Education: - a conversation on TED #2

Education is strongly tied to a structured and systematic way of learning because that is how propaganda is most efficiently distributed. If you accept the premise, after John Ralston Saul, that governments exist to support the dominant class in a society, then you will see how governments use the state-managed, tax-funded, public education system in the United States and elsewhere to promote their message.

Elected school boards impose their political will on the unsuspecting and unprotected student body by selecting the textbooks to reflect their views on how the society should be constructed. At its worst this is nothing short of propagandizing the youth by denying them truth. Recall last year’s controversy in Texas.

Quote – New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/13/education/13texas.html :

And

“There were no historians, sociologists or economists consulted at the meetings, .. “

If you control the curriculum and the content of the textbooks, the system of assessment, and the salaries of the teachers, and then make attendance at a public school mandatory, you control the education of the nation’s youth.

Of course, the children of the wealthy don’t have to attend public school to be propagandized, they can attend the pedagogues of their own choice.

“Texas Conservatives Win Curriculum Change

By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr.

Published: March 12, 2010

AUSTIN, Tex. — After three days of turbulent meetings, the Texas Board of Education on Friday approved a social studies curriculum that will put a conservative stamp on history and economics textbooks, stressing the superiority of American capitalism, questioning the Founding Fathers’ commitment to a purely secular government and presenting Republican political philosophies in a more positive light.

The vote was 10 to 5 along party lines, with all the Republicans on the board voting for it.

The board, whose members are elected, has influence beyond Texas because the state is one of the largest buyers of textbooks.”

Education - a conversation on TED

Why is the idea of education so strongly tied to a structured and systematic way of learning?

Simple. Historically, organized education arose to meet the need for slightly better workers in the factories of the industrial revolution. They were organized to produce mass-educated drones who were replaceable parts in a factory that ran 7 days a week 18 hours a day.
The only variation is that, since WW II they have also served as daycare - babysitting services so that more adults could be freed into the workplace to earn disposable income for the corporations to profit by and to pay taxes for govts to piss away.

Do other teaching styles have equal value?Equal? Tough question, - for whom? The "system" was never intended to benefit the individual student, only the corporations, the govts and the parents.A child-centered, open-learning situation organized to foster creativity and to stimulate critical thinking would not serve the state - who need drones in order to govern even half-assedly, nor the corporations who need ignorant wage-earners to exploit for profit.

Intelligent, critical thinkers who can create their own futures would be the government's worst nightmare.

To paraphrase Bernard De Mandeville, C1725, "To govern effectively, the mass of people must be kept poor and ignorant.'

Future of Climate Change

"You Will Probably Live to See ‘Dangerous’ Levels of Climate Change"

by Care2.com editors

Read more: http://www.care2.com/causes/you-will-probably-live-to-see-dangerous-levels-of-climate-change.html#ixzz1buzkErVo

Every time this comes up, almost daily in fact, I shake my head in amazement at the utter stupidity of the responses.
It isn't going to happen, that is, there will be no reduction in greenhouse gas production.

Why not?

The evidence is as follows.

1) We have known about the threat for more than 20 years and in that time the production of GG has actually gone up, by alarming amounts. As large nations such as India and China, all of SE Asia and in Africa, countries such as Nigeria, have began industrializing, the demand for fossil fuels has increased. Those people want cars, consumer goods, better living conditions, more food, etc. The result has been more GG production. Their governments want it too and they aren't going to deny their people what they want.

2) Per capita reduction of GGs in G20 nations has been almost non-existent, and frankly, pointless, if it was even possible. In Canada for example, we are only 33M people but we are a resource based nation, producing oil, gas, forestry products, minerals and so on that the rest of the world wants, potash for example. We are so spread out geographically that we must drive 1,000 kms per month just to survive - get food, medical attention, education, never mind the things that actually make life worth living, such as entertainment, adventure, finding a mate, etc.

3) Then there is food to consider: we have no seasonal vegetables for the winter, so we get 'em from California, rice from Asia and no locally grown meat is possible because of government regulation, but that is a separate topic. re: vegetarianism, Don't think for a moment that enough calories are available from local veggies to survive a Canadian winter, outside of a city.

