the enemies education

[Carol]

When this was written, Germany was not the declared enemy of the US. It was published in 1899, and is written by William James, one of the best know authorities on education. His book is titled "Talks To Teachers on Psychologiy: and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals"

"If we reflect upon the various ideals of education that are prevalent in the different countries, we see that what they all aim at is to organize capacity for conduct. This is most immediately obvious in Germany, where the explicitly avowed aim of the higher education is to turn the stucent into an instrucment for advancing scientific discovery. The German universities are proud of the number of young specialist whom they turn out every year,- not necessarily men of any original force of intellect, but men so trained to research that when their professor gives them an historical or philological thesis to prepare, or a bit of labortory work to do, with the general indication as to the best method, they can go off by themselves and use apparatus and consult sources in such a way as to grind out in the requisite number of months some little pepper-corn of new truth worthy of being added to the store of extant human information on the subject."

We need to clarify that at this time in history the Prussians had centeralized German education. They used this centeralized public education to destroy Germany's heroes. Whatever culture we speak of, the way to destroy that culture is to destroy the culture's heroes, then educate them to accept the new paradigm.

Under the new paradigm, the young were taught to praise efficiency to trust in Prussian rule over them, as many in the US today, think of government as the answer to all their problems. Just create a new law and a new bureaucracy to enforce it, and we will have utopia. Mostly trust in technoogy like little children trust in Santa Claus, and foucs education on the development of that technology. Don't worry, God, technology and Big Brother will take care of everything, and if you don't believe this, we will move you to the consprisy thread, so you don't disturb our peace of mind and faith.

The education philosophy behind this education is, "Everyone is born with blank brain, and anything can be written on it, as long as the right method is used." The efforts were made to get our schools to accept this German model of education for military reasons when we entered WWI, but we thought that war was the war to end all wars, and teachers stressed, an institution for making good citizens is good making patriotic citizens, so education was not changed at that time. The US was caught completely off guard when it entered the second war, because while our enemies used technology to prepare for war, the US maintained, what Past President Eisenhower called "domestic education". This was liberal education that transmitted the classics, and focused on citizenship, not technology. The US was technologically behind, especially when it came to military technology. Liberal education resulted in some scientist and inventors but not the technological soceity we have become. Eisenhower praised the Germans for thier contributions to democracy, and we might believe equalizing everyone, by thinking of them as blank brains, upon which the state can write anything, may seem a good thing democracy, but it is not.

What Eisenhower missed, and what I want to be sure you do not miss is, the philososhy holds that the state has the right, and even the duty, to write on these blank brains. We need to repeat William James here "If we reflect upon the various ideals of education that are prevalent in the different countries, we see that what they all aim at is to organize capacity for conduct." In 1958 we changed the capacity for conduct, when we passed the 1958 National Defense Education Act, that was supposed to end in 4 years, but permanently changed public education, and the culture of the US.

 

[lizzie]

Carol- it's obvious that you are passionate about the education of America's youth, but for the life of me, I can't figure out exactly where your focus is. For people like myself, who are linear thinkers and straightforward in personality, could you please try to express some specific examples of where you believe we have gone wrong, and what your opinions include that might fix the problems as you perceive them? I don't mean to come across as demeaning or critical, but I really can't figure out what the underlying motivations for your outrage are.

 

[Carol]

lizzie, that was a very intelligent reply, a whole lot better than moving my post to the conspiracy thread as though the Military Industrial Complex were just a conspiracy theory, and the attempt to answer your questions does not belong in the history and education forum. I keep opening new threads, because it has been intention to address the things ask about when I opened the first thread.

However, everyone, I screwed up the title of this thread. It should be The enemy's education, not the enemies education. However, religious controlled education verses secular education could also be a very good discussion. Especially if fundamentalist Christians and Moselms joined the discussion.

You might notice from William James' tone that he disapproved of the German model. Secondly, you might note that we did not adopt the German model until 1958, when Eisenhower asked congress to pass the National Defense Education Act, that replaced our liberal education with education for technology for military and industrial purpose. Thirdly you might note, Eisenhower told us the Military Indusrial complex will effect every aspect of our lives. We replaced our liberal education with the education for technology for military and industrial purpose that is the model of our enemy's education. Our young have been prepared to serve the Military Industrial Complex that was put in place during the Eisenhower administration. Just as the young of Germany were prepared to serve. Among other things, this could become a discussion of socialism. Education is like a genie in a bottle, the wish is the defined purpose and the students are the genie. We changed the wish in 1958, and every aspect of lives are effected.

