from the book: Shadow Dancing on the Grave of Hope:
The Martian wants to know about our child-rearing practices. A helpful earthling explains. "One of the most important aspects is schooling. Our children must attend an institution where they are judged by jobs-for-life government workers who are protected from responsibility by a militant union. These workers have the arrogance, indifference and incompetence that can only be generated by guaranteed employment. During their stay in the educational system, our children are subjected to relentless leftist propaganda whose basic assumption is that a government solution is the only valid solution. If the child does not learn quickly enough, he is considered to be deficient. If he is outstanding in his studies, the credit goes to the outstanding work of the teachers. Many parents judge their children based on how well the children do in this kind of setting." The Martian, although well-trained in earthly dialect, is struck silent by the logic of earthly practice.
"Teaching is very easy if you don’t care about doing it right and very hard if you do." Thomas Sowell.
"Too often what are called ‘educated’ people are simply people who have been sheltered from reality for years in ivy-covered buildings. Those whose whole careers have been spent in ivy-covered buildings, insulated by tenure, can remain adolescents on into their golden retirement years." Thomas Sowell.
Why do we say, "Gates, Wozniak and Jobs revolutionized the personal computer in spite of not graduating from university." rather than "Gates, Wozniak and Jobs revolutionized the personal computer because of not graduating from university."? A considerable amount of progress has come from those who failed at, or didn’t care about, academic achievement.
"The paradox of universal, compulsory, state controlled schooling is that so long as we insist upon it, we cannot learn whether we need it, what we need it for, how it does whatever we suppose it does, or what might, if anything, better take its place." Laura Hersh Salganik, 1981.
A few years ago, a teacher told me I didn’t know anything about teaching–in spite of the fact that I had successfully taught many students untaught by the regular school system. What he meant is that I knew nothing about myths that pass as knowledge in the teaching profession. I didn’t go through the proper "rites de passage" to enter the cult, thence, I was incomplete, imperfect and incompetent. This criticism, as the criticism passed by all cults, had nothing to do with whether my students learned, quickly, slowly or, not at all. It had to do with the form of my indoctrination, and form, as ever for true political believers, is all. This educator’s remark illustrates two major things that are wrong with the current educational situation. The first is the belief that education makes one complete in a field and is thus, both a necessary and sufficient condition. The second is that results are irrelevant to any discussion of educator competence.
Cheerio and ttfn,
Grant Coulson
