Just edumacate them

[Sulaco]

One should always dig into assumptions made by various arguments. My favorite punching bag has always been the proposition that if only the masses in those third world countries were educated all would be good. Usually this argument comes hand in hand with left spawned poverty is a root cause argument. The pair have made their showings regarding muslim extremism.

What poppycock. Usually the "just edumacate them and all will be fine" arguments are made by our effette academes. One wonders how these thinkers can be so ignorant of history. And how they can be so blind to the cultural imperialism they so denounce generally but are preaching through their war cry. What these professers reall mean is not " give them an education" - they mean "educate them in a manner that we prescribe". Teach them our values. if all of them take these values on they will be pacifist doves. All will be utopia. Bah... you aren't be doing any such social engineering without a lot of guns pointed at the third world teachers. And they must mean to social engeneer - because just education makes for better informed fanatic. As we've seen in the past you could be very well educated in the sciences, liberal arts, maths etc. and call for the wiping out of all jews.

As we have seen this past week you can be a passable doctor and attempt to inexpertly set off bombs.

Is the assumption then that the educated would refuse to be cannon fodder for a cause? Umm no - again see the last week. Observe how most highly violent revolutionary movements started out as cadres of very vicious very aducated - and only after some time accreted some portion of the unwashed masses. Frankly the educated can and are far more vicious than the uneducated. They have abstract causes. They have communism or they have an idealized islam.

So does educate them mean indoctrinate them? If so I say to a professor of this bromide - usually a pacifist - you and what army? Or I would ask him: are you really so silly as to believe that the educated are somehow precluded from strapping on an explosive vests, chopping off children's heads, or slaughtering women - simply by the virtue of completeing university?

[ScottSA]

Good post. "Education" long ago began meaning "indoctrination" in the ivory halls of the west.

The radicals of the 60s managed to overthrow the accepted Canons of western civilization in the name of free speech, and once having succeeded, merely transplanted their own canons and made damned good and sure that "free speech" only meant agreeing with them. Unfortunately their own canons had no philosophical grounding, and indeed were premised on having no philosophical grounding, so every collection of two or three agitators with a petty grievance hijacks the direction every few years...first it was "Black Studies", and after everyone got tired of reading up on the stoneage and makebelieve post-colonial revisionism, it turned into "Women's Studies", which gave way to "Womyns Studies" and then back again to "Woman's Studies," and now we're into...well, I'm not sure, but Islamic Studies won't be far down the road. And Islamic studies has no such uncertainties; Islam knows exactly what it's all about. By that time academia will be slipping out of the fading grip of the insipid tie-dyed 60s generation and into the hands of the nightmare it unleashed. And what will "education" mean then?

[jbg]

A creation of values of a civil society, as well as "education" is essential to civilize people. As we just learned in the UK, bringing people foreign to civilization as we understand it to a civilized country dooms one, or both, parties.

[August1991]

A creation of values of a civil society, as well as "education" is essential to civilize people.

I'll stick with that quote, jbg.

Anyone reading this text is in no way different genetically from any "human" alive 100,000 years ago. IOW, if we could take any human baby born 100,000 years ago, bring them to the future and put them into any Western family today for a few years, the child would speak, write, send mobile text messages and chat on Internet forums.

IOW, there is no physical "intelligence" difference between you and an illiterate, animal savage born 100,000 years ago. The only difference is what you have learned since you were born, and the confidence with which you learned it. (Incidentally, I have always found this fact the best argument against racist comments.)

As a species, we are distinct because we spend so much time to educate our young. Indeed, education is arguably a new method to transfer or replicate "genetic" information.

----

I agree however that Canada's education schemes are not particularly effective. From my own experience, forced to sit in a closed room for hours and decades, I found modern, State education to be a humiliating prison. At most, I learned some Math. I learned far more once I had left and gone to a university of my choice.

IOW, IMV, we don't teach our children well - although we devote many resourses to the task. I'm not even sure our unionized State teachers teach heathens how to confront superstition.

[FascistLibertarian]

Anyone reading this text is in no way different genetically from any "human" alive 100,000 years ago.

Really? I doubt they would last 5 mins here, they would get sick and die. However their eyesight would almost certainly be 20/20.

As we have seen this past week you can be a passable doctor and attempt to inexpertly set off bombs.

Dr's arent experts in everything. Education doesnt = ethics.

Whats your point?

Usually the "just edumacate them and all will be fine" arguments are made by our effette academes.

Do you have any examples to back up this generalization? Sounds like a strawman to me.

Umm no - again see the last week. Observe how most highly violent revolutionary movements started out as cadres of very vicious very aducated - and only after some time accreted some portion of the unwashed masses. Frankly the educated can and are far more vicious than the uneducated. They have abstract causes. They have communism or they have an idealized islam.

Yes keeping the masses ignorant would be the best.

The printing press, letting them learn how to read etc.

However the whole world has gone open source.

I am not really sure of the point of your arguement.

are you saying we need to eliminate education?

[ScottSA]

Ah. Another swealian incarnation. Identifiable 20 miles away by the pointless line item nitpicking.

[M.Dancer]

Ah. Another swealian incarnation. Identifiable 20 miles away by the pointless line item nitpicking.

It could be only a coincedence that Figsweal was suspended 3 days before he joined.....