If I explain this whole change in one post, it would be too long for anyone to read. But among the changes is, we stopped transmitting our culture. Jefferson devoted his life to supporting the development of free public education for the masses, because he believed this is essential to our democratic republic. There are two ways to have social order, culture or authority over the people. We stopped transmitting our culture and that leaves only authority over the people. That is what we stood against.

Of course the economic. social and political changes do not happen over night, and the changes are not all bad. I am thrilled by our new technology and our new reality of a growing population of long lived people. I would be living in a wheel chair if it were not for this technology and a hip replacement. I buy college lectures about math and quantum physics, and have books explaining how quantum physics and eastern philosophy compliment each other. In fact, I think Newtron's laws of physics is part of our present problem, and quantum physics is the solution. If people think I am just stuck in the past, they are wrong. However... I need to stop here because the post is too long. A lot of really good stuff has happened because of the change, but not all of it is for the good. We have sold out, and cheated our young and deprived many of them from having life opportunity. We so changed our culture this is no longer the democracy we defended in two world wars.

I really hope this factual thread about education stays in the" history and education" forum, so there can be meaningful discussion.

 

[Samson]

Carol- it's obvious that you are passionate about the education of America's youth, but for the life of me, I can't figure out exactly where your focus is. For people like myself, who are linear thinkers and straightforward in personality, could you please try to express some specific examples of where you believe we have gone wrong, and what your opinions include that might fix the problems as you perceive them? I don't mean to come across as demeaning or critical, but I really can't figure out what the underlying motivations for your outrage are.

Good Luck.

As far as I can tell, whatever the problem is has something to do with The Prussians' opinion of Eisenhower's acceptance of Newtonian Physics vs. Quantum Theory.

 

[Carol]

John Dewey is as important to our education as William James and some conservatives curse him. The Right wing folks here might not like Dewey, and that is fine with me, considering I have my concerns about him too. He was a follower of Hegel and Hegel did not oppose Hitler's NAZI Germany. What is important at the moment is information, and I am hoping to keep this thread in the "History and Education" forum long enough to have a meaningful discussion. This discussion is both histroical and about education, and there are many facts to add to it.

"Organic Democracy: The Political Philosophy of John Dewey" by Scott London

Organic Democracy:
The Political Philosophy of John Dewey
By Scott London
John Dewey has been described as "a philosopher who combined the stubborn perseverance of a New England farmer with the zeal of a reckless liberal." He was a progressive and far-sighted thinker with a distinctly American sensibility, one who espoused the virtues of pragmatism and experience over absolute and metaphysical truths and who advanced a social and political philosophy perhaps more thoroughly democratic than any that has been formulated before — or since. Today, a half-century after his death, John Dewey remains if not America’s premier political philosopher, then at least its greatest spokesman for civil society, community values, grass-roots liberalism, and — some would argue — even democracy itself. ...

The link between Dewey and James is significant because pragmatism has often been criticized as overly identified with individualism, capitalism, and material success, when, in fact, Dewey often spoke out against these values. If anything, Dewey saw the necessity of going beyond James’s version of pragmatism to develop a philosophy that would bind Americans to a moral community, as he put it, and provide criteria for decisions that were socially important and politically useful.

 

[lizzie]

If I explain this whole change in one post, it would be too long for anyone to read. But among the changes is, we stopped transmitting our culture. Jefferson devoted his life to supporting the development of free public education for the masses, because he believed this is essential to our democratic republic. There are two ways to have social order, culture or authority over the people. We stopped transmitting our culture and that leaves only authority over the people. That is what we stood against. ....


I really hope this factual thread about education stays in the" history and education" forum, so there can be meaningful discussion.

Okay, I will ask again, what in specific can we do to make our education what you perceive it should be? You have repeatedly posted what you see as the root cause, but I haven't seen you post any solutions that are practical and solid steps. You say that "we stopped transmitting our culture", but you don't say what that culture is in any manner that I can wrap my mind around. You seem to speak in abstract about general ideas, but I haven't seen you address specific problems. You speak often about morality and humanism, but you don't define your own perceptions of morality or the concept of humanism. What comes across in your posts (to me) is words of a dreamer and an ideologue who doesn't really know what the problem is, but wants to reach an undefined Utopia without the ability to put forth any kind of blueprint.

