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The Forum > Article Comments > There is too much edu-babble > Comments

There is too much edu-babble : Comments

By Michael Zwaagstra, published 14/9/2010

Definition of 'edu-babble': the use of a term that alone puts its advocates on the side of the angels.

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What an interesting choice of name: The Frontier Institute.

The inevitable result of the frontier world-view that energizes the USA (in particular) was portrayed in the recent Avatar film. Never-ending imperial conquests.

One of the Navi said of the (frontier) techno-barbarian invaders. "It is almost impossible to cure you of your insanity"

I had a conventional old-time "fact"-based education in the 50's and 60's. Learning to think and critically examine any and every thing was NOT part of the program. We were essentially empty vessels to be filled with the contents of the then curriculum.

It turns out that most of what I was taught just plain old aint true, or at best only partially true.

It was all taught within the rigidly reductionist frame-work that was an extension of the then, and now, dominant scientific-materialist world-view of father-knows-best white western northern European males.

You know the white-man was born to rule with our christian "religion", culture, and civilization being the epitome of human achievement up until then.
Posted by Ho Hum, Tuesday, 14 September 2010 11:24:18 AM
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I was at school in the 1950s and 1060s, too. No one every taught me that
>> the white-man was born to rule with our christian "religion", culture, and civilization being the epitome of human achievement up until then.

Since your credibility is on the line, HoHum, nominate five other things you were taught that
>> just plain old aint true, or at best only partially true.

Anyone who thinks watching Avatar is an educational experience really does need to be challenged.
Posted by KenH, Tuesday, 14 September 2010 11:41:25 AM
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Not much interested who the author writes. I too never had an education like Hos. Thank God for reductionism and empiricism.

The author pretty much sums up the ideology that underpins much of the modern secondary curriculum - especially in the 'humanities'. I use the term humanities loosely as reading, writing and critical thinking still plays a part, although it is couched in political terms such as 'See Nip deny Fluff's reality because she is a girl.'

Q. Why did Nip do that?
A. Because he is an imperialist, mysogonist who has an unreconstructed conciousness.

Gee, that's even before they read Lady Chat's Lover.

'Self directed' learning is a euphenism for talk amongst yourselves as the teacher hasn't done the reading or is on strike.
Posted by Cheryl, Tuesday, 14 September 2010 12:22:47 PM
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I was a bit over the top in my statement re what I was taught in school.

All films, even the most inane, are essentially propaganda for a particular world-view. Hollywood played an important role in producing films in support of World War II. As did the Nazis in Germany, and the communists via their dreadful "social-realism" films, posters and art. All of which promoted a "world"-view in the image of the machine.

ALL films without exception are also a projection, commentary, and in some cases a critique of the zeitgeist of the times. Such was the case with the Avatar film. And why do you think that art in all of its various manifestations is so important to the powers that be.

It was no accident that those on the right-side of the culture wars divide were uniformly, in a predictable group-think response, horrified by the Avatar film, and its critique of our techno-barbarian civilization.

All cultures make institutions in their own likeness.

Our "culture" is based on the principle of the separate and separative grossly bound individual. Our "education" system is purposed to create unconscious clones to fit into the system. Back in the "good-old-days" it was purposed to create obedient factory-fodder and when necessary canon-fodder for the inevitable imperial wars. Such was essentially the content and purpose of mass-education when it was introduced in the late 1850's.

Such is still the case.

Various USA father-knows-best "conservatives" for instance lament the fact that the USA "education" system no longer produces masses of young clones who are prepared to be turned into mince-meat, or smithereened, in service of the now ruling permanent warfare state.

All of our institutions, including religion, are now patterned by scientific materialism, which has inevitably grossly bound separate and separative individual.

In the present-time world education has been reduced to a propaganda industry that is purposed only to produce the next generation of social and political clones in a programmed life dictated by government, corporations, and economic interests. Thus, such so-called "education" is merely about producing a compliant work force.
Posted by Ho Hum, Tuesday, 14 September 2010 1:52:45 PM
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Real education is the process of getting to the root of what human existence is about. In the present time world there is no such education.

