Will Wikipedia Replace Your Kid's Teacher?, The “Blue Screen Of Death� For Education Options Rating

[Herschelkrustofsky]

Obama has been hanging out with Bill and Melinda Gates (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/cthulhu.gif) , and other persons who really care about education. Their consensus seems to be that all those people who said that a high student-to-teacher ratio was harmful were wrong, and that we can really think about getting rid of a lot of those teachers and replacing them with on-line instruction. With increasing emphasis on drill-and-grill and other regressive educational techniques, does this not put Wikipedia in more significant role as an educational [ahem] resource?

[Jon Awbrey]

Obama has been hanging out with Bill and Melinda Gates (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/cthulhu.gif) , and other persons who really care about education. Their consensus seems to be that all those people who said that a high student-to-teacher ratio was harmful were wrong, and that we can really think about getting rid of a lot of those teachers and replacing them with on-line instruction. With increasing emphasis on drill-and-grill and other regressive educational techniques, does this not put Wikipedia in more significant role as an educational [ahem] resource?

I think this is just one more component of the Corporate Totalitarian Agenda, replacing everything that we have been accustomed to regard as the Public Sector with the Non-Representational Government of Privateerism.

I think a lot of people are being suckered into it out of sheer naivete, but the corporate con artists know perfectly well what they want and how they plan to get it.

Jon Awbrey

[Milton Roe]

Obama has been hanging out with Bill and Melinda Gates (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/cthulhu.gif) , and other persons who really care about education. Their consensus seems to be that all those people who said that a high student-to-teacher ratio was harmful were wrong, and that we can really think about getting rid of a lot of those teachers and replacing them with on-line instruction. With increasing emphasis on drill-and-grill and other regressive educational techniques, does this not put Wikipedia in more significant role as an educational [ahem] resource?

I think that this is just one more component of the Corporate Totalitarian Agenda, replacing absolutely everything that we have been accustomed to regard as the Public Sector with the Non-Representative Government of Privateerism.

I think a lot of people are being suckered into it out of sheer naivete, but the corporate con artists know perfectly well what they want and how they plan to get it.

Jon Awbrey

See, I take a longer view of education, and note that public education as we know it in American K-12, is a relatively recent thing, dating from only about 1850. It comes (basically) from a Prussian idea that if you take kids away from their parents and homeschool-education soon enough, you can turn them into little ready-to-obey-orders-of-the-state brainwashed Hitler Youth. Again, this idea in turn came from late 18th and early 19th century Prussia, long before there was a Hitler Youth. In fact the Hitler Youth itself was just carrying on a fine Prussian tradition that was more than a century old, by then. And which, by that time, had been spread into the school systems of Amerika by people like Horace Mann, who transplanted it into Massachusetts just in the mid-19th century, after which it spread in the US like kudzu.

Wilhelm von Humboldt and his ilk, a couple of generations earlier in Europe, weren't educating Prussian youth in the early 1800's via compulsory state schools because they wanted to turn them into little philosophers. They were educating them, compulsorily, by the state, because Prussia had had its ass kicked by Napoleon and decided it was because the children who came from home-schooling weren't robotical enough to make moldable soldiers. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/hrmph.gif)

So when I see you taking about "drill-and-grill" techniques as being part of Bill/Melinda Gatesian "Corporate Totalitarian Agenda" it makes me laugh so hard it brings tears to my eyes. Drill and grill isn't the corporate totalitarian agenda. It's the ultimate statist brainwashing agenda, and for 150 to 200 years in first Europe and then the US, it's worked so well that you seem not to be aware of it. You think it's sort of the way of nature, with the new business model trying to undo the way things have always been. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/biggrin.gif) (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/biggrin.gif)

Pardon, but thanks for the laugh, Jon.

[Herschelkrustofsky]

See, I take a longer view of education, and note that public education as we know it in American K-12, is a relatively recent thing, dating from only about 1850. It comes (basically) from a Prussian idea ...

Is this comment about Prussian education factual and true?

The fragment you quote is pretty factual and true. However...

Wilhelm von Humboldt and his ilk, a couple of generations earlier in Europe, weren't educating Prussian youth in the early 1800's via compulsory state schools because they wanted to turn them into little philosophers. They were educating them, compulsorily, by the state, because Prussia had had its ass kicked by Napoleon and decided it was because the children who came from home-schooling weren't robotical enough to make moldable soldiers. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/hrmph.gif)

Milt, this is one of the biggest howlers you have ever enunciated on this board. The fact of the matter is that Wilhelm von Humboldt and "his ilk" transformed education specifically to encourage independent thought; they taught kids to read and write classical Greek, to compose classical music, and to master geometry. This is hardly what you do if you want "robotic" kids. But that's not the only thing you have wrong here. The Prussian military theorists developed "Auftragstaktik," which was indeed a response to getting their asses kicked by Napoleon. But Auftragstaktik is based on giving independent combat units a great deal of independence and trusting them to improvise tactics in the context of an understanding of the larger mission. It requires well-educated and creative soldiers who have confidence in their own powers of judgement. There is no room there for robots.

[Kelly Martin]

But Auftragstaktik is based on giving independent combat units a great deal of independence and trusting them to improvise tactics in the context of an understanding of the larger mission. It requires well-educated and creative soldiers who have confidence in their own powers of judgement. There is no room there for robots.

Indeed. One of the largest conflicts between the Wehrmacht and Hitler's special forces is that the special forces emphasized unthinking loyalty and obedience, while the Wehrmacht had long trained its officers and even NCOs for independent, on-the-spot decision making capability. Germans are not all of a piece, you know. (IMG:smilys0b23ax56/default/smile.gif)