 

[Samson]

If I explain this whole change in one post, it would be too long for anyone to read. But among the changes is, we stopped transmitting our culture. Jefferson devoted his life to supporting the development of free public education for the masses, because he believed this is essential to our democratic republic. There are two ways to have social order, culture or authority over the people. We stopped transmitting our culture and that leaves only authority over the people. That is what we stood against. ....


I really hope this factual thread about education stays in the" history and education" forum, so there can be meaningful discussion.

Okay, I will ask again, what in specific can we do to make our education what you perceive it should be? You have repeatedly posted what you see as the root cause, but I haven't seen you post any solutions that are practical and solid steps. You say that "we stopped transmitting our culture", but you don't say what that culture is in any manner that I can wrap my mind around. You seem to speak in abstract about general ideas, but I haven't seen you address specific problems. You speak often about morality and humanism, but you don't define your own perceptions of morality or the concept of humanism. What comes across in your posts (to me) is words of a dreamer and an ideologue who doesn't really know what the problem is, but wants to reach an undefined Utopia without the ability to put forth any kind of blueprint.

According to Dewey good education should have both a societal purpose and purpose for the individual student. For Dewey, the long-term matters, but so does the short-term quality of an educational experience. Educators are responsible, therefore, for providing students with experiences that are immediately valuable and which better enable the students to contribute to society.

Dewey polarizes two extremes in education -- traditional and progressive education.

The paradigm war still goes on -- on the one hand, relatively structured, disciplined, ordered, didactic tradition education vs. relatively unstructured, free, student-directed progressive education.

Dewey criticizes traditional education for lacking in holistic understanding of students and designing curricula overly focused on content rather than content and process which is judged by its contribution to the well-being of individuals and society.

On the other hand, progressive education, he argues, is too reactionary and takes a free approach without really knowing how or why freedom can be most useful in education. Freedom for the sake of freedom is a weak philosophy of education. Dewey argues that we must move beyond this paradigm war, and to do that we need a theory of experience.

Thus, Dewey argues that educators must first understand the nature of human experience.

Dewey's theory is that experience arises from the interaction of two principles -- continuity and interaction. Continuity is that each experience a person has will influence his/her future, for better or for worse. Interaction refers to the situational influence on one's experience. In other words, one's present experience is a function of the interaction between one's past experiences and the present situation. For example, my experience of a lesson, will depend on how the teacher arranges and facilitates the lesson, as well my past experience of similar lessons and teachers.

It is important to understand that, for Dewey, no experience has pre-ordained value. Thus, what may be a rewarding experience for one person, could be a detrimental experience for another.

The value of the experience is to be judged by the effect that experience has on the individual's present, their future, and the extent to which the individual is able to contribute to society.

Dewey says that once we have a theory of experience, then as educators can set about progressively organizing our subject matter in a way that it takes accounts of students' past experiences, and then provides them with experiences which will help to open up, rather than shut down, a person's access to future growth experiences, thereby expanding the person's likely contribution to society.

Dewey examines his theory of experience in light of practical educational problems, such as the debate between how much freedom vs. discipline to use. Dewey shows that his theory of experience (continuity and interaction) can be useful guides to help solving such issues.

Throughout, there is a strong emphasis on the subjective quality of a student's experience and the necessity for the teacher of understanding the students' past experiences in order to effectively design a sequence of liberating educational experiences to allow the person to fulfil their potential as a member of society.

 

[lizzie]

Ahhhh, now we're cooking with fuel.

So Carol, please define what our culture is that we no longer transmit, and clue me in as to what your concept of morality is, and how humanism fits into what you think our educational system should be instilling in our youth. Really, I would like to try to understand your pov.

 

[Carol]

Carol- it's obvious that you are passionate about the education of America's youth, but for the life of me, I can't figure out exactly where your focus is. For people like myself, who are linear thinkers and straightforward in personality, could you please try to express some specific examples of where you believe we have gone wrong, and what your opinions include that might fix the problems as you perceive them? I don't mean to come across as demeaning or critical, but I really can't figure out what the underlying motivations for your outrage are.

Good Luck.

As far as I can tell, whatever the problem is has something to do with The Prussians' opinion of Eisenhower's acceptance of Newtonian Physics vs. Quantum Theory.

The Prussian opinion of Eisenhower has nothing to do with anything. It is Eisenhower's opinion of what the Prussians accomplished that matters. Our history should be as strong in knowledge of the Prussians as it is in knowledge of ourselves. The USA was the Athnes of the modern world, and Germany (actually Germany under Prussian leadership) was the Sparta of the modern world. Now we are the Sparta of the modern world. Or as the Bush family said, The New World Order.

