Is the west training rather than teaching people?

Are the western education systems training people using conditioning rather than teaching them?

Definitions

First, let us look at the difference between training and teaching:

Teaching is typically defined as, "to cause to know something, to guide the studies of, to impart knowledge or to instruct by example, precept or experience.” Training seeks “to form by instruction, discipline or drill” or “to make prepared for a test or skill.” Training usually has a more specific focus than teaching, which seeks to instill a deeper knowledge over a longer period of time. Training, on the other hand, seeks to help people master a specific skill, or skill set, until they are able to execute it efficiently. Training is usually a one-time or short-term event, as with job training.

Read more at EHow.com

Some history

The western education system is inspired by the mid 1800s research of Wilhelm Wundt - the founder of Experimental Psychology.

The book "The Leipzig Connection" states in relation to Wundt:

Originally, education meant drawing out a person’s innate talents and abilities by imparting the knowledge of languages, scientific reasoning, history, literature, rhetoric, etc. — the channels through which those abilities would flourish and serve. To the experimental psychologist, however, education became the process of exposing the student to “meaningful” experiences so as to ensure desired reactions.”

Conditioning vs educating

Teaching is the act of helping to bring out each individuals innate abilities and intellect (educating them) versus crafting a desired response to external stimuli (conditioning them) is, more specifically, what I mean.

There was a lot of research on Classical Conditioning using animals - most known is Pavlov's Dogs - and even humans in the mid 1800s to early 1900s. The results from these studies leaked out into the western education systems by the lead of Wundt.

How does training with conditioning work in practice?

Simply put, the students are rewarded by a grade systems to accept the current consensus, on the other hand individualism and independent thought is punished with bad grades and the possibility of not being accepted into good schools, and thusly later getting a lower paid job etc. It can also be that the nonconforming student is given no praise or attention by the teacher as punishment, and rewarded with praise and attention when repeating and reaffirming the recieved lesson.

Behaviorism

Classic Conditioning lay the foundation of Behaviorism in education which becomes clear once you read the following:

Negative behaviors e.g. lack of engagement, negative contributions, could be minimized through an absence of a reinforcer (e.g. No praise or attention). Within the behaviorist view of learning, the "teacher" is the dominant person in the classroom and takes complete control, evaluation of learning comes from the teacher who decides what is right or wrong. The learner does not have any opportunity for evaluation or reflection within the learning process, they are simply told what is right or wrong. The conceptualization of learning using this approach could be considered "superficial" as the focus is on external changes in behavior i.e. not interested in the internal processes of learning leading to behavior change and has no place for the emotions involved the process.

It is stated clearly above that the primary goal of Behaviorism in education is to change the behavior of the student, and education is only secondary.

So what does it all add up to?

It all adds up to - in my opinion:

1. short-term learning which is quickly forgotten after an exam (hence the training from an early age),
2. and generations of people accepting the consensus as truth with little to none individual thought because of an subconscious fear of punishment because of the conditioning from an early age.

It also seems counter-productive to train people rather than teach them since they will mostly forget the lessons after the exams, unless the primary goal is to change the behavior of the student and education is only secondary - as stated in literature on Behaviorism in education. If so, then the western education system is not to educate at all, but rather to condition people from an early age to accept the consensus and not question authorities.

Reflections

How does this kind of programming affect a child’s developing brain? Will the adult brain be wired to repeat authority input with little to none afterthought?

Who benefits from these kinds of societies? Surely, it must be the ruling classes.

Further reading

Education v. Conditioning: Wundt, Rockefeller and the Teachers College

The Leipzig Connection

-MM

a reply to: MerkabaMeditation

They are training people for sure. Once you see it for what it is, it is very horrible and sneaky.

I saw how my mind was invaded by crap that came from them that was actively destroying me by my own robotic hands.