All of the conventions of education are derived from, and reinforce the now pervasive grossly bound model of human existence which produces the dreadfully sane normal individual who is effectively an unconscious robot -- a sleep-walker in an unconscious collective hive.
Nobody has a clue as to what is really going on, and EVERY-thing that we do is pre-programmed and patterned by the system itself.

Ours is a completely unconscious "culture" and civilization. This is the name of a book by John Ralston Saul.

Such grossly bound "education" inevitably leads to divisiveness, competitiveness, and competing group identities. Which in the case of the archaic Semitic political religions of the Middle-East, and their association with powerful nation states (and collections of states) are now waging global warfare for global rulership.

We now "live" in the nightmare world described both in Brave New World AND 1984.
Posted by Ho Hum, Tuesday, 14 September 2010 2:06:30 PM
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One can only lament the coming of conveyor belt factory style education.
Alvin Toffler in "Future Shock" outlined well the factory-like nature of "school" as we know it in industrialised countries: "Young people passing through this educational machine merged into an adult society whose structure of jobs, roles and institutions resembled that of school itself. The school child did not simply learn facts that he could use later on; he lived as well as learned a way of life modelled after the one he would lead in the future."

In traditional societies, a child was mindful of the ancestral ways and links that connected him to his instruction. He instinctively knew the importance of watching, learning and emulating the grown-ups around him.
We have veered a long way from those times in the western world, and now seek to fill small heads with things with which they have little or no innate connection. Is it any wonder that modern children have no instinctive need to submit to whole-class direct instruction? They are subtly relieved of the ability over time to "think for themselves". This wonderful mode of operation called self-directed learning that served them well in infancy simply does not fit into the artificial and disconnected world of school.
Posted by Poirot, Tuesday, 14 September 2010 2:36:50 PM
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Ho Hum,

Most societies (if you care to think about it) are actually based on what they produce or consume.

Different forms of consumption and production, different cultural customs and way of life.

I do feel for Australian students.

Qld students (and other states are not far behind) now have the lowest level of interest in science of any student in the western world, and the future for them is to be dictated to by others who do have more understanding of science and technology.

The levels of illiteracy and innumeracy are quite high in some states, and the future for such people is to be dictated to by others who are more literate and numerate.

Schools and universities now import almost everything, which teaches the students to import almost everything, and the future for them is to be dictated to by others who do produce something instead of importing it all from elsewhere.
Posted by vanna, Tuesday, 14 September 2010 6:32:41 PM
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One can only lament the coming of conveyor belt factory style education'
Poirot,
nothing personal but for cryin' out loud where've you been since Whitlam ? whaddaya mean by coming ? It's been here since '75 !
Posted by individual, Tuesday, 14 September 2010 10:23:21 PM
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Why, hello, individual,

It's been here a tad longer than that...indeed it was developed hot on the heels of the Industrial Revolution - and has been a standard feature of childhood ever since they hauled the children out of the mines and the factories.
Posted by Poirot, Tuesday, 14 September 2010 11:47:11 PM
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Though there is absolutely no doubt that we have used and still use propaganda in films, to suggest that ALL films are propaganda, is a bit rich. Point at hand, Avatar…lets’ look at the potential for a story here;

1. Humans meet aliens, there is conflict and we win;
2. Humans meet aliens , there is conflict and we lose;
3. Humans meet aliens and there is peace.

Scenario 1, is a story that most people would find enjoyable. Scenario 2, no-one wants to see unless there’s a survivor that beats all, like in Alien or Predator. Scenario 3, is not a story anyone wants to see. But use scenario 1, and the makers are accused of “imperialistic conquest” for propaganda.

Though it is possible to read just about any form of propaganda you desire in just about any film, it does not mean there is propaganda there. It only means this is the way you have personally interpreted it. However, that’s not to say that we have not been subjected to propaganda since 9/11…for those that may watch “cop” shows, you may have noted that immediately after 9/11 there was a subtle shift in the themes of all of these types of shows coming from the US, and it was this….

