Public Education vs. Ignorant Parents

I cannot speak for today as I have no connection with public education. In my time school may have been about facts, but the facts chosen were selected. The desire then was not so much to educate as it was to produce a 'model citizen'. The education I received was American centric. All about what a great country we have. Not much on other places and their contributions to history. Many historical facts were not presented at all, or whitewashed. Manifest destiny was something we were still proud of as a nation. We were the heros of the world stage, and in our own minds. Indoctrination at it's finest.

a reply to: vexati0n

They are also the only place we as a society have a foothold to unteach some truly horrific things kids are taught at home, either on purpose or by example.

Really? What about the military??? Or civilian life outside of the education / programming factories in general.

Im sorry but most of what you just said is laughable. Schools are the last place to stamp out misbehaviour... They probably increase it! I cant prove this & neither can you prove that the indocrintation of public schooling is benefitical in the way you described. Lets not forget something here either, the period between the ages of 12-18 are the most important years in our development. Without giving freedom over what is learned and what can be dome with that time, we deprive youth of any liberty. I think its a contradiction, to say the least. On the one hand you arent smart enough to use the resource available in todays world for your own benefit and survival and on the other hand were saying you are smart enough to learn in depth a large number of complicated topics at those ages hmmm... I think education is torture more than anything. It's also exploitation. Teachers make money from the institutions, head masters make money, exam boards make money etc... Children earn what exactly???? It steals them of their youth, their ability to think indipendantly of societal norms which are for the most part irrational immoral and flawed, and their desire to actually learn. Most kids arent suited to a regimented environment, and its holding them back, hence so many kids these days grow up hating on the older generations for sending them thorugh these nightmareish instutions.

a reply to: MikeHawke

First of all id like to make sure i dont agree with alot of what the OP says, but your post is a product of the education system in my opinion. That you say that evolution is fact and that nobody questions it like the world is round etc is ridiculous. Evolution is also a theory, but just because it is accepted as true by a large enough section of the population in order to influence those who really dont care. It is by this democratic selection of "truth" that shapes our world and beliefs. However like you said no one question the world was round etc.....im sorry but at a point in history the population didnt think it round. Therefore history and what you call facts are changing constantly. What you say are facts now will be wrong in the future. We know so little now and i would argue more than ever as it seems with the more doors we unlock we are faced with many more questions which we have come to a protocol of ignoring.

You need to think for yourself and stop following the mass. If enough people thought if you killed yourself and would become a god, would you accept that to be fact.

Just because its popular doesnt make it fact.

.. . the brainwashing works...

a reply to: vexati0n

I see, so basically, you don't see public schools as a place where children can actually learn valuable skills to make them productive members of society. Instead, you see schools as places where children can be "de-programmed" from the things you wish they wouldn't learn at home.

It's too bad that's not what a school is supposed to do. It is not a place of social engineering which is what you are advocating. It is a place where a kid is supposed to learn the basics of reading, writing, arithmetic so that he or she can function in society and learn their own way. Social engineering has no place, and today our schools are as awful as they are partially because we are turning the curriculum into social engineering instead of basic knowledge base skills.

Either we are to be a free society where people turn out how they turn out even when it means some of them turn in ways you don't approve of, or it means you basically take all children out of their parents hands in the name of some formless greater good. When the latter happens, we no longer have a free society.

a reply to: liteonit6969

but your post is a product of the education system in my opinion. That you say that evolution is fact and that nobody questions it like the world is round etc is ridiculous

just to be clear. i don't believe evolution to be fact. i do believe in micro evolution however.

originally posted by: ketsuko
a reply to: vexati0n

I see, so basically, you don't see public schools as a place where children can actually learn valuable skills to make them productive members of society. Instead, you see schools as places where children can be "de-programmed" from the things you wish they wouldn't learn at home.

It's too bad that's not what a school is supposed to do. It is not a place of social engineering which is what you are advocating. It is a place where a kid is supposed to learn the basics of reading, writing, arithmetic so that he or she can function in society and learn their own way. Social engineering has no place, and today our schools are as awful as they are partially because we are turning the curriculum into social engineering instead of basic knowledge base skills.

Either we are to be a free society where people turn out how they turn out even when it means some of them turn in ways you don't approve of, or it means you basically take all children out of their parents hands in the name of some formless greater good. When the latter happens, we no longer have a free society.

