Is our Education System a Lost Cause?

Dare ane nuttin' rong wid hour edukashun sistim, maykin sumptin' gud own teevee iz wat whe nead 2 feckks.

Yes. Emulate (copy, steal, whatever, but use their system) the Finnish system! It's that simple.

yes.

Public education is a key to a vibrant democracy. That's why conservative kleptocrats want to end it. That way, only the elite kids get to learn. Everyone else learns how to shovel, or detail cars.

Privatize the schooling system then only the two Cadillac owners children can go to school just like other foreign countries then when they go to war they won't know or have brains get back here alive
We gave them a one way ticket

Great video. I agree 100%. We need to focus on teaching kids to think for them selves, to solve problems, instead of indoctrinating them with facts. We need to abolish the grade=age paradigm and teach according to ability. We could do so much better.

I love to learn. I love watching the science channel and sometimes the history channel (although the history channel can be stupid sometimes), but I hated school. Einstein hated school too. Learning should be about fun, not about how to conform, how to fear and blindly obey authority and arbitrary rules, or about becoming nothing but an ignorant work unit. school systems are designed to manufacture slaves who do not know they are slaves. It's not that it was built in a different time, it's that it was built not to educate but to indoctrinate and control and that is the purpose it still serves today.

if schools did what they were supposed to do and produced highly educated, well-informed, critical-thinking individuals, the political and economic systems that we have today that vastly enriches the 1% at the expense of everyone else would quickly crumble (and be replaced with something far better). That is why education will always suck until we boot the 1% out of power. But of course we are not smart enough to actually do that. We are currently stuck in a cycle of ignorance with only tiny hints of a tiny minority of people waking up to this.

Partly I see it as they want people to be stupid. They are easier to control.
More likely to vote to what will be bad for them & better for the rich!
Look at the Catholics in the past making Easter etc, to make the Pagans happy.
Alexandria library, being for the rich only, not the poor! Keep the poor down!
The Dark ages! No enlightenment back then! They want to keep the poor low.

No, it's not a lost cause. It merely needs to be declared a "national emergency" and reformed from inside out and top to bottom, and legislate the mandatory funding of it. After developing the atomic bomb and dropping it twice on Japan nearly 70 years ago, and sending exploratory satellites to the outer reaches of our solar system, that as a national emergency measure we can't return from 38th international position in quality of education, to 1rst place. It's merely an issue of priority. Do we continue to make the Oil Industry and the Military Industrial Complex richer and richer, or do we improve our educational system, an absolute must before improving our economy.

a child's mind must be engaged or the spark hides. Public schools today are no different than any aspect of our life...we need to address how, why and what things are done for all to have an opportunity for freedom and happiness. Everything needs to be reconsidered with people and planet in mind.

I love all of your articles, and this one I'm featuring in War On Intelligent Thought.

A good education is an intense life-long process. The fact that parents and grandparents and even the community itself have been excluded from being involved in a child's education is the greatest modern tragedy imaginable.
Whether it was economics, natural human selfishness, or just a bad social experiment in the idea of factory schooling it has been a disaster of alienation and horrible results.
If one really wants a well educated child it begins with good nutrition, good parenting, and relentless attention of every sentient creature in the network surrounding that child.
Good luck finding that in today's world outside of small economically secure homogeneous communities in Scandinavia.

I can tell you from first hand experience that the default mode of the US factory style education system is to spend far more on administration and building than on the students. Money flows toward the interests of those who control the money. Parents and communities have little to no real influence on the day to day allocation of resources in schools; students have none. In most cases teacher's influence on allocation of resources in schools is confined to begging.

There will be some successes in education but they will be found in the exceptional personal cases of long term determined opposition to the abandonment of children to factory style schools.

NO ! Kids are the best long term investment you can make ! We need to put back more music and art .... expand science and history ... they have to WANT to go to school at least a little .

Noway is it a lost cause, we should never give up on education of our kids!

December 20, (1787)

(to James Madison)

"Above all things I hope the education of the common people will be attended to ; convinced that on their good sense we may rely with the most security for the preservation of a due degree of liberty."

- Thomas Jefferson