“Let the buyer beware” is an ancient warning that applies in this discussion about algorithms, I believe. While it is true that the subliminal nature of algorithms is the point that must be highlighted, and while it is equally true that none of us is capable of exempting ourselves from some degree of influence when we participate in any …
“Let the buyer beware” is an ancient warning that applies in this discussion about algorithms, I believe. While it is true that the subliminal nature of algorithms is the point that must be highlighted, and while it is equally true that none of us is capable of exempting ourselves from some degree of influence when we participate in any activity which exposes us to input from anonymous and mercenary sources, some of us have a BS filter that works much better than others who have not developed such a filter.
I will probably be accused of going off-topic. I have no desire to detract from or diminish the clear and present danger from the “invisible hands” which direct unwitting people in a direction which leads them down a primrose path toward delusion and destruction. I agree wholeheartedly that algorithms are being misused and are a pernicious tool if not monitored and controlled. However, Friday’s topic has some relevance here again, and ultimately, we always must recognize how our perceptions, impressions, beliefs, attitudes, feelings, and experiences are affected by unseen forces or underestimated subtle influences within our most cherished institutions.
The original “big lie” has led us to where we are now, with inordinate susceptibility to misinformation, disinformation, and the manipulation of our thinking, feeling, and believing. Far too many people have been conditioned to suspend disbelief and to lack a “critical thinking” filter which questions what is fed to them and allows them to have a more holistic and comprehensive worldview.
It has amazed me that so many people, some whom I have greatly admired and trusted as great intellects have appeared to be still confusing important matters such as “public schooling”, “education”, “compulsory schooling”, “learning”, “knowledge acquisition”, and related topics. It is even more astounding to me that so many have seemed to have no interest in discussing these issues in any terms except in with those which they are familiar and which are part of a grand mythology.
When the hawks, warmongers, and rabid anti-communists were saying, ‘love it or leave it’, these same people, including many in this audience, were out front calling that pure BS and an unviable argument. So, I do not get it when I get what appears to be a knee-jerk negative reaction or nothing but blank stares when I catalogue the many problems and failures of the “public” schools. To criticize bad schools is not to say that Randi Weingartner is dangerous or responsible for their problems or that I am trying to destroy public schooling.
One can be highly critical of the schools and not be in favor of privatization. One can be adamantly opposed to compulsory attendance laws and connect those laws to the chronic conflicts and controversies of the schools, without believing that the schools cannot become much more hospitable and extremely useful institutions for socialization, training of various types, supervision, character-building, health promotion, and indoctrination (as consciously chosen by parents) if disconnected from state domination.
We can have schools which are not models of prisons or military academies. We can have schools which are both public AND voluntary, without leaving anyone out or behind. We can have schools which facilitate education and inspire and edify, without threats, intimidation, punishment, paternalism, discouragement, demoralization, or mediocrity and cynicism.
Likewise, we can create programs and policies which help citizens to be more discriminating and aware, without discrimination and xenophobia and fearfulness. We can have institution which are insulated from outside meddling and manipulation by politicians or state agents who arbitrarily remove civics instruction and impose right-wing viewpoints using power over schooling that no one should ever have in a democracy.
Children must “pay attention” to learn. However, I defy anyone to force a child to pay attention in a way which has a beneficial and lasting effect or which results in learning that does not have the taint of imposition and resistance.
I defy anyone to bribe a student or use extrinsic reward with a satisfactory outcome over the long term or which does not condition the student to abandon intrinsic rewards or to have a lack of appreciation and awareness toward learning for its own sake.
I defy anyone who has consistently introduced children to, or bothered them with, information, material, or instruction in which they have not had a curiosity or interest in to show how they, the influencers and adults, have been an inspiration, a facilitator of education, or a model worth emulating. Patronization undermines trust.