It's a place to learn the basics of reading, writing, and math, and also the basics of critical thinking, scientific investigation, and a historical narrative based on facts where both the good and the bad are presented as equally real. Common Core takes a (somewhat misguided) stab at the first three and almost completely ignores the rest. Indoctrination and social engineering shouldn't be the goal, but the education system should teach people how to protect themselves against such social engineering, especially the sticky kind inflicted at home.

Now, I'm all for freedom of thought and belief, I just don't want to see us living in a world where amateurs and their opinions are regarded as anything like experts with proven and tested facts. People can believe that supply-side economics is a serious theory, or that evolution is a myth, or that politicians turn into lizards when nobody's looking, but they should have a very difficult time convincing their children that these fantasies are based in reality, for the simple reason that they are wrong, and they are undermining effective education with their nonsense.

a reply to: liteonit6969

Therefore history and what you call facts are changing constantly. What you say are facts now will be wrong in the future. We know so little now and i would argue more than ever as it seems with the more doors we unlock we are faced with many more questions which we have come to a protocol of ignoring.

Exactly, its not just society itself thats evolving, and our technologies, its also our knowledge.

And that is a big issue to resolve, because its the internet causing our knowledge to evolve so quickly. Before the internet scientific progress was much much slower as data analysis and data sharing was far more limited. Now we have a globally connected library, the greatest ever in history, and yet our schooling is stuck in the voctorian ages... Its like 500 years behind the rest of society... No kidding... Ask any of us so called millenials how it is, we learned much more from our own research using the internet than we ever in class at school.
And University??? What a joke that is. 9,000 per year worth of student debt from an education that i could easily get online... No thank you!!!!

Edit: A very important point i missed. The data sharing and progression of knowledge is not just causing people to shun universities and learn from home, its also causing academics in universities to expand into the corporate world because they havent got the man power or the funding to explore research in all the new frontiers that are opening up... This is very dangerous because what you essentially have is knowledge being supressed out of corporate interest and technology being supressed out of corporate interest. And now some areas of science barely even see the light of day..and may never see the light of day because they are too valuable to a companies. The implications of this are pretty scary. What we see with military nowdays could in the sciences ejere corporations taking credit for new science hold them similarly to their chests as "corporate secrets" in the way governments do with technology holding "state secrets" around military science and tech.... We are deeply into a very complicated game of chess that until a few years ago we couldn't even see was happening!

a reply to: tavi45

The school system is broken as hell thanks to our obsession with having "objective" scales for success of students and obtaining school funding.

I literally teach dumb "A" students all the time. Their grades are fantastic but they don't know anything except how to play the game. Anytime they are challenged with thinking or learning they fail. They are masters of regurgitation and doing the bare minimum.

I hear you loud and clear! I've seen that done that. Most people wouldn't believe it until they spent a day in a classroom. Learning is a two way street. You could have the smartest teacher and creative activities to learn the material, but if you lack motivation or the willingness to participate, you simply won't learn.

I've worked in industry before becoming a teacher. and find the educational system dismal to say the least.
Education is all about the numbers game. The system is definitely broken and the people making the decisions are so far removed from what is going on in the classroom.

a reply to: vexati0n

Parents often confuse education with parenting. Many don't want their children educated and consider education to be indoctrination. To them the truth is very biased against their homegrown ignorance that they wish to pass on to their children.

The solution is to push them out of the way and just be blunt with it. Either we teach our next generations about truth or we allow them to continue chains of ignorance. I mean... when an entire demographic of people and political orientations consider the word "intellectual" to be an insult, we have a major problem to be fixed.

a reply to: Cuervo

Give it a rest man, only a serious ignorant fool would think that states can do a better job of educating our kids than the parents can.

If you want to argue over who can provide a better education for our youth, dont look to the parents or the state, or even the church, look to the youth themselves. Older brothers and sisters are the best educators in the world when they put their heart into it.


Edit: I can tell from many of the replies and the OP that most who contributed to this thread dont have a clue how deep the indoctrinstion really goes.

Ever heard of Charlotte Iserbyte?
She explains how we went from teaching Latin in the Appallacias to the Epsilon semi moron route we are on now.
THIS is 78 minutes long but EVERY point is covered
www.youtube.com...
WE got the model from the soviets originally. WE didn't need people learning THINGS we needed FACTORY workers ,so WHY gear education to the INDIVIDUAL instead of a uniform state model?and since the 50s it has gone steadily down hill.

a reply to: vexati0n

I home school my son because I strongly disagree with the agenda-driven indoctrination that passes itself off in public schools.