"War is a highly organized science-the soldier and industrial worker both need training in scinitific thinking and application" This is the title of J.A.B. Sinclair's speech at the National Education Association Conference in 1917. That is when we mobilized for the first world war and used public schools to mobilize us for war and mainitian support of the war. Sinclair praised the German military accomplishments and said, "It is the Great God Efficeincy, to which the Germans were required by their commanders to pay homage of worship-and it behooves us either to effect a thing that will operate as well or to copy theirs." Mind you he is speaking to teachers.

Significant changes were made in public education at this time. Obviously there was a military need for change, but also we had to appease Industry that wanted to close the public shools, claiming the war caused a labor shortage. Just a few years earlier we manned industry with children, and the child labor law keeping children out of industries during school hours was new. Had Industry won the argument, our population could be as educated as the population of India, which until recently was not a well educated population and still has mass ignorance and child labor. The introduction of vocational training in our schools, greatly increased the number of parents willing to send their children to school, rather them keep them home to work. However, it was not until 1958 that we replaced our liberal education with education for technology for military and industrial purpose.

Nothing is black and white here. This whole subject is more a matter of balance than, than this is good and that is bad. In 1958 our education became unbalanced and we are paying a terrible price for that lack of balance. Our liberty and freedom could be lost to us, if we do not understand the need for balance. We no longer have the culture that was the meaning of being an American.

As I said else where, imagine if you died and people put someone else's brain in your head. It would be your head and your body, but someone else's brain. Now is that you? Our national consciouseness has been changed by public education. We are not the democracy we defended in two world wars. Some things are better and some are worse, and we better have meaningful discussion of these matters, because we can not depend on government to manifest life as we want it. Our liberty and justice depends on our knowledge of principles and our willingness to stand for them.

 

[Samson]

Carol- it's obvious that you are passionate about the education of America's youth, but for the life of me, I can't figure out exactly where your focus is. For people like myself, who are linear thinkers and straightforward in personality, could you please try to express some specific examples of where you believe we have gone wrong, and what your opinions include that might fix the problems as you perceive them? I don't mean to come across as demeaning or critical, but I really can't figure out what the underlying motivations for your outrage are.

Good Luck.

As far as I can tell, whatever the problem is has something to do with The Prussians' opinion of Eisenhower's acceptance of Newtonian Physics vs. Quantum Theory.

The Prussian opinion of Eisenhower has nothing to do with anything. It is Eisenhower's opinion of what the Prussians accomplished that matters. Our history should be as strong in knowledge of the Prussians as it is in knowledge of ourselves. The USA was the Athnes of the modern world, and Germany (actually Germany under Prussian leadership) was the Sparta of the modern world. Now we are the Sparta of the modern world. Or as the Bush family said, The New World Order.

"War is a highly organized science-the soldier and industrial worker both need training in scinitific thinking and application" This is the title of J.A.B. Sinclair's speech at the National Education Association Conference in 1917. That is when we mobilized for the first world war and used public schools to mobilize us for war and mainitian support of the war. Sinclair praised the German military accomplishments and said, "It is the Great God Efficeincy, to which the Germans were required by their commanders to pay homage of worship-and it behooves us either to effect a thing that will operate as well or to copy theirs." Mind you he is speaking to teachers.

Significant changes were made in public education at this time. Obviously there was a military need for change, but also we had to appease Industry that wanted to close the public shools, claiming the war caused a labor shortage. Just a few years earlier we manned industry with children, and the child labor law keeping children out of industries during school hours was new. Had Industry won the argument, our population could be as educated as the population of India, which until recently was not a well educated population and still has mass ignorance and child labor. The introduction of vocational training in our schools, greatly increased the number of parents willing to send their children to school, rather them keep them home to work. However, it was not until 1958 that we replaced our liberal education with education for technology for military and industrial purpose.

Nothing is black and white here. This whole subject is more a matter of balance than, than this is good and that is bad. In 1958 our education became unbalanced and we are paying a terrible price for that lack of balance. Our liberty and freedom could be lost to us, if we do not understand the need for balance. We no longer have the culture that was the meaning of being an American.

