The above video discussion is well worth watching. It is profoundly insightful, and profoundly disturbing. I could disagree with a couple points that Simon Sinek makes, but it isn't constructive to do so.
Instead, I'd just like to make the point that the government school system has been incredibly successful at preventing children from maturing as they should, and that is actually one of the objectives of government education.
For those who disagree with that observation, I offer the following quote from John Taylor Gatto for your consideration...
Theorists from Plato to Rousseau to Frederick of Prussia knew and taught explicitly that if children could be kept childish beyond [their] term in nature, if they could be cloistered in a society of children without any real responsibility except obedience, if their inner lives could be attenuated by removing the insights of history, literature, philosophy, economics, religion, if the imminence of death and the certainty of pain and loss could be removed from daily consciousness, if the profound reflections on one’s own death could be replaced by the trivializing emotions of greed, envy, jealousy and fear, young people would grow older, but they would never grow up, and a great enduring problem of supervision would be solved, for who can argue against the truth that childish and childlike people are much easier to manage than critically trained, self‐reliant ones.
That quote comes from Taylor's short and bitter essay titled, The Purpose of Schooling— Truth versus Disinformation: Everything You Know is Wrong About Schooling.
Amazingly, it appears (from the video discussion above) that the government school system has been too successful, at least in regards to preparing young people for occupational employment. Instead of cranking out immature, easily managed employees it has produced immature, difficult-to-manage employees.
In another quote from Gatto's essay, he states that our government "educated" population is, "deliberately dumbed‐down and rendered childlike in order that government and economic life can be managed with a minimum of hassle, it’s that lowdown nitty‐gritty common purpose. Not Marxist grand warfare between classes and greedy captains of industry, it’s simply so that management will have a minimum of hassles."
Thus it is that now, even at its most clandestine and fundamental purpose, government-directed, taxpayer funded education is a failure.
My wife and I inquired why our son in 3rd grade had no spelling. We were told it is not in the elementary curriculum because they do not need it because there is spell check on all computers. That is the BS we are up against. If we could afford to have my wife stay home we would be homeschooling him.
ReplyDeletePeter,
DeleteI did not know that spelling was no longer taught. I am left wondering what is now taught during the time that spelling was once taught. On second thought, maybe I don't want to know. :-(
Elizabeth L. Johnson said, Read Samuel Blumenfeld's book, The Dumbing-down of America. We were facing that problem in the eighties in the public school system. Our first child was five years-old when my eyes were opened. I saw the results in the lives of a friend and her kindergarten son enrolled in the local public school. It was not a pretty picture of the public school. I looked into Christian, private school and found it too costly for our budget. Having seen that some friends across the nation were home schooling, I rejected it. I thought, I don't have the patience for that! I lay on the couch wondering what to do when the Lord spoke up and said, "Homeschool". So I did, and for all 3 of our children, for 22 years. Every year I thought I could do it another year. My children's friends envied them. It was tough, but I did it and we lived on one income, all because I didn't want my son coming home a changed person because of peer society influence. I've and they've never regretted my decision!
ReplyDeleteThat's a good testimony, Elizabeth. Thank you.
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