I decided to escape. Now it is a case of watch out for the wolves. However, it is quite impossible to invade me spiritually now. What does not fit harmoniously with me looks like the misfit it is. I see this for what it is and it sticks out like a sore thumb!

originally posted by: lonesomerimbaud
a reply to: MerkabaMeditation

They are training people for sure. Once you see it for what it is, it is very horrible and sneaky.

I saw how my mind was invaded by crap that came from them that was actively destroying me by my own robotic hands.

I decided to escape. Now it is a case of watch out for the wolves. However, it is quite impossible to invade me spiritually now. What does not fit harmoniously with me looks like the misfit it is. I see this for what it is and it sticks out like a sore thumb!

Pretty deep

I can't find the origonal article I read on this subject as it was few years ago but this is a shorter version with an 8 minute vid that could answer your question

link

Western education teaches people what to think instead of how to think.. easier to control a populace that cant think for itself ...

a reply to: MerkabaMeditation

If you think Western education looks a bit like propaganda, wait until you see the education system in communist countries:

deification of Mao Zedong

communist Russia censors science researches

China top universities bans articles which do not support communism

Worse than training, it's indoctrination. And in most cases, it starts before kids reach school age, in the home, with religious superstition indoctrination, about which, questions are discouraged. We learn to "just believe" what adults tell us and not to doubt or question authority.

I feel fortunate that I left school after 8th grade (for medical reasons) and eventually learned to think for myself. Many others aren't so lucky.

All that elementary / high school trains here in Holland is when you should get out of bed, when to socialize and when to shut the hell up. There's a lot of stuff i don't even remember and i got pretty decent grades. What i do recall is that most kids should've been stationed at a better school because we were all working way below our ability, too busy making teachers cry and smoking pot during recess. Where's that replay button when you need it? Oh well.. I've been better off educating myself. And college has been pretty fruitful in my experience so there's that.

It's also funny how the material they receive has gotten a lot easier.. but more students fail their exams :/

Test from 8th grade, early 20th century

Whats up with that?

a reply to: MerkabaMeditation

I don't know if you went to school or not, but we had our teachers crying. We had several teachers crying on several occasions, our roof ended with spit balls and wet toilet paper the size of a fist painting the roof. We planted apples and milk in the class to try and stink it out. And soaked the floor with juice, God only knows why.

No, our teachers weren't the authority in our classroom.

Besides that kids don't fear in school consequences, suspensions, expulsions ? Awesome time off, detention ? Oh well, all we did at lunch was sit around and talk garbage and run a muck. Can still be done in detention. Writing lines ? That's a pathetic discipline..

My point is the kids aren't conforming to these 'control mechanisms' If these psychology master-minds want our kids conforming to accept authority, they know how to do it. I bet I could do it given the resources. My opinion is that all things everywhere are going just about according to plan.

a reply to: Emerald53

Still, I am guessing that not many of your classmates has gotten in places of influence due to your lack of education - again due to low grades/attendance rules. Therefore, in that sense, the control mechanism has in fact worked by punishing you and your friends for not conforming to the educational system. You are either inside the system, or completely outside it - there is no golden path in between as far as I can see.

-MM

a reply to: Emerald53

Oh man.. i really shouldn't be enjoying these memories but i can't help myself.
We were absolute monsters.. Food fights.. Table fights (yup.. just throwing our tables through the classroom for the heck of it :/).. playing the worst kind of hardcore (oldskool EDM) on the class speakers at 100% volume every single chance we got.. Giant spitballs aimed at the teachers head while they were working the whiteboard.. Some cried, some abandoned ship for the remainder of the year, Some kept yelling till their veins popped.. Funny thing is, some teachers were actually quite laid back, and simply knew how to talk to us.. with these guys we would suddenly be the (relatively) nicest class in the school because we actually respected them.

So what makes you think this is according to plan?

a reply to: MerkabaMeditation

I don't know about that, i know a lot of guys including myself that still got good grades and calmed down after a few years because we ''got it out of our system'' by then.