As I said else where, imagine if you died and people put someone else's brain in your head. It would be your head and your body, but someone else's brain. Now is that you? Our national consciouseness has been changed by public education. We are not the democracy we defended in two world wars. Some things are better and some are worse, and we better have meaningful discussion of these matters, because we can not depend on government to manifest life as we want it. Our liberty and justice depends on our knowledge of principles and our willingness to stand for them.

The Prussian opinion of Eisenhower has everything to do with everything. It is Prussian opinion of what Eisenhower accomplished that matters. Our history should be as strong in knowledge of Eisenhower as it is in knowledge of ourselves. A language expresses the inner life and knowledge of its speakers, and that languages must differ from one another in the same way and to the same degree as those who use them. Sounds do not become words until a meaning has been put into them, and this meaning embodies the thought of a community.

What Humboldt terms the inner form of a language is just that mode of denoting the relations between the parts of a sentence which reflects the manner in which a particular body of men regards the world about them. It is the task of the morphology of speech to distinguish the various ways in which languages differ from each other as regards their inner form, and to classify and arrange them accordingly. Imagine if you died and people put a chicken brain in your head. It would be your head and your body, but a chicken's brain. Now is that you?

Public education has been changed by our national consciouseness. We are the democracy we defended in two world wars. Some things are worse but some are better, and we better have meaningful discussion of these matters. We can depend on government to manifest life as we want it and our liberty and justice does not depend on our knowledge of principles and our willingness to stand by them.

 

[Carol]

Those were some excellent post. Unfortunately I am exhausted and need to recharge my batteries before I can give an intelligent reply. But just off the top of my head, I would love it if people were talking about democratic principles, and having lives of purpose and meaning. This does not come out of education for technology. Of course all of those who want to prove me wrong, can list the democratic principless that we taught every child. And incase someone wants to argue the US never was a democracy, here is a text book definition of democracy.

"Democracy is a way of life and social organization which above all others is sensitive to the dignity and worth of the individual personality, affirming the fundamental moral and political equality of all men and recognizing no barriers of race, religion, or circumstance."

That makes democracy a matter of culture. Our form of government is republic, or actually a bland of monarchy, democracy and autocracy. However, economically we are almost strictly autocratic, although we entered WWI crying "Democracy and autocracy can not co-exist", in denial that we modeled our industry after England's autocracy. Making it even more important to maintian education for democracy in public schools, to balance the autocratic forces, of Industry, the Military and modern bureacratic government.

Briefly for an understanding of morality I rely on Socrates and Cicero, and prehaps hedonist and stocis. In general, that is relying on the classics and humanism. I do believe this is essential to democracy and raising the moral human potential. Thank you so much for the really good post. I sincerely mean that.

 

[Carol]

Good Luck.

As far as I can tell, whatever the problem is has something to do with The Prussians' opinion of Eisenhower's acceptance of Newtonian Physics vs. Quantum Theory.

The Prussian opinion of Eisenhower has nothing to do with anything. It is Eisenhower's opinion of what the Prussians accomplished that matters. Our history should be as strong in knowledge of the Prussians as it is in knowledge of ourselves. The USA was the Athnes of the modern world, and Germany (actually Germany under Prussian leadership) was the Sparta of the modern world. Now we are the Sparta of the modern world. Or as the Bush family said, The New World Order.

"War is a highly organized science-the soldier and industrial worker both need training in scinitific thinking and application" This is the title of J.A.B. Sinclair's speech at the National Education Association Conference in 1917. That is when we mobilized for the first world war and used public schools to mobilize us for war and mainitian support of the war. Sinclair praised the German military accomplishments and said, "It is the Great God Efficeincy, to which the Germans were required by their commanders to pay homage of worship-and it behooves us either to effect a thing that will operate as well or to copy theirs." Mind you he is speaking to teachers.

Significant changes were made in public education at this time. Obviously there was a military need for change, but also we had to appease Industry that wanted to close the public shools, claiming the war caused a labor shortage. Just a few years earlier we manned industry with children, and the child labor law keeping children out of industries during school hours was new. Had Industry won the argument, our population could be as educated as the population of India, which until recently was not a well educated population and still has mass ignorance and child labor. The introduction of vocational training in our schools, greatly increased the number of parents willing to send their children to school, rather them keep them home to work. However, it was not until 1958 that we replaced our liberal education with education for technology for military and industrial purpose.

Nothing is black and white here. This whole subject is more a matter of balance than, than this is good and that is bad. In 1958 our education became unbalanced and we are paying a terrible price for that lack of balance. Our liberty and freedom could be lost to us, if we do not understand the need for balance. We no longer have the culture that was the meaning of being an American.