Obviously, you support the agenda-driven indoctrination.

Good luck with that.

originally posted by: funkadeliaaaa
a reply to: Cuervo

Give it a rest man, only a serious ignorant fool would think that states can do a better job of educating our kids than the parents can.

If you want to argue over who can provide a better education for our youth, dont look to the parents or the state, or even the church, look to the youth themselves. Older brothers and sisters are the best educators in the world when they put their heart into it.

In theory you are correct, of course. In a way it's too bad parents are so good at educating their kids, because too many of them teach their kids to hate people who are different, to feel superior to others, to harbor prejudices, to believe false history and ignorant nationalism, to be afraid of (rather than engaged in) government, to give credence to dumb superstition, and to look down on science as an inferior art. The state's role in education should be completely different from what it is today, but it must be there, because something must be a force to counter such negative home-based indoctrination. When we can trust all (or even most) parents to encourage intellectual curiosity in their children that may lead them beyond the restrictive confines of their parents' own beliefs, then I will agree with you.

a reply to: cavtrooper7

Thank you for relevent source material. I encourage anyone interested in the history of our education system to also check out Murgatroids excellent posts 1st2nd in a similar thread i wrote a few days ago: Institution-centric vs community-centric education.

originally posted by: funkadeliaaaa
a reply to: Cuervo

Give it a rest man, only a serious ignorant fool would think that states can do a better job of educating our kids than the parents can.

If you want to argue over who can provide a better education for our youth, dont look to the parents or the state, or even the church, look to the youth themselves. Older brothers and sisters are the best educators in the world when they put their heart into it.

Edit: I can tell from many of the replies and the OP that most who contributed to this thread dont have a clue how deep the indoctrinstion really goes.

What do you think "education" should be? Of course educators do a better job educating than parents. And parents do a better job parenting. The problem is when people think those two things are the same.

I am with you.

I also am a former educator, k-12, and a science teacher.

Honestly, the majority of people who think that raw history, multi-cultural studies, sex education, or science are "brainwashing" generally are either not very well educated themselves or are fundamentalists of some kind. Hence, either the information violates their ignorance (including such things as racism, sexism, biases, etc) but many ideologies are not based on facts or evidence but instead faith and tradition.

It is scary that many parents want to shield their children from learning about the world, various social and physical sciences, and unvarnished history that takes away the pro-Christian and pro-European American bias.

It is also scary that many of the home schoolers are themselves very low information and uneducated, with exceptions of course. They accuse evidence-based curriculum of being brainwash or corrupt, when in fact most likely the parents are truly brainwashed, such as believing in a 6000 year old Earth, Christianity as the only way, or Satan. When you believe these things without question, then yes curriculum that attempts to respect various religious traditions, teach about atrocities committed by Europeans, or an ancient earth will be threatening.

The danger is, such parents will claim the right to shield their child from knowledge. We now face certain threats globally that can't be whitewashed or ignored, from climate change to a major war. In a democracy, it isn't really acceptable to simply allow ignorance to be taught, because ignorant people affect the democracy and others throughout their lives. Not only that, even those individuals will experience decreased life opportunity, on average.

originally posted by: vexati0n
Evolution. The Big Bang. Global Warming. American History. World History. The Histories of World Religions. These hot-button Culture War topics are often in the news, for one reason or another. In most cases, they are at the center of some argument between a school and the parents of a student, with the parents being outraged that the school would dare to teach their child something that conflicts with the education they’re giving that child at home.

A natural and reasonable response to these parents is to try and allay their fears about the scientific or historical accuracy of the curriculum in question, or to assure these people that it is not the school system’s intention to “brainwash” their child or to intentionally undermine the child’s extracurricular education programs. Such a defense falls on the parents’ deaf ears though, partly because it is not addressing the real problem these parents have with the curriculum, and partly because the educational establishment isn’t being completely honest with itself about its intentions.

Parents aren’t concerned with the accuracy of the course -- if accuracy were the problem, they wouldn’t be clamoring to get rid of science-based biology and climate education. They wouldn’t object to the simple relaying of historical evidence regarding Islam, if their primary concern was that their student be taught history as it happened. They wouldn’t be up in arms about the importance of Deism to many of America’s founders if they wanted their child to understand the reasons behind the American Revolution in the context of the real world.