Sure we can, and did, reduce our personal carbon footprint by a ton per year (a gov't program of 2008) but that 5% was only available for trimming in the first year. What then can you do in subsequent years? Not gonna happen.

4) Taking the large picture, if world population grows by 50% (measuring from 1999 when we had 6B )
by 2050, how could we reduce GG output to climate safe levels without impoverishing our lives, living in large underground communes to save on heating costs, etc. - even then you would have to truck all our food to us. We could jam everybody onto Vancouver island but then there would be no industry because workers must live where the resources are. So, it ain't gonna happen.

5) There is no political will to enforce zero population growth. The people want better lives which means electricity, which means GG production. Forget solar and wind, the figures show that investment isn't there fast enough to employ it and forces exist to prevent its widespread application, maybe by 3000AD. Too late.

It will have to be nature that curtails our population growth by disease, famine, and disaster. We have shown no inclination to stop it ourselves.

Climate Change: these things can be done!

　Thursday, June 16, 2011　　Climate Change surfaced in my consciousness once again this morning. Perhaps it's because the NBA and NHL playoffs are over and the Tour de France and Wimbledon have yet to begin. Heh.

I read an article by Professor Lovejoy of Geo. Mason U. in my e-mail. He suggests geo-engineering solutions in addition to emphasizing that we are approaching tipping-point deadlines.
He points out the danger of delay and that people, and therefore their governments, are not likely to act until calamity occurs and probably only when it happens to them. Island peoples in the Indian Ocean losing their homes to ocean levels rising is not likely to move residents of Winnipeg who have just dealt with their own seasonal flooding from the Red River. Coral reefs dying don't concern folks in Edmonton, and so on.

In an earlier blog, I have pointed out the potential loss of white sand beaches everywhere as a consequence of ignoring climate change because everybody has a dream of vacationing on a tropical beach someday. I hoped that they might act because it hurt them in their dreams, but not so far. Perhaps they are still in denial and listen to false opinions of climate change by naysayers.
But perhaps the apathy is because the threat seems in need of a solution to focus on? Here, Professor Lovejoy has something to offer. He points to such familiar solutions as massive reforestation projects, restoration of grasslands and practicing agriculture that restores carbon to the soil, and then he points to more esoteric methods,

"For example, Vinod Khosla¹s Calera experiment has demonstrated
how to pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere by mixing it with
seawater to produce cement."

___________

Obstacles to implementing these solutions include:

- Doubt in the minds of ordinary people put there by industry lobbyists attempting to prevent any remedies that would cut into their profits, as well as the costs ofimplementing change. This could be changed by education but governments are listening to industry not educators. Lobbyists have bigger budgets and educators are too dependent on government grants to risk speaking out vehemently.
- Urbanization: the shift of people from rural to city living, a movement that in the last hundred years has changed the per centage of labour working in agricukture from 97 per cent to 3 per cent, means thatAgri-business and therefore our food supply is highly dependent on fossil fuels for energy and fertilizer and isn't going to change back easily or quickly.
- Costs in the form of lost profits. In the case of oil sands, reducing, or closing development there would decimate Canadian economy and have intolerable fallout politically with our biggest customer, the USA. therefore the cessation of oilsands production won't occur.
The political consciousness of the Canadian adult is still focused on the needs of family, home, job and could be moved to action in the form of endorsing action, if that action made obvious sense, that is to say, without to much technical explanation. So what is needed is a selection of projects that are conceivable, believable and achievable.

I propose the following:

- end gas flaring in BC and around the world. As of 2008, enough natural gas is wastefully burned every year, at the wellhead to heat 300,000 homes. That's a BILLION cubic metres of gas annually, which puts 1.8 million tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.


- end interference in a woman's choice to control her fertility by providing education about fertility, conception, access to medication, including abortion. Provide education to women everywhere, because it has been shown that educated women have fewer children. 7 billion people, no matter what they do, produce more greenhouse gases just by living than, say, 5 billion people do. Either we reduce our population intentionally or nature will do it for us by disasters - flood, famine, disease, starvation, violent weather events, etc.

