Irresponsible 'Education'

[DEAD7]

Goddard College's recent decision to have its students addressed from prison by a convicted cop killer is just one of many unbelievably irresponsible self-indulgences by "educators" in our schools and colleges.


Such "educators" teach minorities born with an incredibly valuable windfall gain — American citizenship — that they are victims who have a grievance against people today who have done nothing to them, because of what other people did in other times. If those individuals who feel aggrieved could sell their American citizenship to eager buyers from around the world and leave, everybody would probably be better off. Those who leave would get not only a substantial sum of money — probably $100,000 or more — they would also get a valuable dose of reality elsewhere.

Nothing is easier than to prove that America, or any other society of human beings, is far from being the perfect gem that any of us can conjure up in our imagination. But, when you look around the world today or look back through history, you can get a very painfully sobering sense of what a challenge it can be in the real world to maintain even common decency among human beings.

Living just one year in the Middle East would be an education in reality that could obliterate years of indoctrination in grievances that passes for education in too many of our schools, colleges and universities. You could go on to get a postgraduate education in reality in some place like North Korea.

If you prefer to get your education in the comfort of a library, rather than in person amid the horrors, you might study the history of the sadistic massacres of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire or the heart-wrenching story of Stalin's man-made 1930s famine in the Soviet Union that killed as many millions of people as Hitler's Holocaust did in the 1940s.

Mao's man-made famine in China killed more people than the Soviet famine and the Nazi Holocaust combined. And we should not deny their rightful place in history's chamber of horrors to the 1970s Cambodian dehumanization and slaughters that killed off at least a quarter of the entire population of that country.

What about slavery? Slavery certainly has its place among the horrors of humanity. But our "educators" today, along with the media, present a highly edited segment of the history of slavery. Those who have been through our schools and colleges, or who have seen our movies or television miniseries, may well come away thinking that slavery means white people enslaving black people. But slavery was a worldwide curse for thousands of years, as far back as recorded history goes.

Over all that expanse of time and space, it is very unlikely that most slaves, or most slave owners, were either black or white. Slavery was common among the vast populations in Asia. Slavery was also common among the Polynesians, and the indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere enslaved other indigenous peoples before anyone on this side of the Atlantic had ever seen a European.

More whites were brought as slaves to North Africa than blacks brought as slaves to the United States or to the 13 colonies from which it was formed. White slaves were still being bought and sold in the Ottoman Empire, decades after blacks were freed in the United States.

What does all this mean?

In addition to the chilling picture that it paints of human nature, it means that Americans today — all Americans — are among the luckiest people who have ever inhabited this planet. Most Americans living in officially defined poverty today have such things as central air-conditioning, cable television, a microwave oven and a motor vehicle.

A scholar who spent years studying Latin America said that what is defined as poverty in the United States today is upper middle class in Mexico.

Do we still need to do better? Yes! Human beings all over the world are not even close to running out of room for improvement.

There is so much knowledge and skills that need to be transmitted to the young that turning schools and colleges into indoctrination centers is a major and reckless disservice to them and to American society, which is vulnerable as all human societies have always been, especially those that are decent.

-Thomas Sowell

 

[Shogun]

What about slavery? Slavery certainly has its place among the horrors of humanity. But our "educators" today, along with the media, present a highly edited segment of the history of slavery. Those who have been through our schools and colleges, or who have seen our movies or television miniseries, may well come away thinking that slavery means white people enslaving black people. But slavery was a worldwide curse for thousands of years, as far back as recorded history goes.

Few things..

1. All grade school lessons on history are highly edited. You have two weeks to cover major events with kids who are often less than enthused about the topic. A thorough treatment isn't realistic.
2. As slavery pertains to America, the Atlantic trade is what's most relevant. To cover all slavery from all eras in a comparative approach would be difficult for even a college course.
3. Social Studies education is consistently moving further away from content. The focus (per Common Core) is to teach the skill that will allow them to study history independently as adults. The problem with that rationale, as I see it, is that the average American has their head too far up their ass to educate themselves independently.

 

[Ian1362]

Bumping this, but as someone who substitute teaches occasionally, I highly recommend seeking out knowledge yourself and drawing your own conclusions. Just recommended this to a few students interested in theories of education actually:

amazon.com/The-White-Architects-Black-Education/dp/080774042X

(one of the places I sub is a predominantly-black charter school)

I tell students all the time to question the "textbook" account by looking at primary sources, period accounts, etc. A lot of the "textbook history" you get from Elementary-HS is pure shyt in terms of missing the complexity of issues.

Sowell sort of speaks to that here talking about the pertinance of slavery in America, but you see the sort of historical bias elsewhere in schooling. Like HS's having Holocaust classes but paying no more than a few days worth of material to discussing the Soviets wiping out ~10 million noncombatants, or teaching the Armenian genocide at all.

Being from NY, the textbook account I got of the North during the Civil War was tantamount to some sort of racialist kumbaya of altruistic abolitionism, but looking at actual accounts you see the North was (especially according to British accounts) even more racist and contemptuous of blacks than the South (riots after emancipation proclamation, abolitionists were less than 1% of population, obvious racism of Lincoln seeking to deport all blacks, supporting Corwin amendment, virtually all states denying blacks basic rights or requiring bond to be posted lest they be deported from states simply for living there, etc).

 

[Dr. Sebi Jr.]

More whites were brought as slaves to North Africa than blacks brought as slaves to the United States or to the 13 colonies from which it was formed.

GOOD.

The Moors invaded Spain and ruled for hundreds of years. We brought civilization to those savages.


But then Europeans invaded Africa and colonized for hundreds of years. They called us savages and said they were bringing civilization. HOW DARE THEY.