Some Thoughts on Education

  Government funded education has lost purpose and maybe the blame can be laid at the feet of the band Pink Floyd and their song ‘Brick in the Wall’ with the opening line – “We don’t need no education.”  The song was, in hindsight, prophetic though the song could also have set the tone for how to move forward as it was released in 1979; please lookup the lyrics to get the full story.  It must be noted that the noted introductory line in the song a double negative and so, yes, they do need an education.

  Another factor that has influenced education is the female to male ratio within the education system especially from K-12.  According to Statistics Canada the data shows that approximately 75% of educators are female, with a higher proportion (89%) in elementary schools and a lower but still substantial proportion (59%) in secondary schools.  (Source https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=3710015303)  It is understood via the statistics, that boys and young men raised in a single mother home are more likely to end up battered, in prison, or even dead: thus leaving the question, has the formative years for a child’s government driven education has effectively rebuilt the ‘single mother sydrom’, more simply put: it has and been injected into the school system.

   Back when I was in high school I tutored my classmates in Algebra, Calculus, and in Functions and Relations.  More recently I tutored a young man, and went old school on him including, though not limited to, the times-table, and what I call Greek math.  Greek math is what one can do with a ruler, a compass, and protractor; which was done through observation and reasoning.  The most common example of this sort of math is known as the Pythagorean Theorem.

  Pythagoras of Samos, or someone before him, figured out that a equiangular quadrilateral, such as a square or a rectangle, can be cut in half between two opposite corners, which forms a triangle resulting in the equation which is presented as A² + B² = C² where C is the diagonal line from one corner to the opposite corner.  Pythagoras sorted this out without the aid of a teacher, and as such a PHD, posthumously of course, should be awarded by whichever university is of the highest rank in Greece if this hasn’t already been done.

  Another thing that is not being taught, as far as I can tell, is that the basic explanations on the how or the why things work, are no longer being taught.  In the last few yeas I’ve explained to, to many people, why a number squared or cubed is called as they are. Let’s see if I can explain why those mathematical terms are used.  Going back to the good old days of times-table, when one looks at the times-table again, one can see that when you go 3 across on the top and 3 down on the left the result is 9 which forms a square as there are only two dimensions; and yet it still results in a square.  An additionally good task would be to bring in another piece paper for the third dimension, and when one thinks on this idea, one can see why 2^3rd = 16 is referred to as two cubed.  Also, there is no name for 2^4^th as there are no physical dimensions left.

  According to multiple studies, it is said that if a person learns more than one language by the time they reach the age of twelve, they will always know the basic and will be able to speak it without an accent.  This was known to my father, as I was instructed to do times-tables and writing every weekend when I was young, the school system also knew this as I was not allowed a calculator until somewhere around grade ten.  It should be noted that when America put men into space the math was done by hand or by using a slide ruler; oh and I typically add up my shopping list to within two dollars and after that I can tell what the change should be, yes I still use cash.

  The purpose of the paragraph directly above is that if you put in the work manually at a young age then you will reap the reward for most of your life.  The current problem is that age where ‘the toys’ are being introduced and while the toy can give the answer the how it works is being lost; this will only get worse as AI is introduced.  There is program called Grammarly that can write personal letters, reports, legal documents and more.  The problem is going to be that reliance destroys resilience; we are now going to play a game in the form of a narrative.

  The power grid goes down for a week, and so people in homes can not cook, no access to the Internet, or charge their phones and cars, also the gas pumps will stop; also, restaurants won’t be able to cook meals, refrigerate, those who deliver food can’t charge their bikes, and so people will get hungry: can you imagine the level of chaos and violence that will ensue?

   If you don’t use it, you loose it; or perhaps you never really learned writing in the first place; I never really did and I typically only use pencil for words, though I do use a pen when I do maths.  I tend to misspell words all the time, though I’m still working on it, so I can be a better, this is part of the reason for my others writings you can read; the ideas are more important than the spelling.  So this is where I am part from both spelling and grammar, as I just never got it right, it took me about a decade to learn how to type the word dyslexia, though I can now with out error

  Additionally, the rhetorical talent amongst 20-35 year olds seems to be only parroting the current talking point(s), all the while not being able explain what the words coming out their own mouths mean.  I have run into this quite often as of late, and so ‘What do you mean by that’ become my go to response with the current youth; how is that after about 3,000 years the battle against Sophistry has resurfaced or perhaps it had never stopped, and just went into hiding for a while.

