The nonsense kids learn in school

[timosman]

http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/george-jonas-the-nonsense-kids-learn-in-school

September being just around the corner, it’s time for another instalment of my periodic complaints about schools and education.

It must be 20 years since I heard a bold grandfather pose a knowledge-testing question of a kind I wouldn’t have risked putting to my grandsons. “Where would you look for the agonic line on the map?” the adventurous senior asked his grandchild, a boy of 12.

“Agonic what?”

“Never mind. What did you talk about in geography class today?”

“Global warming.”

A child educated in the early 1800s might have learned to think of Aborigines as savages. His grandchild in the early 1900s was more likely to think of Aborigines as noble savages
Need I say more? Still, I’m not opposed to education. Some of what is being taught in school is accurate and useful. It’s good to know that there are 1,000 metres in a kilometre or that the agonic line passes through Thunder Bay in our hemisphere. And if much of what our children learn in school is nonsense, so were many things that our parents and grandparents learned decades or centuries ago.


Not necessarily the same nonsense, though. For instance, a child educated in the early 1800s might have learned to think of Aborigines as savages. His grandchild in the early 1900s was more likely to think of Aborigines as noble savages. A child of the early 2000s might come home from school thinking of Aborigines as archetypal environmental activists.

For good illustration, I recommend the slightly out-of-date magazines in medical waiting rooms. Leafing through The March 1991 issue of the Australian Teachers Journal in a dentist’s office, for instance, one runs no risk of reading expressions like “noble savages.” What one risks is reading lines like: “Aboriginal Science is a mode of knowledge which has evolved to allow human beings to fit into, rather than outside of, the ecology.”

Aboriginal science? Maybe it’s a typo. It isn’t. The writer, Dr. Michael J. Christie, explains that Western science placed humanity apart and above the natural world, while “Aboriginal Science” strives for unity between human beings and the environment. He doesn’t actually write “Man is Fish is Kangaroo” but comes close.

All right; look at it this way. “Aboriginal Science” being an improvement on “noble savage,” one might conclude that our nonsense is getting gentler and kinder. I’m not so sure, though. Nonsense is nonsense and even benign nonsense has a way of turning malignant.

Anything can turn malignant, actually, including good sense or fine ideals. Patriotism, the unselfish love of one’s own country, can metamorphose into chauvinism or ethnic hatred. A desire for social justice can lead to tyranny and the Gulag.

Almost any idea can be Nazified. Our current ideas, from feminism to environmentalism, are no more immune to Nazification than patriotism or religion have been at other times or places. Any bottled dogma is likely to have a potential fuehrer or ayatollah lurking inside it, and dogmas are often bottled in schools.

What has made me so wary of schools is the storm-troopers of Nazism and commissars of communism I’ve known, along with the priests and mullahs of theocracies I’ve known about. The dismal creatures surfacing from history’s pestilential swamps were rarely illiterate. Most had been formally educated, usually in the humanities. Many had been teachers or journalists before they became fanatics of some religion or ideology.

The ideas they embraced were also spawned in the schools of their respective periods. Nazism spread through Germany’s institutions of higher learning faster than it spread through its beer halls. Colleges and universities were hotbeds of communism far more than unions or workers’ clubs.

University students and professors were among the first to “cleanse” independent thought and inquiry. These much-vaunted institutions of academic freedom were the pioneers of political correctness back then, just as they are today.

Tyrannies might entrust the day-to-day operation of their torture chambers to untutored louts, but those at the helm are often graduates of law schools. Many have teachers’ certificates and master’s degrees.

I’m not suggesting that education causes people to become Nazified, only that education does nothing to prevent it. Usually it just puts a seal of good housekeeping on people’s errors or crimes.

There’s hardly a social idea children bring home from school today that’s less nonsense than those brought home by yesterday’s children, especially in the realm of morality or human nature
All cultural institutions are in the grip of fashion. Schools, just like the media, mirror prevailing trends. Education has an uncanny way of reproducing the spirit of the times. Schools rarely rise above the intellectual and social fashions of the day.