I watched school shift AFTER I flunked the 2nd grade of course. They went to a Russian model.



archive.org...

originally posted by: Benevolent Heretic
Worse than training, it's indoctrination. And in most cases, it starts before kids reach school age, in the home, with religious superstition indoctrination, about which, questions are discouraged. We learn to "just believe" what adults tell us and not to doubt or question authority.

I feel fortunate that I left school after 8th grade (for medical reasons) and eventually learned to think for myself. Many others aren't so lucky.

This absolutely rings true for me...the indoctrination was fierce in many areas of my young life and I was an extremely inquisitive child always asking "Why?" with, mostly the replies being "Because you have to."

So, before I sent my children off to school I gave them the right to question authority...first mine and their fathers (which forced us to explain and mull over our reasoning and programming), then the teachers and then the system.

I recall one teacher phoning me with a minor complaint about my son, which we discussed in-depth after I informed her that my son is allowed to question her authority and the system and that the question should be answered so that a child could understand why they have to do what is asked of them, and not simply dismissed or discouraged. I also learned that the teacher really did not have much freedom to teach the way she deemed better or appropriate as the system (curriculum) would and still does not allow that freedom (which may be good or bad, depending upon the teacher in question), so all children are forced, as she is, to follow the curriculum - no questions asked.

I now see that both my adult children have the ability to think for themselves, and feel free to always question that which does not seem right or just to them, or lacks common sense, and they don't like what they see.

a reply to: MerkabaMeditation
Merkaba

While what you point out about the school system is for the most part exactly what is happening, the larger truth of your thread is more important as I see it. While most people poo-pooed the 19th century information about psychology, those in positions of power did not ignore them. They funded studies and promoted the development of programs with which to utilize these new "truths". All the while, common folk continued to poo-poo it. This poo-pooing has continued well on into the later part of the 20th century and I dare say even on up into today.

Now, as more and more people are becoming aware of "conditioning" "mental manipulation" and mind control, what they should be becoming aware of is that the power structure, the elite, the Establishment has been perfecting their schemes now for well over a hundred years. "At Mac Donalds, we do it alllll, for you u u.

Funny, my school education revolved around exposure to variation and encouragement of independent thought. But that was California in the seventies- perhaps times have changed.

My criticism now would be that I have an abundance of individual creativity without the skills necessary to express them clearly.

I was a kid who had comprehension easily, so it was overlooked that I didn't do my homework- teachers figured I didn't need to because I "got it", and verbally could pull out the ideas and run with them in my own direction.

But that doesn't take into account the acquisition of skills that become automatic and subconscious through repetition. You can have great visions inside for a peice of art, but when the mind must focus hard on every tiny movement to bring it into being, the process is stunted by neuroticism. That creative individuality is not aided by a body which can work for it autonomously.

Having raised my own children, as well as having undertaken the learning new skills as an adult, I hold the opinion that in any learning process, a period of training us necessary at first, to establish a firm base of skills. In that stage, a lot more limits are placed - terms like never or always are applied.

Once that base is established, then graduation to a stage of individuation begins. That is when you begin to see that there are times to break the rules, and experience enables you to discern when that needs to be done.

Without the experience of early training, a person can be very good at being "original" in thought and act, but waste an enormous amount of time in clumsy self defeating mistakes without feeling their expression ever understood or manifested accurately.

a reply to: MerkabaMeditation

The dismal state of the Prussian education system is the result of removing the trivium from all curriculum and public education. One must pay good money for that sort of classical education. Now public education is about retaining state-provided facts, instead of providing the tools necessary to work with that information. Worse, it provides little foundation to learning, education built on sand.

Teach your children the trivium, and if you haven't learned it yourself, better get started.

You mentioned the west...

The term Western Civilization has morphed from it's original meaning into a PC racial term that usually confuses a lot of people.

TPTB's control of 'education' is global just like every thing else.