As I said else where, imagine if you died and people put someone else's brain in your head. It would be your head and your body, but someone else's brain. Now is that you? Our national consciouseness has been changed by public education. We are not the democracy we defended in two world wars. Some things are better and some are worse, and we better have meaningful discussion of these matters, because we can not depend on government to manifest life as we want it. Our liberty and justice depends on our knowledge of principles and our willingness to stand for them.

The Prussian opinion of Eisenhower has everything to do with everything. It is Prussian opinion of what Eisenhower accomplished that matters. Our history should be as strong in knowledge of Eisenhower as it is in knowledge of ourselves. A language expresses the inner life and knowledge of its speakers, and that languages must differ from one another in the same way and to the same degree as those who use them. Sounds do not become words until a meaning has been put into them, and this meaning embodies the thought of a community.

What Humboldt terms the inner form of a language is just that mode of denoting the relations between the parts of a sentence which reflects the manner in which a particular body of men regards the world about them. It is the task of the morphology of speech to distinguish the various ways in which languages differ from each other as regards their inner form, and to classify and arrange them accordingly. Imagine if you died and people put a chicken brain in your head. It would be your head and your body, but a chicken's brain. Now is that you?

Public education has been changed by our national consciouseness. We are the democracy we defended in two world wars. Some things are worse but some are better, and we better have meaningful discussion of these matters. We can depend on government to manifest life as we want it and our liberty and justice does not depend on our knowledge of principles and our willingness to stand by them.

If I weren't so tired I would explain why I disagree with what you said. Tocqueville would most certianly disagree. This is not the democracy we defended. We are experiecing the horror Tocqueville predicted for Christian democracies. You are not free to do what you believe is the right thing, without first getting the required permits, and being very careful to follow all the regulations. You are subject to your government, and not in control of it.

 

[editec]

We don't have a centralized educational system, folks.

Yes we have a federal department of education, but that organization has damned little control over the 30,000 school boards in this nation.

However we have emphasised SCIENCE AND MATH and abandoned (to some extent) the humanities.

Now the reason that's a mistake is that while science and math certainly gives us the means to creating a good life, the humanites help us understand what it really takes to have a good life in a good SOCIETY.

And as I read the ignorant blather many of you folks thinks passes for history, I totally understand why authoritarian governments set out to destroy history education.

And as I read you people tortuing word meanings to win these petty debates I totally understand the best way to end rational debate is to destroy language.

Humanities, you can't have a decent modern society if the societies decide that teaching them to their children is not important,

Hitler's Germany had some of the most advanced math and sciences on earth.

And just look at the society it spawned.

 

[lizzie]

But just off the top of my head, I would love it if people were talking about democratic principles, and having lives of purpose and meaning. This does not come out of education for technology.

I have nothing against discussion of living a life of purpose and meaning, but I personally believe that is something that can't be taught in school, and must be learned over a lifetime through experience and exploration. An individual's purpose can't be taught, nor given directly to him, but must be found, and seems to be a basic human desire in many. This enters the realm of the religious imo.

That makes democracy a matter of culture. ....... Making it even more important to maintian education for democracy in public schools, to balance the autocratic forces, of Industry, the Military and modern bureacratic government.

How would you like to see children taught about democracy as a culture?

Briefly for an understanding of morality I rely on Socrates and Cicero, and prehaps hedonist and stocis. In general, that is relying on the classics and humanism. I do believe this is essential to democracy and raising the moral human potential.

To me, home environment is essential to raising the moral human, and the educational system should focus on teaching children critical thinking skills. My observation over the past 30 years, is that schools are no longer teaching children how to think and solve problems, but are more focused than ever before, on instilling social/moral values and struggling just to get them to the knowledge level that they can graduate. It is my opinion that what has gone wrong with the education of our children is the breakdown of the family and a general loss of interest in higher learning. We have significantly fallen behind several other countries in math and science competency. This seems to directly contradict your fears that we are focused on the technological side of education as opposed to the humanities.
　
　
　

