Curicula Galore - Alcyonenews

Miscellany

Posted September 19, 2025

Curicula Galore

In our times curricula are lists of materials schools or other educational entities are going to teach their students for the joy of learning or to prepare them for entry into the learned Professions and the skilled trades, such as that of astronauts, submarine decorators, stand-up comedians, drone skippers and school teachers. I am on that topic because in my previous article I tried to praise schooling on the occasion of the commencement of the 2025 – 26 school year.

And because into my mind came an event from my early school years, a story I frequently tell because people laugh when they hear it: In Greece, not unlike in Canada, the Police would take you to school if you would skip classes. This is to protect individuals and society from the “Ignorance Beast”, which is the arch-enemy of humans. I think it was in Grade two that I somehow learned that there was a way out of having to go to school: If you were smart enough to fool the School Master to give you a letter proclaiming you “incapable of absorbing knowledge”, you had it made. The Police would let you run free. The next day or so I walked into my Master’s den with a draft letter and asked him to please sign it. He read it, commented on the draft and then he confiscated it. Another instance of Freedom Denied ...

My previous column (September 5) came out openly supportive of schooling the children and this I do not support, certainly not, unconditionally. Nor do I oppose it universally. Try to imagine the world or a society without a home “language”, it being schooling. Well you do not have to imagine anything. All you have to do is simply “remember”: Remember what transpired the day after an Angel-spy whispered into God’s ear that the denizens of Babel were building a Tower containing a stairway to heaven ...

What happened in my case was a Conventional un-Wisdom outbreak. We all have been nursed to [im]maturity, on the way listening to the glory of schooling. Our parents were to ensure we attended school and to believe all we are taught in class. Look at the penalty Judas had to pay for hesitating to believe without evidence.

That I supported schooling, as I did, was because l had been pushed to

where I should not have ever let them push me. My tragic fault was to allow the persuaders control the subject theme of the discourse ...

To make the story short, the matter to consider most is the schools’ “Curricula” which parallels a restaurant’s Menu. In this instance, the persuaders kept the discussion on the “school” and away from the “curriculum”. This is like stopping for dinner at a strange highway restaurant and walking in without reading the Menu on the outside of the door. Think about what matters.

Repeatedly the persuaders have drilled into our crania what benefits schools bring. I went for the bait and took it, hook line and sinker. But was my lax of guard inevitable? We are all fallible and we have to live with that. But we may escape the worst of it and this we should forever endeavour to do.

I will close with a Bertand Russell quote for it is often he claims the last words: People are not born stupid. It is the education system that stupidifies us, wisely said he!