- reduce dependence on, and desire for gas-powered transport by all means: end NASCAR, and motor racing of all kinds, includng F1, Indycar, monster trucks, motorcycles, skidoos, hydroplanes, ocean racing, aeroplane racing, car shows, and end tax breaks for anything related to automobiles that does not reduce greenhouse gases. In June 2007, the Canadian Federal Conservatives sponsored a CASCAR racecar, the #29 car in the Canadian Tire Racing series. Can any government be taken seriously on environmental policy while they sponsor a gas-powered racecar?

- co-ordinate trucking industry by developing a computer run clearing and dispatch system like taxis use. At the moment trucks run all over North America, back and forth hauling everything from logs to food, and the inefficiencies result in millions of tonnes of greenhouse gases being produced unnecessarily.

- reduce regulation that works to prevent people from eating locally produced food, including meat. fruit, vegetables, grains. For instance, recent regulation required locally grown meat to be trucked away for slaughter and packing, doubling the cost in greenhouse gases, instead of permitting local packing by producers. It was a solution lacking a problem, and which only served to eliminate local producers and put profit in the pockets of corporate meat packing interests. Healthy food, eg. fruit cannot be produced locally at a profit because of useless regulation.

Political values lie at the heart of these issues. The solutions require change but the cost of not changing is greater, economically, morally, and idealogically.

Save the Boreal Forest?

Not likely.

Like it or not we are in a battle over the pristine north.
And the reason the conservationists will lose and the exploiters will win is that the closest anybody on this forum, and 95% of the rest of the world, has been to the boreal forest is the picture at the top of the page.
You and I included live so far away from that forest - in our centrally-heated homes and apartments above paved streets, with lights that stay on all night, serviced by garbage collectors, snowplows and street cleaners, paper boys and mailmen, that the boreal forest could go away and it wouldn't affect our daily lives in any noticeable manner.
But if petroleum products - gasoline, diesel, heating oil, pulp & paper, disappeared, there would be no streetlighting, no garbage collection, no newspaper, - heck, no garbage bags (plastic nor paper) and you would be hauling your trash to the dump on a horse drawn wagon, or burning it in your backyard, or maybe in your fireplace to keep warm.
You wouldn't have a grocery store to go to, you'd have to grow your own food. There would be no video store, no GAP, no WalMart. better learn to sew and knit, and spin your own cloth like Gandhi did. Learn to make candles and soap.
And, oh yeah, better dig an outhouse too, because the water treatment plant that depends on electricity, chemicals pumped in, pumps that are manufactured only by heavy industry, would soon vanish.
Then there's the medical industry that comes with petroleum and cheap energy.

Enjoy.

Price of Freedom

Arizona Teacher Fired Over Bumper Sticker

care2.com — Arizona teacher Tarah Ausburn has been fired from her job teaching English at Imagine Prep High School, in Surprise, because she refused to remove a bumper sticker from her car.

_____________________

Bandersnatchi's take:

Can you say, "pun?"
This teacher has not only the courage of her convictions, she has wit as well.
cf. Have you hugged your kid today?
vs. Have you drugged your kid today? - the offending sticker.

Shades of Dead Poets Society.
The school does not deserve this teacher.
She speaks the truth.
They cannot handle the truth.

The excessive dispensing of prescription drugs to alter moods, and inhibit thinking is apalling: ritalin, prozac, et al.
The dumbing down of school terxts, TV shows, the numbing of America through the avalanche of advertising propaganda all aimed at conrolling the behaviour of the masses is disgusting.
More teachers aware enough and courageous enough to try to awaken youth is exactly what is needed.
The cost of freedom is eternal vigilance.
Don't let these fools silence another voice of sanity and reason.

That a teacher's job is in part to stimulate students to think is surely not contentious?

The Socratic method is the basis of public & private education or it is just propaganda. There are constitutional issues here. But this is Arizona and I fear the conspiracy to promote ignorance to maintain power is widespread there. But not only there.

