Brainwashing vs. Education

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Brokor, Jun 12, 2011.


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  1. Brokor

    Brokor Live Free or Cry Moderator Site Supporter+++ Founding Member

    YouTube - ‪Erica Goldson - Brainwashing vs Education‬‏
    By Erica Goldson.

    The following speech was delivered by top of the class student Erica Goldson during the graduation ceremony at Coxsackie-Athens High School on June 25, 2010.

    Erica Goldson made a few people fall out of their seats with her valedictorian speech that boldly spoke her truth about the broken education system. Her speech is brilliant, spot on and important for everyone to read/hear - Erica challenges us to rethink how to value a student's creativity or uniqueness instead of merely ranking them based on a test score or ability to work the system (aka: memorizing everything)

    Full speech & credit to YouTube - ‪Valedictorian Speaks Out Against Schooling‬‏
     
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  2. ghrit

    ghrit Bad company Administrator Founding Member

  3. beast

    beast backwoodsman

    when i graduated from highschool the teacher that gave the address
    gave a similar speech. he was immediately fired following the ceremony
    i and several others wrote letters to the school board saying we opposed
    his termination and why we did so
    he was reinstated just before the next school year
    i cant remember what exactly i wrote anymore but i do recall something along the lines of telling the school how ignorant and narrow minded i considered them
    and how i felt they must be communists for preventing free speech
    and as that was around the time tricky dick did his little watergate thing
    i asked if they were any better than a corrupt government for squelching
    any opinion that wasnt theirs and trying to keep the wrong they do secret
    that will always be one of the things i am proudest of doing
    i stood up for freedom when everyone around me said i should shut up
     
  4. Seawolf1090

    Seawolf1090 Retired Curmudgeonly IT Monkey Founding Member

    The single biggest problem with education today is the parents - no involvement, no idea what is being taught their kids, no care for what is taught. The schools have become defacto 'child care' - drop Junior and Mary Sue off for a few hours so Momma can get some 'alone time'......
    So, with no input from the parents, the schools are totally at the mercy of whatever silly or stupid crap comes from the Board of Edjamucashun or the Feds. If parents stood up and refused to send their kids to the 're-education camps', with the threat of losing the Fed and State monies given per student, the schools would come back in line. Also, find which politician push the crap and vote them OUT! We can reverse the trend, but it takes involvement and caring......
     
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  5. wags_01

    wags_01 Monkey+

    While I'm inclined to agree, this is not entirely the parents' fault. Due to factors beyond their control, (stagnant wages, increased cost of living, etc.) parents today are working more hours than ever before. Kids are lucky to have two parents anymore, even though it's more than likely that both work full time.

    I'm not letting them off the hook though. My biggest motivation in school was my parents. They encouraged me not only to excel, but to think for myself, develop my own opinions, ask the tough questions. Many parents these days don't go over their kids' homework, don't ask them questions, don't supplement the curriculum and sometimes are completely uninvolved otherwise, unless it's to take them to soccer practice.

    IMHO, the biggest failure of the educational system is it failure to promote critical thinking. If we want our kids to learn this, it'll be up to us to teach them.
     
  6. Witch Doctor 01

    Witch Doctor 01 Mojo Maker

    Sorry Wags i tend to disagree... excuses are simply that excuses... much like the liberal voices crying he couldn't help it he's from a broken home during sentencing of a murderer.... plenty of folks who where raised in a home with two working parents or an absentee, parent have succeeded... folks and society need to take responsibility for their actions....

    I've worked in education for over 15 years and the biggest issue I see is that folks think education is a right not a privlidge.... so we keep disruptive students in school instead of moving thenm to another setting.. (the wife has a 17 year old in 8th grade who is disruptive and she can't get rid of...) we can't group students by ability to maximize their learing everything is dumbed down to the lowest common denominator... because we have to be PC BUilding false self esteem in students in like polishing brass on the titanic... it dosen't matter how pretty it looks , it is still going down.... just my opinion...
     
  7. wags_01

    wags_01 Monkey+

    Like I said, I wasn't letting them off the hook. It's never as simple as A or B. The fact is, circumstances influence behavior. Influence, not dictate. All else being equal, a wealthy area will have less crime than a poor area. Does this excuse personal responsibility? No, but it helps to explain patterns of behavior.
     
  8. Clyde

    Clyde Jet Set Tourer Administrator Founding Member

    H O M E S C H O O L. End of discussion. We are raising our kids to follow their passion with the recognition that the almighty $ will not bring happiness (can make life easier). If you see your 12 year old daughter authoring stories in her journal and sharing those with others....one who is a voracious reader, then perhaps calculus is not her answer, but her gift of writing. She might be the next Beatrix Potter, but if math is not her game, then why force feed Caculus/Trig/, upon her shoulders.

    I have learned that Algebra is important, Geometry helpful, the rest I have never used.

    In college I had a Business Finance class. What did I spend $15,000 for that semester? How to use a financial calculator. The concepts could have been learned by reading the book that came with the calculator. Has the use of the financial calculator made my life better? Yes. Did I really need to know all the calculations by hand....not really, I have never used them since simply because I have a financial calculator that does it much better, more accurately and 1000x faster.

    The next Mozart, Rembrandt, Shakespeare, Jefferson, Newton, Plato, etc, might just be living under your roof if you awaken versus indoctrinate your child.
     
