From the American Conservative a discussion on what ails American education:
I liked this part:
"Kirk also found that although religion (instruction in which he considered a “natural right”) was on the run in public schools, educationists had fallen under the spell of Freud and Marx, and “values” were replacing true authority, the powers of the imagination were hard to kill. “Montessori is no fad,” he said. “Aye, Maria Montessori understood the imagination of children and their creative powers.” Because she was a devout Catholic, and because she realized, almost by revelation, that the world of the child is the world of wonder, she laid out a path of hope that stays mostly outside the educationist bog. “If every child could be touched by her spirit,” said Kirk, “we would make speedy headway against our present discontents.”
Yes. Outside the box. The one thing the left (rightly) demands we do...yet our system (and I include Canadian education in this) is not set up to encourage free thought. Principal Skinner's 'Independent Thought Control' alert may have been a cartoon but how far off from reality is it really? Interesting they would espouse such a position but feel the best way to achieve it, ironically, is through the state.
I often gaze upon the stars and wonder what it would be like if real choice on education free of bullshit sham curriculums, misguided teaching methods and mismanaged state paternalism existed. And I mean real choice.
Though I reckon defining exactly what we want to get out of education would be a start. Is it to merely produce functional people to be able to go out and get a job and keep the economy rolling?
I notice it's always people who are really old and haven't even been in a modern classroom who imagine themselves to be such experts on what is taught in them.
ReplyDeleteMarx and Lenin? Are you fucking serious? Those guys are vilified left and right in public schools. And I got news for you, religion isn't being persecuted. People latch onto one instance a year where someone is sued for baptizing someone's kid at school and suddenly religion is the victim.
I call bullshit on old people telling me what school was like. I still remember it clearly, and I actually went to school during the supposedly "politically correct" 90's. Clearly I turned out to be a brain-washed, politically correct person, and my generation who loves crude humor, race jokes, think that women should be making us sandwiches in the kitchen, and that ran off to join the military in droves to kill Arab Muslims shows clear signs of the liberal propaganda being shoved down our throats...
Get a fucking clue, dude. Nothing but alarmist old-peopling going on in this post. Shouldn't you be yelling at some kids to get off your lawn?
Ah yes, Bret once more imparting his words of wisdom.
ReplyDeleteYou need a few more clues.
As I've told you before, like a child, just because I post an article doesn't mean I agree with all of it. I post because maybe some readers would like it and hopefully a thoughtful debate results. I agree with some not all of what he says. I don't look at life from one hard perspective as you seem to do; even though you think you don't.
ReplyDeleteThink before you tell others to get a clue.
And I mean fucking think.
You posted something you said you liked and you wrote you own opinion on the matter, which I disagreed with. What am I missing? You just post stuff you disagree with, write about how you agree with it, and then cry when someone says you're an idiot for posting it?
ReplyDeleteTissue?
Oh, and I assure you, you can rest easy because non-Christians are still made to feel left out in schools across the country. Relax, no one is questioning the conservative agenda that runs rampant within public education. Ideas like "Manifest Destiny" are alive and well, so I have no clue where this hostility towards secular ideas comes from. I guess you want baptism and acceptance of Jesus Christ as their personal savior to be graduation criteria? Or just mandatory classroom prayer?
ReplyDeleteOh wait, that's not you, it's the assclowns you plagiarize from. Got it. Noted.
Once again, you show yourself to be the ultimate assclown. You're first response is moronic.
ReplyDeleteAd hominmen, deliberate misrepresenation, and then an unsubstantiated charge of plagiarism.
Seriously Bret, get lost.
It's one thing to make a point and contribute but all you do (when you're off your pills) is just spew and spew - asshole this, idiot that. It's like you're a drunken uncle or something.
ReplyDeleteAnd to try and have a civil discussion, here in Quebec, it's a liberal agenda - not a conservative one - if such a distinction exists.
ReplyDeleteT.C., I thought you said Bret was starting to grow on you?
ReplyDeleteOh, shut up.
ReplyDeleteHeh.
He was growing on me.
I can't believe the balls on this guy.
I'm cool he disagrees with things (that's par for the course) but he has no business or right to accuse me of plagiarism (seriously, plagiarism!) or to tell us to get a clue.
Well, now maybe you have an answer to your question on that other post about what it was that Bret did. He was being Bret.
ReplyDeleteaccuse me of plagiarism
I don't know where he's getting that, but believe me, he's accused me of worse. Maybe he'll explain.
He once insidiously accused me of racism.
ReplyDeleteAnyway. Shame. I think there's merit to this article. I don't agree with him education is liberal. My wife is in it and lemme tell ya, they don't talk about their jobs through ideological prisms but there's no question it's a liberal agenda more than a conservative one. It's even more dramatic in post-secondary education.
A buddy of mine is a bleedding heart liberal and always tells me "conservatives are winning the battle but liberals the war."
That's how I see it and don't understand how liberals can claim they're on the defensive on the bigger picture.
BUT, unlike Bret, I'm not sure of this; it's just an impression and keep moving forward to see if I'm right or wrong - or neither.