They are not confined to any borders.

“Education is a weapon, whose effect depends on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed.” ~ Joseph Stalin

As another man without a high school diploma, I discovered many years ago that the "educated" class is generally not educated at all, it is mis-educated. The whole purpose of American (perhaps all "western") "higher education" is obviously to bring minds into lock step with "The Agenda." As a general rule, the less official American education a person has been exposed to, the greater his/her ration of common sense.

"Education" is Spiritual Suicide

Modern course work in universities does not widen the scope of a student’s knowledge, it narrows it. It doesn’t cultivate wisdom. It cultivates ignorance. It doesn’t teach students to become independent and self-responsible citizens, rather, it conditions them to become more and more dependent upon the system of corporate employment and governmental assistance. It doesn’t encourage free thought and the questioning of external authority, but rather to accept unconditionally the official version of everything.

What today’s universities accomplish is to turn young students with malleable, questioning minds into rigid, unthinking drones destined to become cogs in the machinery of modern society, machinery that has been wholly devised and developed by none other than our aptly named Machine Men. In short, universities are institutional tools that manufacture unthinking and incurious machines – namely, graduates

wadevenden.wordpress.com...

"...the academic meltdown in our public education system is intentional. It asserts that change agents have been working at the Education Department to change curriculum, not to improve teaching but to promote a socialist agenda. Their role is to create schools which will mold obedient citizens who no longer have the knowledge and skills to improve their lot in life, but are dependent on government/multi-national companies' guidance to survive. The system will create imprisoned citizens that will be managed from cradle to grave to serve the needs of the state's managed economy."

Deliberate Dumbing Down of America

Only when all children in public, private and home schools are robotized-and believe as one-will World Government be acceptable to citizens and able to be implemented without firing a shot. The attractive-sounding "choice" proposals will enable the globalist elite to achieve their goal: the robotization (brainwashing) of all Americans in order to gain their acceptance of lifelong education and workforce training-part of the world management system to achieve a new global feudalism.

A 100 yr. Silent War on Education

Never mind that this country's education system is already tailor-made to spread misinformation, entrench mythologies, and promote American exceptionalism to our young children. American history, as taught in schools, is generally nonsense meant to instill and preserve a sense of City-on-a-Hill nationalism, along with healthy doses of tall-tale founding myths, gung-ho militarism, and ethnic cleansing justification in the form of righteous Manifest Destiny. As James W. Loewen explains in his 1995 book Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, textbooks used to teach our children "leave out anything that might reflect badly upon our national character."

Who's Really Brainwashing Our Children

I lost interest in school when they were teaching me Jesus in my first elementary school, and sending me to the principals office for silly childish offences, muscle shirts, giving the horns, or fighting. When the high school girls would wear low mini skirts at the religious high school.

I lost interest of learning anything or being anything due to the plain and abstract views, and my grandparents telling me to get an office position to be a boss, who still gotta suck off other bosses.

I lost interest in knowledge when it was so boring, and unappealing when they said I would die. And how very few teachers could hardly grasp the knowledge they were teaching.

Then I went to college, and loved school for the first time...Sad thing it was a little out of date like most idolized garbage.

Then I saw Gods Angel and have found faith, and the Devils Demon, and have found religion to be fun.

I enjoyed learning as a child, as I am a life-long learner, and I was lucky enough to have a librarian take notice of my insatiable reading desire as she took the time to introduce me to the world of fine literature at a very young age. Unfortunately, I was not nurtured in the sciences and arts, which I had an excellent aptitude, and had to pursue the latter in later life when I was able to afford it. So, all in all, for me, it was a vehicle to introduce me to my strengths and weaknesses, but lacked teaching me the tools to take myself further than the limits of the box; perhaps being female during the early 60's had something to do with this. I hope this is still not the case, but with large classrooms and so many demands on educators, how many students slip through the cracks and are left to their own devices?