11 Reader Responses

1. human? Says:
   July 17th, 2005 at 1:51 pm

   unfortunately, it seems as if its not just a miserable failure, but a deliberate dumbing down that is the education system in America (i cant even venture a guess on other places, i have 0 knowledge of them personally)….

   at a very young age i became very bored with school.

   and by high school, school had become a destructive rather than a constructive force in my life, as ive found it has been for many other people i know…

   i do feel blessed that i have a father who is a real history buff to share with me information & my family has tons of interesting stories from the past that have always kept me wanting to learn…. i do see how such horrible experiences with the school systems could totally turn people off to education…

   i was always the lead the class discussion type, almost just dialouges with teachers and easily ace all the tests… but i never did any homework and basically would show up if i felt like it… combined with a bunch of other society bullshit & just being a crazy youth, i ended up not making it through high school…

   after years and years of “un learning”, which is a painfull and dramatic process, i am happy that i didnt undergo any more years of the scholastic intitiation….

   i think that the education cult and the science cult are very related.

   i am usually very suprised at how little people actually know, and how little they care… but i dont think that is the way people really want to be, because everytime i see people encouraged to learn in the right way, they respond with curiousity and a eager attitude..

   the history thats taught in public schools is awful. pure propaganda really. i think its probably provable that ki9ds learn more from history and discovery channels than they do high school.

   one
   human?

2. Max Kaehn Says:
   July 17th, 2005 at 3:00 pm

   I had the same experience in school in California in the Eighties.

   I don’t think it’s a coincidence that history education in the public schools stops at the end of World War II. There was moral clarity there, and we were on the right side of it. Encouraging kids to study more recent history might cause them to learn from the mistakes we made as a nation, which might lead to a generation of people who want to change the system that was educating them, and that would threaten the status quo.

3. Tom Harrison Says:
   July 17th, 2005 at 3:57 pm

   In class we just did the revolutionary war and the civil war, over and over. Fortunately we had a great librarian.

   Encouraging kids to study more recent history might cause them to learn from the mistakes we made as a nation,

   That’s entirely true, at least the the extent that anyone ever learns from history. It’s also true that studying the history of the rest of the world will put those mistakes in context.

4. Pacman Says:
   July 17th, 2005 at 4:03 pm

   I went to high school (”Gymnasium”) in West Germany during the 90’s. In history class we made it as far as World War II… twice. Post-war German history was taught in social studies, with a short bit about nuclear disarmament treaties and the Reunification.

   Since that time I’ve come to the conclusion that Germany’s schools are institutions for brainwashing and indoctrination (e.g. “Germany is a free and democratic country”, “the press is independent and guarantees democracy”, “evolution is a proven fact” and other lies).

   I don’t think it’s a coincidence that history education in the public schools stops at the end of World War II. There was moral clarity there, and we were on the right side of it.

   I’m sorry to disappoint you, but have you read Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler by Antony Sutton? There was no moral clarity at all in WW II, just propaganda on all sides to justify the mass slaughter of soldiers and civilians alike. And certain people made big bucks along the way.

5. alistair Says:
   July 17th, 2005 at 9:02 pm

   education is a union made product in canada where i finished my “education”. we teach our children more at home than the overpaid babysitters do at school. what they do teach is a brand of social imprinting more than what i would call an education. an idealogical indoctrination. the noises that must rattle inside of the head of a modern canadian teacher must be horrific if this is the product they keep pounding out the three quarters of the year that they do work. regarding content, any discussion of the last fifty years of world history rapidly becomes political, so what`s the point? any position you want to take can be proven out by whatever bias the writer or speaker that you consume takes.”facts” become consumable products. apparently winston churchhill is a war criminal now. he used to be a hero.

6. Nathan Says:
   July 17th, 2005 at 9:23 pm

   And I have to wonder about the collective impact of a generation of people who never learned about the last 50+ years except through what they’ve seen in movies and pop culture reference

   Actually, this is what helped send me down an alternative path. I saw the movie JFK and was riveted by it. It may have been speculative and fanciful, but it was mesmerizing, and after that I just had to read more about the case, and was astonished by what I found, how blatant it all was. About 20 books later (Deep Politics and the Death of JFK by Peter Dale Scott being the most important one) I now know a little more about how the world really works. But I’m sure, during my entire time in high school and college, I never once heard the phrase “Kennedy Assassination” uttered, in any context, and yet now, it’s pretty much at the center of my worldview.

7. Jason Bradfield Says:
   July 18th, 2005 at 9:20 am

   In my high school history class we got all the way through the 1980s ( this was in the 1990s). I also had a very good and VERY organized teacher.

   I don’t think there is an active conspiracy against teaching recent history. Rather I think there is a silent, sub/unconcious conspiracy. Specifically, no one in the power elites want to

   Also, in my experience some teachers were good, some were bad. Overall, I think mandatory public education is overrated. IT would be much better for some kids to work rather than go to school. Of course, child labor laws interfere with that.

8. rg Says:
   July 18th, 2005 at 11:31 am

   here is an interesting piece on this topic by a college professor:

   http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4428.htm

   08/12/03

   “Learning to Be Stupid in the Culture of Cash”

   By Luciana Bohne

9. channel null Says:
   July 18th, 2005 at 8:02 pm

   If you look up recent GRE scores, those test-takers who identify themselves as seeking degrees in education score lowest in every category, even scoring below would-be engineering students on the verbal portions. This is bad, real bad; it makes me want to get into teaching, but I often throw my hands up in despair.

10. Occult Investigator Says:
    July 18th, 2005 at 8:10 pm

    Holy shit. That’s crazy. My girlfriend is getting her master’s in teaching. And do you want to hear what the number one response in her class was when asked why they wanted to be teachers?

    “So I can have the summer’s off.”

11. alistair Says:
    July 19th, 2005 at 11:30 am

    from a career standpoint wanting summers off just makes sense. i have an issue with the ethics, mind you. the tax payer wants the best product deliverable. two months off in the summer deosn`t make sense from an education standpoint. in our kids schools they offer summer programs but you have to pay extra for them.(sound of me scratching my head…….). it is a union product after all, like beer and pick-up trucks.