School is not education for these and other reasons. Mandatory schooling is the antithesis of education. Education is personal. Schools must group students in classes, sacrificing the personal. Education requires full engagement, personal initiative, intensive concentration, and private cognition, contemplation, and rumination. School allows very little time and space for any of these, especially when there is a curriculum that is not organic and spontaneous in response to student input and inquiry, and when there is a pathological need to track and document supposed progress.
What I believe I am witnessing in far too many instances is a dismissal of, or a minimization of, significant and serious injuries to children. Their humiliation, angst, abuse, maltreatment, exploitation, or miseducation is being ignored. Adults who seem to care about all sorts of unfairness, miscarriages of justice, and abuses of power affecting other adults have decided, quite consciously, to look the other way and disregard the egregious harm to children - for one reason and one reason only. They believe that children must be seen and not heard. They believe that life is hard, so life must be hard for kids to teach them that life is hard!
Life is unfair, and getting somewhere demands rigor, work, and endurance. Therefore, children must be forced to bear dissatisfaction and misery to prepare them for adulthood. That is the irrational logic behind the failure to act in defense of children or to oppose the denial of their constitutional rights as citizens at birth. I find it extremely disconcerting to think that people I have trusted for ideas and information have fallen into this trap.
It has easily been forty years since John Holt wrote that “School is bad for kids”. Holt also said that, “School makes children servile and dumb”. He was one of dozens of people who had been outspoken about harms done in schools and by schooling as we have known it, starting a century or more before. Volumes have been written by Dewey and others about a broken paradigm. Yet, in the second decade of the 21st century there is no chance that the conditions in our dysfunctional schools will change. Uncounted promises have been broken and innumerable reforms have had their few minutes in the sun, only to fade out, flame out, or be defunded, disappearing with hardly a trace.
Power in the wrong hands or applied for the wrong reasons is corrosive and dangerous. Power over children to ostensibly teach them lessons or “educate” them is power that is too easily abused, mismanaged, and ignored. Knowledge acquisition, learning, education, and teaching are processes and activities which should not occur in an environment where power or undue influence are being applied as a matter of course or in anything other than a temporary emergency circumstance.
We have a schooling paradigm which is destructive and which is hostile to education. We have a schooling paradigm which is inimical to the interests and welfare of students, which dishonors good teachers, which usurps the rights and obligations of parents, and which puts our country and our democracy at risk. Power is granted as a function of laws which are paternalistic and unconstitutional. And the results fill our headlines with unpleasant accounts of failure and bad conduct daily. The results yield school graduates who can be suckered by a comedian named Limbaugh and by mindless algorithms.
As stated in a couple of recent posts, we have state schools, not public schools. The states each have their “900-page book of rules”. The states have put us all in Strait Jackets and chastity belts and have put blinders on us. Not a single state official can articulate what education is to my satisfaction. Not a single one has the solution to the endless problems and abuses.
What kind of residual religious or super-moralistic algorithms were used to program us in school? Benevolent Big Brother state has had our best interests at heart and is able to educate our children? By force? There’s a doozie of a bigly big lie.
We are far beyond the crisis stage. Ending bad attendance laws should be one of our top priorities, and if it isn’t algorithms will just grease the skids on our downfall. When will someone listen?
Thank you for the advice. I'm afraid I am unable to alter my style to suit people with short attention spans or who are not willing to expend the time and energy to follow my lead, however. I was writing specifically to respond to certain things that have been concerning to me over the last couple of years that have been disregarded in this space which I happen to believe are contradictory to Thom's stated beliefs and ideas about democracy and how it must be preserved via education. You have illustrated the issue quite well, in fact. Those who lack an interest in an area of controversy, debate, or knowledge and those who are not paying attention voluntarily as a consequence of their own inquiries or curiosities will not do the work or benefit much from it if they are compelled by external force or extrinsic reward. Some things involve deep belief systems, biases, mythology, and social traditions which cannot be reduced to sound bites or clever statements of truth and fact. My writing is not for everyone and some things must be said even at the risk of being ignored. Thank you again for your input though. For what it is worth, that was one of my shorter posts.
