Re: "We Don't Want No Education"
- From: "deadendDan" <jfha1@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 25 Feb 2008 08:21:28 -0500
"Alcibiades" <jacksoneskew@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:0d3f8012-42f6-4c7e-b095-2aeca805e3ca@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
On Feb 24, 4:25 pm, "deadendDan" <jf...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"Alcibiades" <jacksones...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:fb556c46-3635-4239-ba69-9dfa8612480f@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Friends,
The recent thread on the dismal state of today's education brings this
to mind, by today's most insightful essayist, Theodore Dalrymple:
http://www.city-journal.org/html/5_1_oh_to_be.html
It's now a chapter in this book:
http://tinyurl.com/3xts83
You know Alc., I'm not sure if this applies or not, but I have found a
peculiar dynamic that has aspired in my own conscious self over my life
time. I was once very establishment...believed in the classics,
traditions,
and generally strived along as my parents and peers instructed me. That
meant believing in and aspiring for education.
But there are two angles to that statement, where one is that ascension
in
understanding brings about higher BEing, while another is simply a social
process whereupon, credentials and social enhancement is obtained.
As we all know, somewhere along these last few decades, 'educational
institutions' started to divert itself into promoting certain political
views promoting in very intense ways, multiculturism, diversity, and
tolerance. My own father, a former administrator at the high school
level,
used to describe it that schools became far more interested in
'socialization' than 'education'.
In the same vein of 'inclusiveness, standards were lowered, grades
inflated,
and excellence redefined as 'elitist' by many egalitarian authorities.
Medocrity could only be the result, at best.
I found myself slowly retracting from that new mainstream as a kind of
pridefulness to not get swept up in this new shallow, artificial,
political
movement thinking that surely it could not last. What I've ended
however,
is being on the 'outside' now, once the establishment, but now the
outcast.
And for this, I have grown a terrible hatred for all things now the 'NEW'
estabishment. Those same instructors and teachers that I once so admired
and aspired to emulate and mold my own personage by, are now just
survivalists at best to me, and those that have embraced the new world
values of their 'new' indoctrination, I see as just 'the enemy' plain and
simple. And I have come to detest all things 'intellectual' since such
elevations today have become so competitive that the human mind enmasse
is
more than willing to embrace total bleakness in a new embrace of material
nihilism. I realize we all have and need intellect to survive, yet I am
willing to rest at least some part of my conscious existence upon
'irrational' emotionality for sake of holding on to what I deem my
'humanity'...even to become less competitive if need be. But this leaves
me
in a world becoming more and more 'animal' by the day...and surrounded by
a
spiritual Beastliness based in a rising stupidity from 'lack of self
critique' [conscience by any other name...the main ingredient I assess
that
results in our humanity].
And so, I now detest and resist all things 'authoritarian' in our grand
societies across western civilization. These new human artifacts have
been
contrived by political force as surmised by a select few...and the very
educational institution has by far become the most corrupted of it all.
"'Tis pleasant, through the loopholes of retreat,
To peep at such a world; to see the stir
Of the great Babel, and not feel the crowd."
-William Cowper
"Now the men who have become members of this small band have tasted
how sweet and blessed a possession it [philosophy] is. At the same
time, they have seen sufficiently the madness of the many, and that no
one who minds the business of the cities does virtually anything
sound, and that there is no ally with whom one could go to the aid of
justice and be preserved. Rather - just like one who has fallen in
with wild beasts and is neither willing to join them in doing
injustice nor sufficient as one man to resist all the savage animals -
one would perish before he has been of any use to city or friends and
be of no profit to himself or others. Taking all this into the
calculation, he keeps quiet and minds his own business - as a man in a
storm, when dust and rain are blown about by the wind, stands aside
under a little wall. Seeing others filled full of lawlessness, he is
content if somehow he himself can live his life here pure of injustice
and unholy deeds, and take his leave from it graciously and cheerfully
with fair hope."
-Plato, The Republic, Book VI, 496 c-e
"When with much entreaty we cannot persuade him to attend, it remains
for us to be silent. For if we are still to go on, his carelessness is
aggravated. But him that is striving to learn, we lead on, and pour in
much."
-St. John Chrysostom, Homily XLV, commentary on Matthew 13:10-17
Thank you for these thoughts. They were uplifting to me.
There is a concept called 'cacooning' that I relate to. This is when people
withdraw from the public realm and focus upon their personal existence,
trying to ignore the insanity afar. It is not easy to do in today's
connected world.
Case in point. I don't watch a whole lot of TV, but perusing my many
channels yesterday, I stopped on what is hawked to an unthinking public as
that channel that represents today's 'high tech'....essentially, computers,
video, electronic gadgets that are now becoming so abundant in our lives
[and perhaps root of that connectivity].
Yesterday, it seems this channel was celebrating some sort of Pornography
convention being held out west. It absolutely amazes me how such a thing
has become so accepted in mainstream society now...and here, streaming into
our very living rooms, an ongoing celebration and essential message that
this is all acceptable and good, and to the traditionally oriented, those
like myself are the 'new evil' in the world [for our fascist, oppressive,
tyrannical and puritanic attitudes...ahem! [in jest]].
Well, IF "I" am the new evil, then I wear this mantle proudly and dare say,
I cringe at the unsightliness of the NEWly enlightened [ahem! again] as
represented by this new embrace of all things prurient and debased, and what
appears to me as wild dogs playing with turd balls on open grounds.
So, again, there are different aspects to this word "Education". There is
true learnedness that raises our conscious existence to realms of true
excellence and a rising BEing [which I compliment you, Alc. as seeming to be
product of]...and there is 'Education' that rationalizes it's way to just
about anything else in the lower dregs of our existence.
.
- References:
- OT: "We Don't Want No Education"
- From: Alcibiades
- Re: "We Don't Want No Education"
- From: deadendDan
- Re: "We Don't Want No Education"
- From: Alcibiades
- OT: "We Don't Want No Education"
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