26 June 2012

The tipping point

Melody Byrne pinpoints the exact period the the 'Educational System' became the 'Indoctrination System.'

But I digress. Point is, in the space of 7 years everything changed. My mother, til the day she died, just could not understand how it happened that she kept me in the same district and the same high school as my brothers and they got a much better education.

It's simple. The teachers, the administration, and the culture of the school system.

Due to the circumstances of the district I grew up in, and my age, I'm the leading edge of the generation where personal accomplishments were politically incorrect and competition was banned. These ideas filtered in with the new teachers; for this reason rapidly growing districts and the inner cities (where only young teachers without seniority could be found to work) were the first to undergo the transformation.

...

So take a bunch of children. Tell them they MUST be in a place or else bad things happen and they MUST show up every day. Tell them they MUST obey the teacher or else bad things happen. Then teach them that they are powerless over their own intelligence and own abilities and the only rewards they can possibly get are from being a good little cog in the system.

Then put them in the real world and be utterly shocked that they don't take control over their own lives.

Gen Y, Generation "Why Bother", Boomerang Generation, Peter Pan Generation (because we won't grow up)... think those might have anything to do with the operant conditioning we were forced through as kids? When you're told that you have no control over yourself or your situation and that the big teacher in the sky doles out what is fair and what you deserve... why in the hell would you try at all?
RTWT.  This lady definitely has it surrounded.

2 comments:

  1. "So take a bunch of children. Tell them ..."

    This paragraph also describes the pre-tipping-point public school system on its surface. (Surely you've related to Pink Floyd's "Another Brick In the Wall", right?)

    The tipping point came when "competitive" outlets within the rigid industrial framework were removed: kick ball with real winners and losers, grades that meant something, etc.

    iow the factory stopped turning out people who knew how to win and lose competitions, dust themselves off, and move on ... and started turning out confused little zombies for whom "everything is relative" and therefore "nothing has objective meaning" and therefore they have no innate moral compasses.

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  2. Good one, Wraith. We are fracked!

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