“Let the buyer beware” is an ancient warning that applies in this discussion about algorithms, I believe. While it is true that the subliminal nature of algorithms is the point that must be highlighted, and while it is equally true that none of us is capable of exempting ourselves from some degree of influence when we participate in any activity which exposes us to input from anonymous and mercenary sources, some of us have a BS filter that works much better than others who have not developed such a filter.
I will probably be accused of going off-topic. I have no desire to detract from or diminish the clear and present danger from the “invisible hands” which direct unwitting people in a direction which leads them down a primrose path toward delusion and destruction. I agree wholeheartedly that algorithms are being misused and are a pernicious tool if not monitored and controlled. However, Friday’s topic has some relevance here again, and ultimately, we always must recognize how our perceptions, impressions, beliefs, attitudes, feelings, and experiences are affected by unseen forces or underestimated subtle influences within our most cherished institutions.
The original “big lie” has led us to where we are now, with inordinate susceptibility to misinformation, disinformation, and the manipulation of our thinking, feeling, and believing. Far too many people have been conditioned to suspend disbelief and to lack a “critical thinking” filter which questions what is fed to them and allows them to have a more holistic and comprehensive worldview.
It has amazed me that so many people, some whom I have greatly admired and trusted as great intellects have appeared to be still confusing important matters such as “public schooling”, “education”, “compulsory schooling”, “learning”, “knowledge acquisition”, and related topics. It is even more astounding to me that so many have seemed to have no interest in discussing these issues in any terms except in with those which they are familiar and which are part of a grand mythology.
When the hawks, warmongers, and rabid anti-communists were saying, ‘love it or leave it’, these same people, including many in this audience, were out front calling that pure BS and an unviable argument. So, I do not get it when I get what appears to be a knee-jerk negative reaction or nothing but blank stares when I catalogue the many problems and failures of the “public” schools. To criticize bad schools is not to say that Randi Weingartner is dangerous or responsible for their problems or that I am trying to destroy public schooling.
One can be highly critical of the schools and not be in favor of privatization. One can be adamantly opposed to compulsory attendance laws and connect those laws to the chronic conflicts and controversies of the schools, without believing that the schools cannot become much more hospitable and extremely useful institutions for socialization, training of various types, supervision, character-building, health promotion, and indoctrination (as consciously chosen by parents) if disconnected from state domination.
We can have schools which are not models of prisons or military academies. We can have schools which are both public AND voluntary, without leaving anyone out or behind. We can have schools which facilitate education and inspire and edify, without threats, intimidation, punishment, paternalism, discouragement, demoralization, or mediocrity and cynicism.
Likewise, we can create programs and policies which help citizens to be more discriminating and aware, without discrimination and xenophobia and fearfulness. We can have institution which are insulated from outside meddling and manipulation by politicians or state agents who arbitrarily remove civics instruction and impose right-wing viewpoints using power over schooling that no one should ever have in a democracy.
Children must “pay attention” to learn. However, I defy anyone to force a child to pay attention in a way which has a beneficial and lasting effect or which results in learning that does not have the taint of imposition and resistance.
I defy anyone to bribe a student or use extrinsic reward with a satisfactory outcome over the long term or which does not condition the student to abandon intrinsic rewards or to have a lack of appreciation and awareness toward learning for its own sake.
I defy anyone who has consistently introduced children to, or bothered them with, information, material, or instruction in which they have not had a curiosity or interest in to show how they, the influencers and adults, have been an inspiration, a facilitator of education, or a model worth emulating. Patronization undermines trust.
School is not education for these and other reasons. Mandatory schooling is the antithesis of education. Education is personal. Schools must group students in classes, sacrificing the personal. Education requires full engagement, personal initiative, intensive concentration, and private cognition, contemplation, and rumination. School allows very little time and space for any of these, especially when there is a curriculum that is not organic and spontaneous in response to student input and inquiry, and when there is a pathological need to track and document supposed progress.
