'TRUST US'...Big corporations
As we ponder the proposed new iron mine in northern Wisconsin, we seem to be oblivious to the past when it comes to large U.S. corporations, especially mining companies. The very same company proposing the mine in the Ashland area is in the midst of complaints in southern Illinois concerning environmental damage and leakings into water near Carlinville. The history of mining in the U.S. is littered with environmental damage and huge scars in the landscape. Pollution abounds. Why should we trust them?
EDUCATION VIA QUOTATION
"A school should not be a preparation for life. A school should be life." -Elbert Hubbard
Educational tweaking or Revolution?
Thanks for the many comments about my prior blog posting about the need for a revolution in American education. Please don't jump to the conclusion that I know the answers. I'm an old geezer who happens to know something about education, but I am only trying to open the door so we do something revolutionary to re-gain American prominence in education. We are falling farther and farther behind. It must be stated that a major reason for our decline is the way religious and right-wing anti-intellectuals have tried to foist their beliefs onto all Americans via education. These sorts of ignorant and sinister intrusions stymie education. They try to force religious mumbo jumbo into curriculum and further deny scientific principles. This is anti-American. God is correctly not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution. Trying to inject creationism into the curriculum is religious. Trying to deny climate change and global warming in the curriculum is religious. Evolution and changes in climate are science. Trying to mix the two has no place in American education. Feel free to do that in your own religious circles, if you want, and that is fine and is American. Making religion the law of the land or the basis of education is a religious forcefulness. There will continue to be an ignorant group that will try to wedge God into education, and the prevention of such anti-intellectualism is a fight we all must undertake if we are to sustain our American democracy.
WE ARE EDUCATIONAL FAILURES
Public education, as we know it, did not exist before the 19th century. It grew out of the Industrial Revolution. And the education model we have used since then was formulated along the lines of industry and mass production. Students were mass produced via industrial formulations. Class groupings, regular class meetings for an hour or so, classrooms organized with desks in rows, the teacher [foreman] up in front leading the production line. And students progressed en masse or failed. At first, by and large, the graduates were prepared to fill skilled and unskilled jobs in factories.
Evolution of greed-capitalism
Before the Industrial Revolution, people lived a lifetime in one location. They rarely traveled more than a few miles from where they were born. Everything one needed was self-supplied or supplied by someone in the immediate area.
