Education Vs Indoctrination Vs Critical Thinking

I would refer you to another recent Vive article:<br />
<a href="http://www.vivelecanada.ca/article.php/20070114053531914">http://www.vivelecanada.ca/article.php/20070114053531914</a><br />
because education and jobs are intricately linked, all the more so as technological advances render "traditional" employment redundant.<br />
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In addition, education per se, becomes more of an indoctrination when the former aspires to a less and less "well-rounded" format (i.e. "specialization") Concentration in a few subjects (the "flavours" today being math and sciences, as opposed to arts and literature) renders the student ignorant of virtually anything outside of their particular endeavours. This in turn opens them up to indoctrination, if only through misconception, because they have no way to assess the information they are receiving. They measure it relative to their knowledge base, and if it doesn't fit, they discard it as a waste of time. Propagandists know this.<br />
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Besides, Robert Heinlein said of specialization: Specialization is for Insects<br />
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"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."<br />
<p>---<br>"When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change." <br />
-Max Planck<br />
<br />

Very good point RPW. There was a time when being able to think, learn,
invent was expected but all too often today the term, 'jack of all trades
master of none' is used to imply the importance of specializing. Yet anyone
who wants job security knows that the ability to adapt or do various duties
will give them more security.

I also remember when we were told that computers and modern life would
make for more leisure time. Instead many families are working two jobs,
children are working instead of playing, we are hooked on feel good drugs for
everything that doesn't fit into the new normal. I don't recall children
declaring they were bored when I was a kid. But we didn't wait for someone to
tell us what might be fun, we made our own fun. We could also go outside
and play without being in fear; now kids are locked into their houses after
school waiting for a parent to come home. They have choices like what to eat,
and what to watch on t.v. Its about being safe, fighting fear and the
unknowns. There is a better way.

We used to get our exercise outside, walking to school, playing tag etc. Now
you have to pay someone so you can go inside and use their equipment to
get your exercise. Or we worked physically outside and inside, we skated on
outside rinks, for free and the person who made the ice did it for free. Now
you have to rent ice if you want your kids to skate, or flood your own
backyard if you have a yard.

We must begin to think outside of this box.

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"aaaah and the whisper of thousands of tiny voices became a mighty deafening roar and they called it 'freedom'!"' Canadians Acting Humanely at home & everywhere

" We used to get our exercise outside "<br />
Excellent point! And timely!<br />
<a href="http://www.macleans.ca/topstories/education/article.jsp?content=20060904_132617_132617">http://www.macleans.ca/topstories/education/article.jsp?content=20060904_132617_132617</a><br />
And if you get Maclean's magazine, in the current edition (Jan.22/07), there is a followup article entitled "Everybody in the vegetable patch!" (couldn't find it online - only hard copy)<br />
<br />
As regards technology, the 50's promised us that technology would bring the leisure society, by creating great learning tools. And leisure time would allow us the time and means for intellectual pursuits. <br />
And it has brought "leisure" for many of us - except it is called under-employment and unemployment, mainly because we haven't yet figured out how to get the wealth to those of us who DO experience this "leisure". So instead, technology has become a diversion (i-pod, i-tunes, i-phone, yada yada yada) and it has become a cruel taskmaster as well, for those of us who work, requiring us to work faster, harder, longer.<br />
A large part of the problem has been a concommitant lack of "ramping up" of education opportunities. Part of any rational leisure society should be the opportunity to become "professional students". In the ideal of the Startrek series, "to go where no one has gone before". Instead, we have increasingly desperate single parents, poverty among the elderly, an increasingly irrelevant educaton system (the indoctrination aspect), homelessness, and, as both citizens and governments become more niggaredly in support of all of the above, a significant increase in crime and budgets for fighting crime.<p>---<br>"When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change." <br />
-Max Planck<br />
<br />

“There was a time when being able to think, learn, invent was expected but all too often today the term, 'jack of all trades master of none' is used to imply the importance of specializing. Yet anyone who wants job security knows that the ability to adapt or do various duties will give them more security.”

This is true and yet I see an opening for a “specialist” in being a “Jack of all trades”.
As an Electrical / Mechanical technician for over 30 years the latter part of those being in equipment repair and troubleshooting I cannot count the number of times that I have had to locate a problem so that the “specialist” could repair it. All too often the expertise is so narrow that they cannot understand and troubleshoot the equipment because they do not have a broad enough understanding of the various systems that comprise the whole machine. This is not totally the fault of their education as in my experience in training apprentices, and working with maintenance personnel over the years, I have found that the ability to be a GOOD generalist is not totally due to training and experience (although the latter “hands on” time is very important) but rather the fact that you “get it”. Some can look at a machine and intuitively zoom in on the area of trouble and some cannot no matter how well trained.