I’d agree that if children must learn to think nonsense, it’s better to have them think of Aborigines as early environmental activists than savages, whether noble or ignoble. Better — but no less nonsensical. There’s hardly a social idea children bring home from school today that’s less nonsense than those brought home by yesterday’s children, especially in the realm of morality or human nature.

Thank God schools haven’t yet changed their minds about the agonic line running through Thunder Bay or the number of metres that make up a kilometre. That’s the good news. The bad news is that they’re so preoccupied with global warming, they rarely bother mentioning anything else to their pupils anymore.

 

[Paul Or Nothing II]

The ideas they embraced were also spawned in the schools of their respective periods. Nazism spread through Germany’s institutions of higher learning faster than it spread through its beer halls. Colleges and universities were hotbeds of communism far more than unions or workers’ clubs.]

One of the things that liberals like to conveniently ignore in the face of the argument that the government shouldn't be in-charge of education.

 

[DevilsAdvocate]

When I was in elementary school, they told us all about global warming. They showed us videos, and the teacher made sure to talk about it as often as possible. I remember after one of the videos, walking out of class and seeing my classmates breaking down crying against the wall, shuddering in fear. Everyone believed that they were killing the earth just by breathing.

Several times a week, like a clarion call of doom, my teacher would break off from the lesson and speak to us frankly about the threat we faced. Let's say we were talking about sea life. Midway through the lesson, my teacher would put down the clipboard and lower her voice, and in a serious tone tell us about how although it was great that we were learning about the ocean critters, very soon thanks to global warming most of it would disappear. In our textbooks we read about tides, and were frightened to discover nestled warnings within the paragraphs of text. Warning us that very soon, the tides would rise, and the oceans would swallow the land and kill millions.

We kids were terrified out of our minds. Humans were a cancer upon the world, a disease that did nothing but ruin and kill and destroy. Everyone felt a sense of bleak hopelessness over the state of the Earth. And a horrible feeling of foreboding for the great catastrophe we were born into. Everyone thought that if only there were a way to lower the population. If only we could just go back to nature, and live the way we were supposed to among the trees and the animals! Why did everyone have to be so selfish?

In high school it continued, except the intensity of it increased. Now we were introduced to political ideologies that promised to return the world to normal. Our teachers didn't tell us what to think, but if you said the wrong things, you were looked at strangely and shunned by the class and made fun of by the teacher. If you heard any skepticism at all over the FACT that the world was in great crisis because of global warming, you couldn't believe what you were hearing. It was like listening to a crazy man telling you that the Earth is flat. Everyone KNOWS that we're all in trouble! Everyone KNOWS the planet is dying! How could you not? How ignorant would you have to be? Didn't you go to school?

 

[dannno]

Wow they really hate the Aborigines.

 

[Warrior_of_Freedom]

I still have nightmares where inside the nightmare I wake up and I have to go to school, even though I haven't been to school in a over a decade.

 

[tangent4ronpaul]

WTF DA???

Everyone knows the earth is flat! and the global warming/cooling or whatever it is this week is just because God made a bad Frisbee toss. He'll catch it and make a better toss back to himself n/ problem solved.

-t

 

[osan]

When I was in elementary school, they told us all about global warming. They showed us videos, and the teacher made sure to talk about it as often as possible. I remember after one of the videos, walking out of class and seeing my classmates breaking down crying against the wall, shuddering in fear. Everyone believed that they were killing the earth just by breathing.

Several times a week, like a clarion call of doom, my teacher would break off from the lesson and speak to us frankly about the threat we faced. Let's say we were talking about sea life. Midway through the lesson, my teacher would put down the clipboard and lower her voice, and in a serious tone tell us about how although it was great that we were learning about the ocean critters, very soon thanks to global warming most of it would disappear. In our textbooks we read about tides, and were frightened to discover nestled warnings within the paragraphs of text. Warning us that very soon, the tides would rise, and the oceans would swallow the land and kill millions.