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  9. Sapper John

    Sapper John Analog Monkey in a Digital World

    This is why I work my butt off to send my daughter to a private school...just sayin'
     
  10. beast

    beast backwoodsman

    ive never in all my life found a use for algebra
    geometry, yes. i do build things, but never algebra
     
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  11. BTPost

    BTPost Stumpy Old Fart,Deadman Walking, Snow Monkey Moderator

    If you ever had to calculate Pulley, or Gear Teeth, ratios, you used Algebra. If you ever had to build risers for Wooden Steps, you used Geometry... If you ever had to cut a recipe in 1/3rd's you used Algebra. Have you ever mixed a tank of chainsaw 2 cycle Gas? I suspect you use these math functions every day, you just don't recognize them, as such. .... YMMV....
     
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  12. Brokor

    Brokor Live Free or Cry Moderator Site Supporter+++ Founding Member

    Fractions aren't algebra. The masters of fractions, to a level we still have trouble comprehending to this day: the Egyptians. The creators of Algebra: Arabs. great.

    Anything you can do in Algebra, you can use another method to obtain the answers. My personal favorite: guesstimation. Works like a charm. Some think I am a savant most days.
     
  13. BTPost

    BTPost Stumpy Old Fart,Deadman Walking, Snow Monkey Moderator

    Fractions ARE algebra, only done with numbers, instead of letters.... Knowns instead of unKnowns... That is the only difference....
     
  14. Brokor

    Brokor Live Free or Cry Moderator Site Supporter+++ Founding Member

    Well, I am no expert in Algebra...but I can see how it is comparable to fractions within its elementary use, however, when it turns to abstract function or linear, Algebra isn't like fractions at all and has different rules of operation. I hated polynomials...I think Ghrit is pretty good with this stuff, maybe he can chime in.
     
  15. ghrit

    ghrit Bad company Administrator Founding Member

    Heh. No expert at all, but --. Come down to it, arithmetic is the only limited math because it doesn't allow for more than one unknown, and is restricted to using known values to get a result. There are no mathematical problems I know of that can't be solved by more than one tool. What makes a mathematician is being able to pick the right tool (branch) of math that will get there in with the least effort.
     
  16. Brokor

    Brokor Live Free or Cry Moderator Site Supporter+++ Founding Member

    GUESSING WINS! [touchdown] (when it works?)

    YES!
     
  17. wags_01

    wags_01 Monkey+

    Usually works for me! Close enough anyway...
     
  18. ghrit

    ghrit Bad company Administrator Founding Member

    You may or may not remember having to memorize multiplication and division tables in elementary school. (I always thought that was nutty, the tables are published. That said, memory training is worth something.) One of the most enlightening moments I had was realizing that the way a mathemetician makes his bones is memorizing the form of solutions for integral calculus. Getting to that insight was a long difficult road over too many years. Whipping an equation into shape to match a previously solved form was the real problem.

    Yeah, it's a guess at my level, there are literally hundreds of solved forms to pick from. Sometimes you get lucky on the first try, and sometimes you get all wound around the axle chasing your tail coming up with identities. (x=x. Well, no ****, Sherlock --)

    These days, the worst real math problem I want to face is reconciling my checkbook. Anything else is for fun.
     
  19. tsneds

    tsneds Monkey++

    In Japan they have schooling down to a science,it is very regimented,lecture style,no questioning the teacher,military style uniforms for students and excessive testing combined with a pervasive culture of bullying those who stand out from the crowd.All part of a system that creates a very docile worker bee populace that is not hard to manage.
     
  20. Seawolf1090

    Seawolf1090 Retired Curmudgeonly IT Monkey Founding Member

    I guess it's a system that works for them, being stacked like cordwood on that tiny island. They also have a high suicide rate.....

    About twenty years ago while attending a tech school for Data Processing, we had a few high school students among us adults. The topic turned to figuring out how to find the square root of a number. These kids had been 'taught' some funky 'choose a number and guess', then see if it worked routine. We older folks showed them the true way to calculate it mathematically - they were shocked!
    This was even worse than the 'new math' we were being taught in the heady 70s........
    At that time, the school system was trying many odd ideas. New schools were built with four classes in one huge room, separated by three foot high cube walls! At this time too, they stopped putting 'bad students' aside. So, one student acting out disrupted not one class, but FOUR! Schools were like warehouses......
    This was when I hit on a bright idea. They handed out 'points' for doing really well on various things, points that could be 'spent' for library time. I buckled down, made massive points and became a library junkie - NOT because I was 'smarter' than the other kids - but it got me away from the dumbed-down herd! I spent so much time in high school as a 'Library Aid', and looking more mature for my age, the other kids soon got to thinking I was a faculty member - I even 'graded' some tests in study hall......
    Hehehe, I loved those days!
    A few 'Liberal Teachers' even shaped my destiny back then. A couple took a group of us 'under-18' students to a Democrat 'election party' for a lady running for the school board. We were allowed to drink.... we coulda 'owned' those two teachers........ but we saw how the 'political process' worked, first hand. She lost..... and I became a lifelong Republican (til 2008, but that's another story)........
    My Physics and Chemistry teachers were great too. We had lots of very interesting discussions, far beyond the scope of normal classwork. They did far more than just 'put in their time', they were true 'educators'.
     
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