Crunching the most recent data from a pair of U.S. and international math and science exams for middle-schoolers, Gary Phillips, a researcher at the non-profit American Institutes for Research (AIR), a non-partisan Washington think tank, finds a decidedly mixed picture: Students in most states perform as well as — or better than — peers in most foreign countries.
But he also finds that even those in the highest-scoring states, such as Massachusetts and Minnesota, are significantly below a handful of top-scoring nations such as Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan and Japan.
"We're kind of in the middle of the pack," Phillips says. "Being in the middle of the pack is really a mediocre place to be."
The differences between states are stark: While students in Massachusetts, the top-scoring state in math, can rightly boast that they do nearly as well as students in those highflying Asian nations, students in places such as Mississippi, New Mexico and Washington, D.C., register math results comparable to Bulgaria, Moldova and Macedonia.
"We are not in the lead in winning this race to prepare the minds for the future generation," Phillips says.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2007-11-13-student-study_N.htm

 

[Samson]

The Prussian opinion of Eisenhower has nothing to do with anything. It is Eisenhower's opinion of what the Prussians accomplished that matters. Our history should be as strong in knowledge of the Prussians as it is in knowledge of ourselves. The USA was the Athnes of the modern world, and Germany (actually Germany under Prussian leadership) was the Sparta of the modern world. Now we are the Sparta of the modern world. Or as the Bush family said, The New World Order.

"War is a highly organized science-the soldier and industrial worker both need training in scinitific thinking and application" This is the title of J.A.B. Sinclair's speech at the National Education Association Conference in 1917. That is when we mobilized for the first world war and used public schools to mobilize us for war and mainitian support of the war. Sinclair praised the German military accomplishments and said, "It is the Great God Efficeincy, to which the Germans were required by their commanders to pay homage of worship-and it behooves us either to effect a thing that will operate as well or to copy theirs." Mind you he is speaking to teachers.

Significant changes were made in public education at this time. Obviously there was a military need for change, but also we had to appease Industry that wanted to close the public shools, claiming the war caused a labor shortage. Just a few years earlier we manned industry with children, and the child labor law keeping children out of industries during school hours was new. Had Industry won the argument, our population could be as educated as the population of India, which until recently was not a well educated population and still has mass ignorance and child labor. The introduction of vocational training in our schools, greatly increased the number of parents willing to send their children to school, rather them keep them home to work. However, it was not until 1958 that we replaced our liberal education with education for technology for military and industrial purpose.

Nothing is black and white here. This whole subject is more a matter of balance than, than this is good and that is bad. In 1958 our education became unbalanced and we are paying a terrible price for that lack of balance. Our liberty and freedom could be lost to us, if we do not understand the need for balance. We no longer have the culture that was the meaning of being an American.

As I said else where, imagine if you died and people put someone else's brain in your head. It would be your head and your body, but someone else's brain. Now is that you? Our national consciouseness has been changed by public education. We are not the democracy we defended in two world wars. Some things are better and some are worse, and we better have meaningful discussion of these matters, because we can not depend on government to manifest life as we want it. Our liberty and justice depends on our knowledge of principles and our willingness to stand for them.

The Prussian opinion of Eisenhower has everything to do with everything. It is Prussian opinion of what Eisenhower accomplished that matters. Our history should be as strong in knowledge of Eisenhower as it is in knowledge of ourselves. A language expresses the inner life and knowledge of its speakers, and that languages must differ from one another in the same way and to the same degree as those who use them. Sounds do not become words until a meaning has been put into them, and this meaning embodies the thought of a community.

What Humboldt terms the inner form of a language is just that mode of denoting the relations between the parts of a sentence which reflects the manner in which a particular body of men regards the world about them. It is the task of the morphology of speech to distinguish the various ways in which languages differ from each other as regards their inner form, and to classify and arrange them accordingly. Imagine if you died and people put a chicken brain in your head. It would be your head and your body, but a chicken's brain. Now is that you?

Public education has been changed by our national consciouseness. We are the democracy we defended in two world wars. Some things are worse but some are better, and we better have meaningful discussion of these matters. We can depend on government to manifest life as we want it and our liberty and justice does not depend on our knowledge of principles and our willingness to stand by them.

If I weren't so tired I would explain why I disagree with what you said.

Well, it is a message board, Carol, not a chatroom.

So feel free to take your time responding.

 

[Old Rocks]

Science teaches us how to do things. Humanities teaches us the things that we should and should not do. The former, without the latter, leads to a pathological society. We saw plenty of that in the prior century.

 

[zzzz]

I may be getting off of the subject of this thread a little but I think the educational experience today is fragmented and unworkable. There is no direction or focus except to meet graduation goals and to get to that goal they must design courses that will help students answer the questions on the mandated tests. You speak of the Education act of 1958, that was over a half century ago and today’s grade school and high school education has strayed far from that ideal. When we talk about education in the US you have to look at the separate parts, the different states because this is where education is controlled in this country. Yet the local school board has a lot of power too but the states have been exerting a lot of control lately.

