Wishing you all a happy school year - Alcyonenews

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Miscellany

Posted September 20, 2024

Wishing you all a happy school year

Plato on Education:

“He who is elected minister of education should consider that of all the great offices of the state, this is the greatest. For if the first shoot of any plant makes a good start toward attaining its natural excellence, it has the greatest effect on the plant’s maturity. This is also true of men. Man requires proper instruction and a fortunate nature. Then, of all animals he becomes the most divine and the most civilized. But if he be insufficiently or ill-educated, he is the most savage of earthy creatures. Wherefore, the legislator ought not to allow the education of children to become a secondary or accidental matter.”

The beauty of being in School is that you are learning and that you have someone to criticize you when you veer the wrong way. And since the predominant characteristic of humans is intelligence, school is geared to enhance what nature endowed you with. The scope of school is to fuel your mind for the journey though life. I see much beauty in that as do most people. The school experience helps us learn to be comfortable with people with whom we do not think alike. This sets our minds to devise ways and means with which to change things to make our world better.

Likely you have already learned that “information is power”. It is true but not necessarily desirable. A bullish attitude is traceable to a “pre-civilization era” known as Barbarism. For example, learning to fly a plane or a kite is fun, useful and desirable. But learning to fly a bomber aircraft with which to obliterate some kids you never had the pleasure of befriending but whom someone “demonized” and “enemy-ized” to make you see “fulfilment” in killing them. This, the acquisition of the skill to kill, and knowledge to destroy, is stupidification which sharply contrasts education.

I referred to the “beauty” of learning and I think the word fits the notion I meant it to carry. Humans are curious creatures and fulfilling that trait is pleasurable. Archimedes shouting “Eureka!” (= I found!) is the historic iconic ode to learning. But I know of nothing that cannot be either used or abused. Nuclear energy can do Hiroshima as well as chase cancer cells. In the prevailing socio-economic environment if something can be abused for Profit, it will be – education being no exception. Indeed, the proverb “you can’t teach old dogs new tricks” and the practice of breaking-in a horse while young, attest to the strength of early brainwashing.

It seems to me that the “beef” du jour is the curriculum used in the schools. Who is to determine what is to be taught to the young? Would it be the Politicians? The Clergy? The Teachers? The Parents? The Librarians? Or us Hoi Polloi?

I think it is imperative to recognize that the schools of the nation have been highjacked by “minorities” who are out to “cancel” Plato, Archimedes, da Vinci, and Shakespeare lest the world read about “men and women” who are found in abundance in the “contaminated” classics. The schools are converted to conduits conveying the rancid current to drown out the future. It is they who perpetuate religion, the work ethic, the dispute adjudication by hired legal teams and the “resolution” of international grievances in slaughter-fields using submarines and stealth aircraft, the secrecy introduced to enhance soldiers’ killeability.

What should the schools teach the young? Before looking at “permitted” stuff let’s consider the protection of the young from the predators of the mind who hover over the schoolyards and “contaminated class-rooms”, forever seeking prey.

Where you to elect me School Czar for a weekend, I would append to the education edifice with an Ideas Bank c/w the essential invitation to all and sundry to better the prevailing curriculum. All in the open for all to see the peoples’ ideas for inclusion or exclusion from the Curricula.

As for the rest, do I need think? I will leave it all to Democratia and I will go clam digging. Or oyster picking.

I will sum it all up in a little story I lived through in my school youth. I think it was in grade 10. It was a history Class and the textbook was weighty. About 2/3 of it was devoted to wars and the rest 1/3 to the history of civilization. I asked the teacher to explain. He showed me the door and told me ed me he class to meet him in the Principal’s office. At recess we met there and the teacher laid the charges. The Principal asked for the teacher’s answer to my question. He said he had expelled me from the class for impiety to our national heroes .... “Oh No!” the Principal said. What I am after is your answer to Tom’s query. This the teacher could not produce. The Principal said he could not do so either. But he ordered the teacher to find out and report back. The teacher fell silent to the end of the school-year. End of the story.