I am pleased to see that my son has inherited this trait from myself, having seen him at quite an early age take stuff apart, fix it, and reassemble it having never seen the item before reinforces the belief that only some skills can be taught, some are just built in!
So I tell him that his ability is going to be more valuable than that of the specialist in the future because unless there is someone to narrow the problem down for the specialist to fix, the equipment will be relegated to that un-repairable category that the modern “replacement technicians” use so much!

Our motto in our small repair shop is that old but true (in most cases for us) saying “We have fixed so much with so little for so long that we are now qualified to fix anything with nothing”. Only a NON specialist can say that.


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When you are up to your ass in alligators it is difficult to remember that the initial objective was to drain the swamp

Excellent article, but I wonder how much any kind of education is worth ? Do we really educate anybody, apart from technical skills that have to be absorbed?

I grew up in a fascist society, fascist family and fascist education envrironment, but have been a rebel every since I can remember. To the dispair of my ultra conservative, royalist family.

My eyes were opened in the summer of 1948, when, at the age of 21, I first saw the speakers at the Marble Arch of Hyde Park Corner, even though I couldn't understand a word of what they were saying.

Cambridge, at the time, was still the seat of open minded learning, although the courses I took gave no papers and qualifications, which didn't matter to me, anyway, but they opened a new world I could never have imagined before and under extinction today. Of course, I was only a farm worker anybody can read about by typing my name into google.

My wife and I have had the happiest relationship, since we first met 62 years ago, and our 3 children grew up in a happy, open minded, free thinking home. Apart from their school education to get the necessary papers, they've been surrounded by hundreds of books on any and every subject I needed for my own research, entertainment and self education. Our table was always open for the most objective and free discussion of any subject anybody could think, or heard of, or by strangers brought into the house.

They, now in their mid to late forties, turned their backs not only on our life experiences, history, education and free thinker beliefs, but have cut off all contacts, with the exception of one, who maintains some cursory contact. They've been strangers to us all their lives. We have 4 grandchildren, 3 we've never seen. Luckily, we're not the doting parents and grandparents, who'd die if they couldn't constantly see their offspring, and so we learned to live with the facts and are very happy with what we have.

So, what has our educational system, or we, have done wrong?
Did we really have any chance to have any influence?

One of my psychology instructors, a firm believer in reincarnation, had the theory, that souls end up in some kind of a pool, after death, where they can examine the mistakes they've made in their past lives and choose their rebirths in families and locations where they could improve their characters as human beings. Also, that the people who make the most mistakes, criminal actions, are "new souls", without a long line of past experiences.

I'm not a believer in anything, without an open door for doubts, but have experienced and seen some very interesting events under past life hypnosis, which I'm qualified to do, but haven't done in many years. This medical, clinical psychologist was interseted to find out why I'm not rich and have absolutely no interest in money, or power, etc. It was an intersting experiment and it turned out that in past lives I may have been a Spanish pirate and a Japanese Catholic priest ?????????? I don't know and don't really give a damn, but I sure would like to hypnotize some of our political leaders ? Yet, it did change my life, as it gave me an idea, or understanding of why I may have made certain decisions and chosen certain paths ? Also the power of positive thinking, I sadly lacked before, as do may, if not most Hungarian born and raised.

Who knows, Hitler now may be an ultra religious Israeli politician ?

Now breakfast is waiting then, out to clean the chicken house and feed the cows.

Ed Deak, Big Lake, BC.

Quick note before going out.....

Specialization creates incomeptence and reliance on the system, forcing people to spend money on what they could and should do themselves, but it doesn't jack up the GDP.

This is an important part of the neocon/neoclassical theory, urged and taught in our universities. Also the reason for the destruction of family farms, small businesses and depopulation of the countryside, going on all around us, with schools and services closing.

By jamming people into cities they're forced to spend every minute to survive, which is "growth of the GDP".

I've been an advocate and practitioner of multiple skills and self sufficency since the end of WW2, when I saw how totally incompetent and ignorant specialists were when the system collapsed around their miseducated necks.

Europe was pulled up from the ruins by skilled trades people who could think and use their knowledge to make things out of junk, but it couldn't happen again, especially here in North America. In the case of a breakdown, The only results would be armed robber gangs, combing the country for food.
Mel Watkins' "Road Warrior" society.

Ed Deak.