In the US, the Texas State Board of Education sets the standard for the way textbooks are written. The enormous amount of textbooks bought every year by Texas makes the publishers cater to their needs. But each school, each class each teacher teaches subjects differently. Some use the texts more than others. But whether you lean anything or not depends upon the teacher and to a lesser extent the surroundings. To me, children (generally speaking) who go to school in suburbia have a better chance at learning than inner city kids. This has to do with culture, atmosphere and the better teachers going to better environments. But still the focus is on getting scores not learning. In the 60’s and 70’s the focus was on learning.

Technology is a driving force in today’s society. Without the skills and knowledge of technology, people entering the workforce would have a hard time finding a good job. Changing the educational format to focus more on the humanities sounds like an admirable goal but the reality of the world today shows that this is not reasonable. In colleges, students have the option of humanities or science and technology. Some take that option, others don’t. In K 1-12, curriculum is set by the school boards not the students. It is here that a change can be instituted but again I do not see it happening.

If the change in 1958 had not occurred what would the world look like today? Our technology driven economy surely would not be advanced as it is today, using this website might not be possible. The Russians would have gotten to the moon first and we would not have been able to drive their economy into insolvency and force the downfall of the Soviet empire. The world may have become a Soviet dominated world, but Europe may have provided some counter balance to them along with us. But our defense strategy against the Russians in Europe was that technology would beat their quantity in a non-nuclear attack on Western Europe. Without our change in focus to technology we might not have had that edge and the Russians may have invaded. Remember the countries they did invade back in the 60’s. Many other scenarios arise that would have been different. Would it have been a better world? Would American society have been better? It is hard to say.

Society was shaken by the 60’s. The riots, war, birth control and free love destroyed the nice nuclear family set. It was these actions that set us on this course as a nation. We seem to be searching for an identity or something in life that we cannot grasp. Religious beliefs have fallen, crime has risen, our jobs are disappearing and we are becoming a welfare state that is based on quicksand. Let us hope that we can find that identity before it is too late for our children.

 

[Samson]

.....The enormous amount of textbooks bought every year by Texas makes the publishers cater to their needs. ....


....Technology is a driving force in today’s society.... .

Interesting that these two remarks appear in the same post, because publishing technology today allows text manufacturers to tailor texts to any state's specific requirements with little or no additional cost.

 

[zzzz]

.....The enormous amount of textbooks bought every year by Texas makes the publishers cater to their needs. ....


....Technology is a driving force in today’s society.... .

Interesting that these two remarks appear in the same post, because publishing technology today allows text manufacturers to tailor texts to any state's specific requirements with little or no additional cost.

That is true, Texas' influence on the textbook market has been decreasing because of technology. California is a balancing influence in the textbook market also. Those are the 2 largest buyers of textbooks and publishers catered to them creating 2 different texts for the same subject. The rest of the country picked from one or the other (I am being simplistic here) and since most of the country was conservative they picked the Texas texts. But it still comes down to economics. If your school wants a different textbook it will have to pay more for the books than a standard book and if you are buying hundreds of books that can add up. And in today's economy a few hundred dollars makes a difference to a school system.

 

[Samson]

.....The enormous amount of textbooks bought every year by Texas makes the publishers cater to their needs. ....


....Technology is a driving force in today’s society.... .

Interesting that these two remarks appear in the same post, because publishing technology today allows text manufacturers to tailor texts to any state's specific requirements with little or no additional cost.

That is true, Texas' influence on the textbook market has been decreasing because of technology. California is a balancing influence in the textbook market also. Those are the 2 largest buyers of textbooks and publishers catered to them creating 2 different texts for the same subject. The rest of the country picked from one or the other (I am being simplistic here) and since most of the country was conservative they picked the Texas texts. But it still comes down to economics. If your school wants a different textbook it will have to pay more for the books than a standard book and if you are buying hundreds of books that can add up. And in today's economy a few hundred dollars makes a difference to a school system.

Oh sure, I agree, if a school system wants Gold Embroidery on the covers of all their text, that will cost more. Conversely they could buy only books with B&W pictures, and have students share texts, and it will cost much less.

The point is, that the myth that any school must buy exactly the same text as Texas or California is simply untrue.