegiate institutions, but, overall, these four years launched my focused interest in reality. I never even knew, for instance, that one could study philosophy. I didn't even really know what it was. I did not grow up in a home with books. I did not grow up around intellectuals. I was taught to believe in Catholicism, not truth and beauty and wisdom.