  I left grade thirteen around 40 years ago, so I’m not sure how the curriculum is being taught today.  Though based on anecdotal evidence, I feel that things have changed and not for the better.  Two factors must be taken into account at this point, the first being that I have three to four decades over the youth and that most of them live in Google.  A problem with living within Google is that most of the people know the what, while not knowing the why.  This is why teaching history is important, because while the faces change; the human character has not changed for thousands of years.  “Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it”, the question then must be riddled: what happens when history is never really even being taught in the first place? 

  Returning to rhetoric for the final moment, there was a man about 3,000 years ago who stood up against the Sophists and he was sentenced to death for his deeds; his name as you may have guessed was Socrates.  Socrates is best known for the Socratic Method, which is all about asking a person to explain their position and expand on it, which was seen as an attack on the orthodoxy.  The concern is that we have returned to a position of Sophistry and orthodoxy all the while abandoning the Socratic Method: and I’d like to know the how and why that could have happened outside the changes in education systems.

Too Many Minds v One Mind

  The title for this writing was ‘borrowed’ from a scene the Tom Cruse movie The Last Samurai; a highly recommended movie.  This article is going to be a series of questions and answers.

   Misinformation and disinformation: who decides?  The term ‘politically correct’ was invented and maintained during the reign of the USSR, and was then imported to the Western World via Germany and France.  This term basically means that while a fact is actually a fact it is also politically inconvenient to those in charge and so it had to be denied.  How is what happened back then over their any different from what is happening now over here when the State pays for the source of information to the masses: it must be asked once again: who decides?

  Some social media creators have caused problems for those who have decided what misinformation is and what disinformation is, as those creators are showing what is outside of the narrative for those seeking political power and personal gain; though now this seems to be a distinction without a difference between the narrative and the ‘truth’.

  What is a woman?  This question is going to be an easy one seeing as so many people don’t seem to understand the first law of definition writing, or the primary law of writing a dictionary – don’t include the word you are trying to define within the definition being used to define that word.  Consider the simple question of ‘what is a woman’ and of the regular answers provided is ‘A woman is anyone who identifies as a woman’.  Towards making the point, let’s play the definition rule game…

 A woman is anyone who identifies as a (A woman is anyone who identifies as a [A woman is anyone who identifies as a {A woman is anyone who identifies as a ‘A woman is anyone who identifies as a “A woman is anyone who identifies as a woman”’}]).  This author believes that showing and explaining a Mobius Loop to a child would be easier.

  What’s up with all this migration?  This section is going to be broad and long, mostly due to the impact across the Western World; mostly because there isn’t much migration to any other significant country.  It has been said that said that when America sneezes the rest of the World catches a cold, and so we are going to start there.  

 Within those United States of America their census discounts citizenship when it comes to the counting the population, and yet the population count that sets the number of Congressional seats; hence why the practice of Gerrymandering is a problem.  Thus allowing for a more highly populated area to have a greater influence, all the while disregarding the political impact to the individual citizen, a neighborhood, or a city.  This can be noted when one looks to the crime statistics in typically Blue Cities and States.  

  Within Canada, there has also been quite a bit of illegal migration, though mostly via overstayed visa recipients, coupled with people avoiding legal points of entry, which has created situations of higher crime rates and more misery for Canadian citizens.  The previously mentioned misery comes in the form of lower wages and higher land prices; part of this situation can be explained by, if one moves from a home where you shared a home with twenty people and when that get reduced to ten, welcome to a new Nirvana.

  Lampedusa Italia, a small island south of Sicily has been overrun for years until recently, due to people leaving what was once called the Barbary Coast; which is now basically the area that reaches from Egypt to the Atlantic Ocean along the north cost of Africa; Spain has also been suffering the same fate, as has Greece, along with much of the rest of Europe as has Vienna; yet this has happened before.  For in the years around 1300, 1301 according to some, the Ottoman Empire, an empire built around the Sunni sect of Islam invaded the countries of Spain, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Romania, Croatia, Austria, along with other places; it must be remembered that Constantinople did become Istanbul.

