by JM130ELM Sat Sep 18, 2010 6:49 pm
The purpose of public school originally was to train children to become workers in an industrial society. The school was the factory that produced factory workers. Public policy was to assort children into categories matching the jobs waiting for them as workers. The grades given determined which students would go on to colleges for further training to be executives, managers and professionals, leaders, clergy, and so on. The top of society is the wealthy class. Below them is a professional and managerial class, and the vast bottom is the working class. Education was never intended to promote each student reaching their potential except within the narrows scope of those jobs to which they were being sent after graduation.
Like competition does, there is a prize held out to motivate contestants. Try your best and we'll reward the best with the best jobs. The rest, good luck and thanks for playing. It was understood in crafting education policy that esoteric ideals and intellectualism were necessary evils to be kept in check lest revolutionaries disrupt a social order. Several similar mechanism exist in society to mitigate any natural impulse to replace an arbitrary hierarchy with a natural organization of society based in egalitarian truth. You have the egoists led off to become minor gods, leading groups of people. You have the righteous distracted by political campaigns in pursuit of justice. You have the altruists serving soup and sermons, cleaning up after the casualties of a modern society. Most predictable impulses to buck enslavement have been provided for. The majority of workers are content enough in their routines to keep going to work, abiding the law, dreaming the prescribed dreams, opining the slogans dictated by propaganda. Very few people will wind up thinking for themselves and us all for very long, and nearly all of those will live short and troubled lives on the outskirts of a society that punishes such behavior.
The public school is a training camp for Joe and Jane Public. Many such are produced. There need not be any great efficiency. Sloppy teaching by mediocre teachers is apt for dullard students, children of ignorant workers. It's supposed to be like it is. It does what is is meant to do.
The ideal a parent may have wanting for their child "great things in life" usually consists of a very narrow description of success. You can see it portrayed on TV in ads all day long. Great job, happy family, nice car, social status, white teeth. A good wage slave parent wants a future for their child that amounts to a successful wage slave life. Schools need only allow that dream. The parent needs to dream how the school can help the child have a better life through education, so the parent can keep their mind on work while their child is at school.
There was a pretty good debate a while back about education policy. The idiots won out, predictably, and so we had "outcome based education" being "implemented" nationwide. It turns out that teachers are to blame, and need to be held to standards of student performance. Evidently they were having some quality control problems at the schools. The products were defective; the students were not turning out like they were supposed to. The side that lost had the idea that when you acknowledge what learning is and provide an education meant to support individual minds, somehow as a net result of having an enlightened population the world sort of just improves because it cannot be helped, that smart people do smart things. That was a close call!
From my own experience what is missing, if it still is, is when you have sex education class they don't assign homework.
Sun Mar 17, 2013 3:17 am by Chris
» NEW ADDRESS: http://conversationchamber.ipbhost.com/
Sun Mar 17, 2013 3:16 am by Chris
» New project
Sun Mar 17, 2013 2:17 am by wants2laugh
» st pattys day
Sun Mar 17, 2013 12:21 am by Bluesmama
» White smoke signals cardinals have selected a new pope
Sat Mar 16, 2013 8:11 pm by wants2laugh
» Red?
Sat Mar 16, 2013 8:05 pm by Alan Smithee
» Do You Look Like a Celebrity?
Sat Mar 16, 2013 7:57 pm by wants2laugh
» Canned Foods
Sat Mar 16, 2013 2:57 pm by CeCe
» English Muffins or Toast?
Sat Mar 16, 2013 12:45 pm by Nystyle709