Lesson in Life

"A seventeen year old Miss San Antonio lost her title for gaining too much weight, being told by the pageant committee she ate "too many tacos." Instead, Domonique Ramirez's crown was given to the runner up."
- Robin Marty reports, in "Beauty Queen Loses Crown Over Eating "Too Many Tacos"


Bandersnatchi's take on the incident:

A deal is a deal. A contract is a contract.
There was full disclosure - the rules were published and well-known beforehand.
You may not like "beauty contests" or "scholarship programs" but you have to want her to learn to be responsible and to honour her commitment at age 17 - while she's young, before it has life altering consequences.

If she doesn't like the deal after the contest is over and the tour begins, she can quit, give up her crown, forfeit the winnigs - it isn't slavery. The pageant knows winners sometimes stub their toe - that's why they have runners-up. Everybody knows this.

This win could lead to product endorsements for her, maybe, Revlon, maybe DKNY, who knows?
Jessica Alba makes big bucks putting Revlon on her pretty face, but if Jessica Alba puts on weight, stays out late and gets bags under her eyes so she cannot represent Revlon the way she does now, she gets replaced. That's the deal.
Tell the beauty queen to grow up, do her job, or she'll be answering the phone for the local car dealership for the rest of her life.

If God blesses you with good looks, or a singing voice, or the ability to catch a football, you shouldn't squander it by shoving coke up your nose, or Tacos down your throat.

The slow baby turtles get eaten by seagulls on hatching.
Life's tough, but it's beautiful if you don't weaken.

There are billions out there who don't have it as good as Miss San Antonio.
No sympathy here.

Romeo Must Die!

World Population
  * 1 billion in 1804       * 2 billion in 1927 (123 years later)     * 3 billion in 1960 (33 years later)     * 4 billion in 1974 (14 years later)     * 5 billion in 1987 (13 years later)   
Climate change causes notwithstanding, the human impact on the animal kingdom is indisputable.
But know this, there is no going back.
Concerns for the environment are not (just) about how pretty it is to look at, at the bottom it is about liveability - for humans.
Sure we care about pristine mountain streams being good for fish to spawn in, but in reality the concern is that the fish will still be there for us to eat.
We are pushing 7 billion people now. The environment supported lots of critters a hundred years ago when there were fewer than 2 billion people, but now we have five billion more! That's five BILLION more mouths to feed, butts to poop, and to house, warm, and entertain.
The only way for us to return to a world of plenty is for 5 billion people to die.
That isn't going to happen voluntarily, but it will happen, and it ain't gonna be pretty.

NASCAR is the canary in the coal mine.

Two truths are told as prologues to the swelling acts to the Imperial theme:

- There is no stopping climate change - so get away from the coasts, sell off your shore front cottage.
- Just because they speak English, there is no reason to think our politicians are any less corrupt than those of your average banana republic.
Polluted water, air & soil will have increasing adverse effects on people as time passes because there are no new lands to conquer where unconflicted life is possible.
- it's going to be an increasingly more vigorous battle for life & liberty from now on. The salad days are over, mostly because the peoples that "we" European descendants, enslaved, colonized and exploited, are now grown up and sitting at the table of the developed nations demanding a piece of the pie.
The G8 has become the G20 and others are clamoring to be let in.
I see world politics becoming more protectionist from now on, and energy-dense fossil fuels will be hoarded by the military to protect borders and resources.
Because the only solution to this competition is massive reduction of the population, there is no political solution, only military ones.
btw, I consider NASCAR to be a bellwether, a canary in the mine - as long as there is NASCAR, no government can be taken seriously about energy conservation and climate change.

"Why [should] I yield to that suggestion
Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair
And make my seated heart knock at my ribs,
Against the use of nature?"

Sorry, Bubba.

Climate Change Crisis

To those who think "we" lead the way and should set an example for the world - you should realize that we already have set an example for the world, and every developing nation wants to become the over-producing, over-consuming society that we have become.

Also, sadly, for every well-intentioned statesman/woman who wants to rein it in in the interests of our descendants, know that there are ten times as many lobbyists with big budgets hired by corporate interests who want to forge on full speed ahead to use up all the resources before the other guys can. In other words to follow the adage, "make hay while the sun shines."

"Get yours while the getting is good." is their motto.