The style of education we have here in the US was pioneered at first to make more obedient factory workers.
Seriously.
It’s still used to make children obedient and obsequious.
Kids are getting trained, not educated.
Trained to listen and obey the authority in the room.
That’s exactly what grades are based on. Do the work, regurgitate what you’re taught, and you’ll get rewarded.
Think about the grading system. You get rewarded for mindlessly following instructions and behaving how the authority in the room wants you to behave. There is no room for dissent, as children who don’t follow the rules are scorned and exiled.
The slogan of Apple computer is “think differently.” Just don’t do that in the classroom or else you will be held back. Or, like Steve Jobs, you might just drop out and start a revolutionary computer and consumer electronics company.
“The most famous teacher in America,” John Taylor Gatto, paraphrases the six functions of school in his book Weapons of Mass Instruction, which were originally defined by Alexander Inglis in his book Principles of Secondary Education. They are as follows:
- The adjustive or adaptive function. To establish fixed behaviors in response to authority. Children are frequently charged with performing mindless, boring tasks.
- The integrative function: To create and reward conformity. School rewards conformity. Be like everybody else and you’ll do well. This is especially prevalent today when you look at how universities have become neo-liberal echo chambers, and any dissenting thought is insensitive, aggressive, and harmful. Universities used to challenge the status quo. Now they reinforce it.
- The diagnostic and directive function: To determine the proper social role of students. Students are assessed and managed based on their grades and records. Rather than truly being able to pursue their interests they are mostly managed into various fields by career counselors and test scores. “Based on your test scores here are the careers you’ll be the best fit for.” WTF?
- The differentiating function: After kids have been “diagnosed,” kids are sorted by role and educated to meet the requirements of their projected careers. This is outcome based training and education rather than performance based. Outcome based training has individuals work for a particular forced outcome. Performance based training cultivates your own strengths and interests and focuses on making you the best you can be. Outcome based training is forcing a square peg into a round hole. Performance based training focuses on you becoming the best damn square peg you can be then looking for a square hole to match with.
- The selective function. Natural selection of obedient, conforming fools. Essentially breeding out those who don’t go along with the program. Kids with bad grades are lumped together and stigmatized, labeled as inferior. Do bad in school, get a “bad” job for little pay, get a low quality spouse, have bad kids. Sillyness.
- The propaedeutic function. Some kids will rise to the top and begin to understand the system. They’ll get involved with politics and they’ll keep the whole system humming along.
State run education creates good little dumbed down and de-clawed worker bees.
Kids start getting indoctrinated at a young age. They are mostly controlled by state run education until they are “adults.” Then they might go to college to get indoctrinated even more. In the end, it’s a self perpetuating system where we all lose.
Critical thinking is lost. Conscious thought is lost. Dissent is lost. Virtually all of the protesters of the current election were the exact type of people I’m talking about. They’re walking, talking robots programmed by the mainstream failing legacy media. They participate in group think in their online cliques and are subject to confirmation bias from propaganda masquerading as news. They weren’t protesting against the current state of affairs. Their goal was to perpetuate it. They wanted to stay on the disastrous downward spiraling course we were on. They were fighting for the status quo and not change.
I’ve written in the past about reality and consciousness. People create reality for themselves based on how they’re raised, how they’re taught in school and what their friends think. Their brain does it automatically. They are essentially programmed. It’s like the fish in the small aquarium. Put it in a bigger aquarium and it will still swim as if confined by the walls of its previously limited boundaries. Breaking that conditioning is hard, especially when almost everybody else acts the same way.
Today’s education doesn’t promote conscious and critical thought. I understand that it’s necessary to “play the game” of school by getting good grades and giving yourself the best chance to do well in society. But – It’s up to conscious and critical adults like you to teach your children how to think which they won’t learn in school. I hope you’re doing your part.