I am one who qualifies as a philosopher according to a definition I once read. That philosophy is the love of learning. <br />
And there is so much to learn, for instance much of what once was available for the student is no more <br />
<a href="http://www.barefootsworld.net/1895finalexam.html">http://www.barefootsworld.net/1895finalexam.html</a> <br />
<br />
I am aware of the works of John Taylor Gatto and Charlotte Iserbyt.<br />
I am aware of how school has been dumbed down (deliberately so too) and how the framers of the US constitution advocate the study of classic Greek and Latin and how up till 1910 or so (about the time of the Federal Reserve system was nefariously foisted on an unsuspecting populous it America the were school texts that instructed children how to do commerce, those book were withdrawn.<br />
<br />
This self directed study of law I do is chiefly concerned with Natural Law and law history as well as that which is contained in article like these,<br />
<a href="http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/BluePete/Lawyers.htm">http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Essays/BluePete/Lawyers.htm</a> <br />
<a href="http://www.constitution.org/liberlib.htm">http://www.constitution.org/liberlib.htm</a> <br />
<br />
I suppose I can call my self a Jack of all trades of sorts as I have earnd a livelihood form the skill I acquired to design and make jewellery, furniture, sculpt, silk screened items <br />
I have remodelled my temporary homes, learned to do wiring, plumbing etc/<br />
Out of my love of knowledge I have been the founder of societies, to address employment and in Mexico was instrumental in starting a computer school for the less privileged.<br />
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As I write this and try to recall all the various types of work I’ve done I have the full knowledge my sort is putdown and described as flighty. <br />
<br />
Labels, But according to who? <br />
To the language police?<br />
Or put down artists who to inflate their weak egos must demean?<br />
<br />
I see Vive le Canada as a sort of community, a community where when minds are open some of the problems of to day can be addressed in real ways.<br />
<br />
It is not good enough to only point at, what come after recognition?<br />
<br />
To be acknowledge by on of my peers in a positive fashion rather than be sniped at ia what buoys me.<br />
Thank You CWC <br />
Diogenes<br />
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<br />
<br />
<p>---<br> [juris ignorantia est cum jus nostrum ignoramus]<br />
<br />
it is ignorance of the law when we do not know our own rights" <br />
<br />
lex ferenda

The concept of "Jack of all trades" ought rightly to spill over in to the area of intellectual pursuits as well

One must, in my opinion, be familiar with the various schools of thought foisted on us by "experts"

What say you?

---
[juris ignorantia est cum jus nostrum ignoramus]

it is ignorance of the law when we do not know our own rights"

lex ferenda

Ed said "Of course, I was only a farm worker anybody can read about by typing my name into google."
Having found your insight and history very interesting Ed, I did just that some time ago. You have indeed led a full and varied life and I note that this year you put yet another decade under your belt. I am "just" a couple of decades behind you and can only hope that I gain (and am able to retain) just a small portion of your breath of knowledge before I "catch up" with you! Congratulations on that milestone whenever it takes place this year, wish I were able to personaly shake your hand.
PS. Readers googling Ed should not get him mixed up with Ed Deak the Economist Profesor in the US, now there is a interesting coincidence.



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When you are up to your ass in alligators it is difficult to remember that the initial objective was to drain the swamp

All the posts on this thread so far are right on target.

I think it all begins when we are children. I'm sure most of us can remember when we had to make our own fun, and pretend that sticks were swords or guns, or used an old 2x4 as a baseball bat, or used a stick as a poor replacement for a shovel.

Necessity, as it has for so long been said, is the mother of invention.

When play becomes all-in-one, and pre-packaged, there is no necessity, and no need to use one's more valuable skill: the ability to use your imagination.

Being a jack-of-all-trades requires being able to imagine solutions on the fly, and a pre-packaged mindset is too hamstrung by it's own "knowledge" to see what to another is completely obvious.

We are, sad to say, rapidly becoming a culture of mindless drones.

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"and the knowledge they fear is a weapon to be used against them"

"The Weapon" - Rush

Or to put it another way, one cannot teach common sense. In fact "higher education" in many cases seem to inhibit it!

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When you are up to your ass in alligators it is difficult to remember that the initial objective was to drain the swamp

We learn all kinds of facts in highschool, then when we go to college and university and take certain subjects, economics are the prime example, we're brainwashed for 4-5 years and can not pass unless we agree that the physical facts we learned in highschool were baloney.

I received quite a number of postings on this when I was on certain economic forums, from students and even professors, from all over the world, who knew that what they had to learn and teach was crap, but had no choice.

Also from scientists, who had to take certain economic courses as part of their post graduate MSc, or DSc studies and have laughed their heads off over the nonsense they had to put into their term and final papers to get their letters.

A friend of mine bucked this trend and used my Principle, against the presrcibed texts. The examiners were shocked, but when he defended his thesis, had no other choice but to agree and gave him his doctorate magna cum laude. This has happened several times that I know of.

Some of the stupidest people I've known had all kinds of papers framed on the walls of their offices.

Ed Deak.

Ed Deak.

<blockquote> when I saw how totally incompetent and ignorant specialists were when the system collapsed around their miseducated necks. </blockquote> This is key, Ed, and is a club that "our masters" can use to keep us in line. When we specialize, and our neigbours specialize, we will give up just about anything to anyone who promises to keep the system intact, so we may survive. <p>---<br>"When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change." <br />
-Max Planck<br />
<br />

YES!!! Imagine having enough "useless bits of information" to participate in Jeopardy (as a starter).

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"When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change."
-Max Planck