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When the Carnegie Commission on Education considered the state of U.S. education as part of a governmental effort to understand what “went wrong” in the 1960s, it decided that the problem was too much education. The population, the commission reported, expected to have too much say in society, too much income, too much job fulfillment, too much dignity and respect -- and upon getting ready to enter the economy, many members of the population had their expectations trashed and rebelled. The solution, the commission reported, was to reduce the tendency for education to induce high expectations in most of the population. It was necessary to cut back higher education and make lower education more rote and mechanical – save for those who were destined to rule, of course.

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Eighty percent of us are presently taught in schools to endure boredom and to take orders because that’s what capitalism needs for its workers. The other twenty percent are made callous to the conditions of those below and ignorant about their own callousness, save for those at the very top, who are simply made cruel.

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I disagree. My university taught us (myself and my classmates) to become critical thinkers, not obedient slaves. Then again, my university is Canadian, so that is my only point of reference.

My experience at the secondary school level, even with "successful" students, is that most see education as a means to an end, i.e. a credential that opens further opportunities, and that it is the credential rather than the learning itself that is most important. In this sense, academic success does involve a certain degree of obedience; a willingness to do what the curriculum designers require not because the curriculum is of value but because the existing status structures require compliance.

[ 24 May 2004: Message edited by: MacD ]

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...academic success does involve a certain degree of obedience; a willingless to do what the curriculum designers require not because the curriculum is of value but because the existing status structures require compliance.

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I think you must mean "willingness". Freudian slip? LOL

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Originally posted by steffie_slick:

I think you must mean "willingness". Freudian slip? LOL

I agree partly. Existing structures do require compliance, but one does not succeed solely by complying. IMO, one must make a SPLASH!!

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As my Father says, " don't be wallpaper in the class"

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Originally posted by steffie_slick:
I agree partly. Existing structures do require compliance, but one does not succeed solely by complying. IMO, one must make a SPLASH!!

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Originally posted by MacD:
* editing Freudian typo *

I think it depends on whether we're talking about secondary or post-secondary. I don't have any stats handy but I seem to recall that the percentage of students starting college or university who fail to complete their degree or diploma is quite high. What it takes to be a success in high school is not what it takes to succeed in post-secondary studies. In my experience, it is almost universally accepted that high schools are designed primarily to prepare students for university, and it is almost universally true that high schools do approximately nothing to actually provide students with the capacities and attitudes they will require for post-secondary success.

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Originally posted by EmmieD:
I agree. I also think, from personal experience, they tend to give somewhat less than a shit about whether you succeed in secondary education or not.

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My experience has been that "they" want students to "succeed" as long as the students demonstrate they are able to comply with existing structural demands mentioned in previous post.

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Originally posted by MacD:

I suppose that this statement depends on who "they" are and what you mean by "succeed".

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They: teachers administrators, generally anyone who gets paid in be in the school

Succeed: finish with anything remotely approaching a usable education.

Hope this clears it up.

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Originally posted by EmmieD:
They: teachers administrators, generally anyone who gets paid in be in the school

Succeed: finish with anything remotely approaching a usable education.

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The problem is, it's not the people who are in the school who decide when, how, and what you learn. Curricula are designed by provincial ministries and post-secondary institutions based on what they think you need to know to be successful when you get out of school. There are a bunch of problems with this approach:

1) There is no distinction between learning that is short-term and long-term. To be deemed "successful", you only need to retain what you have learned until the last exam is over. There's no guarantee, or even incentive, that the curriculum content you learn will be of any use to you in the future.

2) It fails to take student interest into account as an important factor that contributes to successful learning. If students are required to learn content that they do not find interesting, this almost guarantees that the learning will be short-term. It also contributes to a student attitude geared toward obediance and credentials rather than real learning.

3) What you learn in high school is of almost no relevance to your likelihood of success in post-secondary studies. If you have the attitudes and skills required for university (intellectual curiosity and independence, critical thinking, etc.), any deficit in content knowledge will be a minor inconvenience. If you lack these skills, you are doomed regardless of how much content has been crammed into your brain.

The problem is, it's not the people who are in the school who decide when, how, and what you learn. Curricula are designed by provincial ministries and post-secondary institutions based on what they think you need to know to be successful when you get out of school. There are a bunch of problems with this approach:

================================================
Well, it wasn't a matter of curricula, it was really a question of my grades and my attendance took a nose dive and no one even bothered to figure out or even ask why.

It just really drove home to me, that I was, in the end , simply student # 955133 to these people.

It was like, "oh well, we made our quota of graduates this year, who cares about those who slip through the cracks"

Luckily, I'm back on track.

[ 24 May 2004: Message edited by: EmmieD ]

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Originally posted by EmmieD:
It was like, "oh well, we made our quota of graduates this year, who cares about those who slip through the cracks"

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Unfortunately, that's how the system is set up. Schools/teachers are considered successful if a specified percentage of students achieve the specified standard. Schools are structured not to be learning communities but to be sorting factories. As long as the percentage sorted into the "reject" category isn't too large, there won't be many questions asked.

Most high schools do, at least, have a counselling department that flags unexplained changes in marks and looks into the situation. Don't count on the classroom teacher doing anything in this regard because, in most large high schools, you won't have the same teachers long enough for them to know if your marks are in line with your abilities or not.

[ 24 May 2004: Message edited by: MacD ]

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Originally posted by MacD:

Unfortunately, that's how the system is set up. Schools/teachers are considered successful if a specified percentage of students achieve the specified standard. Schools are structured not to be learning communities but to be sorting factories. As long as the percentage sorted into the "reject" category isn't too large, there won't be many questions asked.

Most high schools do, at least, have a counselling department that flags unexplained changes in marks and looks into the situation. Don't count on the classroom teacher doing anything in this regard because, in most large high schools, you won't have the same teachers long enough for them to know if your marks are in line with your abilities or not.

[ 24 May 2004: Message edited by: MacD ]

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Sorry about the kind of Rant.

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In order to achieve a totally predictable economy, the low-class elements of the society must be brought under total control, i.e., must be housebroken, trained, and assigned a yoke and long-term social duties from a very early age, before they have an opportunity to question the propriety of the matter. In order to achieve such conformity, the lower-class family unit must be disintegrated by a process of increasing preoccupation of the parents and the establishment of government-operated day-care centers for the occupationally orphaned children.

The quality of education given to the lower class must be of the poorest sort, so that the moat of ignorance isolating the inferior class from the superior class is and remains incomprehensible to the inferior class. With such an initial handicap, even bright lower class individuals have little if any hope of extricating themselves from their assigned lot in life. This form of slavery is essential to maintaining some measure of social order, peace, and tranquility for the ruling upper class.

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Originally posted by DrConway:
Whether or not you believe this is true, it has some interesting things to say about education.

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THE ARTIFICIAL WOMB

From the time a person leaves its mother's womb, its every effort is directed toward building, maintaining, and withdrawing into artificial wombs, various sorts of substitute protective devices or shells.

The objective of these artificial wombs is to provide a stable environment for both stable and unstable activity; to provide a shelter for the evolutionary processes of growth and maturity -- i.e., survival; to provide security for freedom and to provide defensive protection for offensive activity.

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