Prior to 9/11 cop shows had the theme of the person’s rights being paramount. After 9/11, a person’s rights were miniscule compared to the issue of getting the “bad guy”. It may have been in the show “24”, where they killed the wrong guy, but it was washed away with the line…”It doesn’t matter, we were after a terrorist, and that’s what counts.” So the rights of the citizen have been down-trodden since 9/11 in the programming of cop shows. I would even suggest that a show like “Cops”, where we watch police arrest people for wrong-doings, is a subtle form of propaganda to condition the public to the idea of a police state, which America turned more into after 9/11.

TBC...
Posted by MindlessCruelty, Wednesday, 15 September 2010 9:26:49 AM
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During WWII, the forms of propaganda were far more obvious, and it wasn’t as sophisticated and subtle as it is these days. Hitler dehumanized the Jews by referring to them as “vermin” and other things. Today, we defend the deaths of innocents in war-zones with the use of the term “collateral damage”…the term dehumanizes subtly by not using any term pertaining to “human” or a condition of humanity…injury or death. We use a term originally designed for inanimate objects to describe the human condition of death…”collateral damage”. It used to be a term specifically for inanimate objects that were damaged, but now refers to persons, and is in effect a dehumanizing term designed to remove some of the emotion from the event…we feel less passionate about the mistake made by our army that killed the wrong person(s). We don’t like innocent deaths, but we have been conditioned to accept a certain amount of “collateral damage”.

We don’t like censorship of information, yet we accept the “embedding” of reporters, all under the guise of their safety. The army isn’t concerned with their safety they’re concerned with reporters seeing what they shouldn’t. And while “embedded”, the army controls their movements, and thus information. America had to pull-out out of Vietnam because of reporters, so they’re not about to let that happen again…the footage of the South Vietnamese officer pulling his gun out of its holster and shooting a prisoner in the head on “60 Minutes”, finished that war. The public outcry was palpable. (It certainly burnt an image inside MY head).
Posted by MindlessCruelty, Wednesday, 15 September 2010 9:26:54 AM
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Ho Hum,

I won't go so far as to say that I agree with everything you have written, but I think one of your last points was a very valid one:

'so-called "education" is merely about producing a compliant work force'.

This is, I think, one of the biggest arguments that continues to rear its head in educational circles. What IS the point of education? In a clinical sense, one could argue that it is - and should be - to produce good employees. In a more rounded and emotive sense, education should serve the purpose of producing good citizens, not just good employees. I don't mean 'compliant, mindless drones' who simply follow directions. I mean citizens who can question, citizens who can rise to challenges, citizens who can use their learning to improve their lives and those of the people around them. People who produce, rather than simply consuming.

Therein lies the problem. While they make noble statements about developing the 'leaders' of the future, I don't know that government bodies really want us to nurture people who will question and challenge the status quo.

Look at the disaster that was critical literacy, which was first hamstrung in state syllabus documents, and is now being almost completely sidelined in the national curriculum. One of the criticisms was valid - that the emphasis on critical thinking detracted from the basics of literacy teaching. There was always the underlying idea, though, that critical literacy was encouraging too much thinking. We don't want that. Shakespeare is good - end of story. Austen is good - end of story. The short-term future of English, it seems, will be relegated to canon-worship and, as a side-effect, unthinking acceptance of the status quo. Peaceful? Yes. Productive? No.
Posted by Otokonoko, Thursday, 16 September 2010 12:41:16 AM
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What IS the point of education? In a clinical sense, one could argue that it is - and should be - to produce good employees.
Otokonoko,
I think it was supposed to be enlightenment. It worked for quite a while but when it was realised that it was even better for indoctrination that's when the rails started to widen. It has gone from the great discoveries to the abomination of brainwashing that it is now. Actually, brainwashing is not an apt term. Brain deadening is more applicable. We have now a situation where morons are the educators who sabotage the intelligence of just about all young students with impunity, all with the aim of furthering consumerism. Education itself has become consumerism.
Posted by individual, Thursday, 16 September 2010 7:08:02 AM
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