These parents who are so quick to anger toward schools are not afraid that their children are not getting a proper education -- and so arguments that attempt to assure them that the curriculum is fact-based and without ulterior motives only fuels their anger.

And let’s be honest with ourselves. The curriculum does have an ulterior motive, at least with respect to the parents’ objectives in the education of their children. Our public education system is designed, however ineffectively and bureaucratically, to instill facts in the minds of children, and facts are precisely what these parents so despise.

These people do not want their children to learn that Islam saved modern mathematics from the Dark Ages, because in order for their worldview to survive their children must believe that Islam is a soulless death factory with no positive aspects whatsoever. Their children must believe that climate change is a myth, so they will grow up to be wasteful, shortsighted, selfish and ignorant just like their parents are. Evolution must be false, at least in the minds of their children, otherwise they might reject the anthropocentric worldview of their parents. America must be a Christian Nation founded by Christian Saints, or their children might learn that it is possible to coexist with people who believe differently than you without marginalizing them or abusing them.

This is why we must not give in to these people. This is why when they call the School Board to complain about actual science and actual facts in the curriculum, the only acceptable response is to politely let them know that the school board does not care what kind of nonsense they teach their kids after school, but when their children are in a public setting with other children, facts and science are more important than hocus-pocus or nationalism.

We must be honest with ourselves. The Culture War is a real war. There are real battles and there are real casualties. Every time a school permits the reality of evolution to be questioned, they are teaching their students that science is less meaningful than willful ignorance, and those kids grow up unprepared to deal with a world that behaves according to natural laws, not religious commandments. Every time a school fails to inform a child’s worldview with true history, it leaves a vacuum to be filled her parents’ superstitions and prejudices. Every time a student is allowed to grow up thinking the crap their parents have spoonfed him is true just because they said it was true, we unleash an adult on the world who is intent on spreading lies and assumptions.

And this war isn’t just a war of words and ideas. Because people do not understand science, they refuse to vaccinate their kids, leading to thousands of unnecessary infections and deaths. Because people refuse to accept real history in schools, we are a nation of xenophobes and warmongers, sending thousands of young people to kill and be killed. Because we allow evolution and climate change to be questioned in schools, we face generations of people willing to sacrifice the future of the planet for the illusion of temporary gain. Because we teach faulty economic theories, we sentence millions to poverty. And because we refuse to see this war for what it is, we keep repeating the cycle.

Ultimately, the rift between education and uneducated parents is a war for the right to shape the hearts and minds of the future. We aren’t just fighting over science or history, we are fighting over who gets to define the world in which we live. And because no one exists in a vacuum, the only rational victor in this must be verifiable, testable truth. Society’s right to educate itself must trump individual parents’ rights to impose narrowmindedness and cowardly conservatism on their children.

a reply to: vexati0n

In a way it's too bad parents are so good at educating their kids, because too many of them teach their kids to hate people who are different, to feel superior to others, to harbor prejudices, to believe false history and ignorant nationalism, to be afraid of (rather than engaged in) government, to give credence to dumb superstition, and to look down on science as an inferior art.

Here's a question for you. Who taught you to beleive what you just said about parents is a both accurate and true picture of society? Was it your personal wealth of experience in society itself or was it simply as i suspect, what you have been led to beleive through your consumption of the mainstream media? Or worse some government agency employing you to speak about these things? (no really).

originally posted by: Quetzalcoatl14
In a democracy, it isn't really acceptable to simply allow ignorance to be taught, because ignorant people affect the democracy and others throughout their lives.

Wow... there's a whole lot of truth in that statement. What a perfect way to put it.

originally posted by: Quetzalcoatl14

It is also scary that many of the home schoolers are themselves very low information and uneducated, with exceptions of course. They accuse evidence-based curriculum of being brainwash or corrupt, when in fact most likely the parents are truly brainwashed, such as believing in a 6000 year old Earth, Christianity as the only way, or Satan. When you believe these things without question, then yes curriculum that attempts to respect various religious traditions, teach about atrocities committed by Europeans, or an ancient earth will be threatening.

The danger is, such parents will claim the right to shield their child from knowledge. We now face certain threats globally that can't be whitewashed or ignored, from climate change to a major war. In a democracy, it isn't really acceptable to simply allow ignorance to be taught, because ignorant people affect the democracy and others throughout their lives. Not only that, even those individuals will experience decreased life opportunity, on average.

Wow.

Arrogant much?

Should we be humbled to be in such erudite company?