  For anyone less versed than this author in history, please be aware that WWI was chiefly a rebellion against the Ottoman Empire which fell in 1922.  For this author, WWII was simply WWI.II, in that seeing as nature abhors a vacuum; especially when ever it comes to political power; some people then did what comes naturally; so they tried to fill in the spaces lacking organized political power.  It then took about one hundred years for the re-invasion, though this time without any kinetic force at the frontend; though the force was delayed until after the mostly fighting age men had already entered the targeted countries as “refugees” from countries considered safe. Additionally, “refugees” are supposed to stop in the first ‘safe’ country which they entered and yet they didn’t.

  Won’t someone please think of the women?  As with many things when it comes to something coming across as a collective, don’t let the exception become the rule.  That being said, a certain something has to be noted – most women are empathetic and they do have mood swings based on their 28 day cycle; this broad biological fact makes stable situations hard to achieve for anyone in proximity.

  Won’t someone please think of the men?  As with many things when it comes to something coming across as a collective, don’t let the exception become the rule.  That being said, a certain something has to be noted – most men typically are more pragmatic and just want to resolve whatever problems are put right in front of them, let them do it and they will cause less troubles.

  Won’t someone please think of the children?  As with many things when it comes to something coming across as a collective, don’t let the exception become the rule.  That being said, a certain something has to be noted – children, female or male, need a mixture of womanhood and manhood in their lives preferably via their mother and father; when the mother or father are no-longer available due to death by illness or accident then some-one in the family should step up and if that is not available then a neighbour should step up; or perhaps a few of neighbours will share the load as that is how a society is going be better and it is well known that mankind is tribal: which raises the question; how is it that multiculturalism was ever expected to work?

  Staying on the topic of the children let us look into the future as best as we can; for it is the children who will eventually be the future, given enough time.  In this the world that has been built, children are mentally and physically being made fungible in Western societies; or should they simply be called ‘wage-slaves’ which is now a common talking point for some. 

  Education used to be the anvil where the tools of society were forged.  Please consider that a firearm is a tool as it provides for force equalization for actual woman when they are attacked by an actual man and a firearm can be used for hunting.  A horseshoe can also be used to smash a skull as can the hammer that was used to shape it.  Within the present situation it seems that the education systems of today, at any level, are seemingly more like a Petri dish rather than the forge & anvil as originally intended. 

  Won’t someone please think of the youth?  Moving beyond the children the young men and women, mostly the men, have lost hope in their future because the price of post high school education is about the same as the down payment on a house, if not higher.  This equation flips between Canada and the US as education is cheaper in Canada while the house prices are lower in the US for a basic home; though please remember that lavish is palatial no matter where you go and so prices may vary by region.

  Moving on, manufacturing was shipped over seas years ago and the west was moved in-to the information/cubical age; now even that is being taken away through poor education and Artificial Intelligence (AI) thus leaving nothing for the youth to live by; for lack of a better term all their jobs have been stolen: leaving the question, who is going to pay for all of the migrants that are currently arriving? 

  It is now time to wrap things up.  The future is always scary and things are not going to get better any time soon, it is just the challenges that shift from century to century and even from generation to generation.  Throughout history there has always been problems somewhere and some when on this globe; the common thread of this history is mankind and hence why there will always be problems.

  People, both writ large and at large are different, which requires that they have different goals, different concerns, and a different picture for moving forward for themselves and their tribe.  All of the differences mentioned just above will cause consternation between tribes within nations as well as between nations as tribes vary in size.

  The post WWI.II dream was that everyone globally would just get along, so that WWIII would be avoided; and yet about 110 years later there is once again talk of that another world war coming.  Any idea, when talked about often enough, will become reality as all of those involved expect it to happen; and as such it will be made manifest for everyone ‘knows’ it is going to happen. 

  What most people want is hope for future stability, this was previously managed in the West by the Church and the Law; both of which have been stripped away and it seems that both the people and the countries have been left morally rudderless, this has happened before, though this time things are more complicated due to so many more morale codes in play; hence too ‘many minds’.