We kids were terrified out of our minds. Humans were a cancer upon the world, a disease that did nothing but ruin and kill and destroy. Everyone felt a sense of bleak hopelessness over the state of the Earth. And a horrible feeling of foreboding for the great catastrophe we were born into. Everyone thought that if only there were a way to lower the population. If only we could just go back to nature, and live the way we were supposed to among the trees and the animals! Why did everyone have to be so selfish?

In high school it continued, except the intensity of it increased. Now we were introduced to political ideologies that promised to return the world to normal. Our teachers didn't tell us what to think, but if you said the wrong things, you were looked at strangely and shunned by the class and made fun of by the teacher. If you heard any skepticism at all over the FACT that the world was in great crisis because of global warming, you couldn't believe what you were hearing. It was like listening to a crazy man telling you that the Earth is flat. Everyone KNOWS that we're all in trouble! Everyone KNOWS the planet is dying! How could you not? How ignorant would you have to be? Didn't you go to school?

You're not the only ones. Our generation had the specter of nuclear war hovering overhead. We were a tougher bunch, however. We did not cry against walls. We toughed it out. But with the years, the subsequent generations have been softened - pussified in the parlance of George Carlin. It's been wildly successful such that there is almost nothing that doesn't terrorize a great plurality of young people.

Theye are not worried, methinks, about the prospects for their continued and growing hegemony over the race of men. In one more generation, a mere 20-25 years, the majority will be so vast, so ignorant, so weak, so gullible, and therefore so completely pliable that there will likely be no threat against Themme worth noting.

I have to laugh as I witness the people of America, myself included, standing idly in the midst of what may be the greatest nexus in known human history. In perhaps another decade or so, this last window of opportunity to act will have closed, our fates sealed. I am fortunate as by then I will be well ready for it - even welcoming it. But the young will not fare so well as those who are making their escape into the comfort of the Void. They will have a long and miserable existence to which to look forward; one of completely managed days; of total dependence, never knowing the least taste of individual sovereignty. They will be as cattle, to be corralled here and there at the whim of others, owned hoof, mouth, and tail by their masters.

The specter of humanity's future as it appears at this very moment is endlessly more bleak than even the most impossibly depressing depictions of our favorite dystopian science fiction films. All else equal, and that is a dangerous assumption to make, the future of the race of men is a red nightmare that nobody in possession of the least sense would want to live. It will not be life. It will barely qualify as mere existence. Imagine a world with the face of Huxley's "Brave New World" and the heart of Orwell's "1984"... though I'm not so sure about the former even being bothered with as it appears now to have been largely obviated by the latest measures to acclimate the people to whatever outrage; measures that I believe may have worked out far better than Theye ever imagined possible. I am almost willing to bet that some of Themme still shake their heads, quipping perhaps to themselves, "I still cannot believe it was this easy... these people are idiots."

But who knows... perhaps Yellowstone will blow its lid, kill off 95% of the population, and afford us a chance to start over.

Nah. We're hosed.

 

[Davonte88]

Yeah, when I was in elementary school the teachers told us about global warming. It was very interesting for us to know all these things in school. But nowadays education pattern and the methods to teach have changed rapidly. My son goes to a Phoenix preschool and it is amazing to see how the teachers use fun methods to teach new things.

 

[tod evans]

Global warming in my day was fear of the Ruskies lighting up the sky...

There were no school kops, no political correctness and no free lunches.

The metric system was what they used on the other side of the pond and children were encouraged to be independent thinkers.

 

[Republicanguy]

That explains a bit about you then^ Some of the older folks are out of step.

You can't teach an old dog new tricks can ya!

 

[tod evans]

That explains a bit about you then^ Some of the older folks are out of step.

You can't teach an old dog new tricks can ya!

I wasn't "in step" 40 years ago, why would I want to be now?

And who in the hell has the balls to try and teach this old dog new tricks?

 

[Danke]

That explains a bit about you then^ Some of the older folks are out of step.

You can't teach an old dog new tricks can ya!

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to Republicanguy again.