What I believe I am witnessing in far too many instances is a dismissal of, or a minimization of, significant and serious injuries to children. Their humiliation, angst, abuse, maltreatment, exploitation, or miseducation is being ignored. Adults who seem to care about all sorts of unfairness, miscarriages of justice, and abuses of power affecting other adults have decided, quite consciously, to look the other way and disregard the egregious harm to children - for one reason and one reason only. They believe that children must be seen and not heard. They believe that life is hard, so life must be hard for kids to teach them that life is hard!
Life is unfair, and getting somewhere demands rigor, work, and endurance. Therefore, children must be forced to bear dissatisfaction and misery to prepare them for adulthood. That is the irrational logic behind the failure to act in defense of children or to oppose the denial of their constitutional rights as citizens at birth. I find it extremely disconcerting to think that people I have trusted for ideas and information have fallen into this trap.
It has easily been forty years since John Holt wrote that “School is bad for kids”. Holt also said that, “School makes children servile and dumb”. He was one of dozens of people who had been outspoken about harms done in schools and by schooling as we have known it, starting a century or more before. Volumes have been written by Dewey and others about a broken paradigm. Yet, in the second decade of the 21st century there is no chance that the conditions in our dysfunctional schools will change. Uncounted promises have been broken and innumerable reforms have had their few minutes in the sun, only to fade out, flame out, or be defunded, disappearing with hardly a trace.
Power in the wrong hands or applied for the wrong reasons is corrosive and dangerous. Power over children to ostensibly teach them lessons or “educate” them is power that is too easily abused, mismanaged, and ignored. Knowledge acquisition, learning, education, and teaching are processes and activities which should not occur in an environment where power or undue influence are being applied as a matter of course or in anything other than a temporary emergency circumstance.
We have a schooling paradigm which is destructive and which is hostile to education. We have a schooling paradigm which is inimical to the interests and welfare of students, which dishonors good teachers, which usurps the rights and obligations of parents, and which puts our country and our democracy at risk. Power is granted as a function of laws which are paternalistic and unconstitutional. And the results fill our headlines with unpleasant accounts of failure and bad conduct daily. The results yield school graduates who can be suckered by a comedian named Limbaugh and by mindless algorithms.
As stated in a couple of recent posts, we have state schools, not public schools. The states each have their “900-page book of rules”. The states have put us all in Strait Jackets and chastity belts and have put blinders on us. Not a single state official can articulate what education is to my satisfaction. Not a single one has the solution to the endless problems and abuses.
What kind of residual religious or super-moralistic algorithms were used to program us in school? Benevolent Big Brother state has had our best interests at heart and is able to educate our children? By force? There’s a doozie of a bigly big lie.
We are far beyond the crisis stage. Ending bad attendance laws should be one of our top priorities, and if it isn’t algorithms will just grease the skids on our downfall. When will someone listen?
Thank you for the advice. I'm afraid I am unable to alter my style to suit people with short attention spans or who are not willing to expend the time and energy to follow my lead, however. I was writing specifically to respond to certain things that have been concerning to me over the last couple of years that have been disregarded in this space which I happen to believe are contradictory to Thom's stated beliefs and ideas about democracy and how it must be preserved via education. You have illustrated the issue quite well, in fact. Those who lack an interest in an area of controversy, debate, or knowledge and those who are not paying attention voluntarily as a consequence of their own inquiries or curiosities will not do the work or benefit much from it if they are compelled by external force or extrinsic reward. Some things involve deep belief systems, biases, mythology, and social traditions which cannot be reduced to sound bites or clever statements of truth and fact. My writing is not for everyone and some things must be said even at the risk of being ignored. Thank you again for your input though. For what it is worth, that was one of my shorter posts.