Science Forums 2

[ldsoftwaresteve]

I don't like badly designed systems. They are hard to change and improve. Consequently I don't like wasting my time fighting for the sake of fighting with no end in sight except more fighting. You say I should jump in there and yell until I get my way? Sorry, but that's stupid. Unless the outcome is based upon some sort of logic, some sort of predefined set of goals where it isn't just a form of mass hysteria that drives it, I refuse to participate. And if it is designed for a species not human, I refuse to participate also. If no attempt is made to take into account the nature of man, I refuse to participate.

What really constitutes a good education anyway? Why is it needed? This is another one of those things that we take for granted as an absolute truth or universal value. And I absolutely defy you to explain what a good education means.

To be educated does not mean able to survive. It does not mean intelligent. It does not mean good. In our society today, which you and I see from diametric positions, moontanman, I see a herd being inoculated with what someone has deemed appropriate to their mental well being. At least that's what is behind the pretense. I have proven that there isn't anything there that can't be achieved by simple reading and a lot less cost and stress.

Childhood should be an exciting time of preparation and skills accumulation. It isn't. We've turned it into a systematic, tortuous drudge that accomplishes the destruction of interest and intellectual excitement.

And anyone who thinks they know what all children should be learning and when they should be learning it - is deluded. Only the kids know that and only the kids should choose. But our 'system' is not set up that way. It is fundamentally wrong headed.

Teachers 'teach' and students just sit there and think about other things and ask themselves 'Why do I have to learn this shit, I'll never use it?'. And truthfully, they never will.

And after 'graduation'? They're too busy trying to figure out how they're going to fix their car or pay the exhorbitantly high rent being charged to pay for the property taxes that pays for the schools that don't teach them what they need to know to survive. That they get to take loans out for and pay for over the next 20 years if they decide to 'continue their education'. And if you don't think something is wrong with that, well, I guess I've said all I can.

And as for deciding what is best to teach, creation or evolution, don't you see that each of us has to make that determination ourselves? Let the kids decide what they think is correct. I happen to think that both are wrong but that is beside the point. I don't presume to think I should decide what anyone should be exposed to since almost any subject other than mathematics is subjective at best. But still we delude ourselves thinking that we know and so we choose for them and steal that chance for them to grow.

My view of man is quite different than yours. moontanman. Maybe we should leave it at that.