It would make sense, especially if you take in mind that the government actually forces us to use the internet and Wikipedia and such what ultimately will lead to a sort of brain drain because we save less in our brain and more on the net

Rational Wiki does a better job hooking inquisitive folks that most sites!

Charlotte Iserbyt does lay blame at "the socialization" of the US edu system, but she does have a point, and she outlines a history.

and why isn't Latin taught to everybody?

Latin is a dead language.

Still alive in some parts of Switzerland as the Romansh language.

A real force of intellectualism.

Let me kick you in the phallus, then we'll see how dead Latin is.

I just had a comment deleted because I said Democratic are going to be sent to a gulag, but you can threaten to kick me?

Man! I was joking. Though, if we're now all being taken literally, guess I'll see you in the gulag.

Why were you saying that Democrats are going to be sent to a gulag?

Why are you asking?

Because I want to know the reason you would say something like that.

Keep waiting.

Cool.

Have yourself a good one.

Removed. Rule 4

What should everybody know Latin?

It is very useful as it is the root of many modern languages. Also fun to speak.

Those are all “nice to have” reasons. Nobody “needs” to know Latin unless they’re involved in activities that require it.

I'd rather kids learn Latin, civics, home economics, credit management, auto repair, philosophy, basic computer programming etc. rather than a lot of incorrect is obsolete stuff they're currently being taught. 'Need' is a subjective concept.

I would consider all the items in your list as “needed”. Latin, not so much.

Not sure About having to know Latin but, as another commenter said the knowledge Latin roots, prefixes and suffixes allows you to better understand the words you already know, as well as enables you to decipher words you don't know by their etymology (hope I got that word usage right there, lol).

That’s all nice and fair. I’m not saying it wouldn’t be useful to some. I’m saying it’s not something that needs to be taught in school with the other items in the list of things that should be taught in school, but aren’t, commented by the user I replied to.

I think it should be taught in conjunction with vocabulary at an elementary level - which I believe they do To some extent depending on the school I'm sure.

I know I've seen my kids have word lists with common prefixes/ suffixes - wish they also did roots.

That's what Republicans try to do yes. They have it nice though because republican citizens then double down and don't want to be educated at those "lib commie schools".

It's genius really

Those Republican citizens? Kind of like my entire family, all of which were educated through public school

Quit acting like republicans are the only Politicians who have been in charge the Last 100 years. Don't you think those wonderful Dem/lib/whatever peeps would fix things when they're in charge of they really wanted too? Oh but they don't... it's almost as if they just take turns playing good cop/bad cop on the nightly news.

Democrats don't gloat about how uneducated they choose to be by avoiding college

Republicans don't pretend a college education makes them better than everyone else.

You are right, because they are too busy saying that they don't need education because it's a liberal communist conspiracy to not be ignorant kek

No group of people statistically votes against their own best interest MORE than Republicans

No group thinks they know everyone else's interests best than Democrats. Thanks for proving my point.

You think that because you are educated, you know my interests better than me.

What if I place the interests of others before my own interests? Why do I have to vote for my own self interest first? What then?

Your education makes you selfish and blind to the actual interests of others.

No but I know poor republican folks in poor republican folks who benefit largely by social support, which is perfectly okay, are the same demo of people who widely vote AGAINST it. Explain that to me?

Those same people loved Obamacare when you called it by it's real name.

I don't make up the truth, I'm just telling you like it is

You're making a terrible mistake, which is to assume that the individual people who make up a demographic all act in similar ways and have similar interests. This is not true, but it is a popular assumption.

The falsity of this assumption was recently exploited by Cambridge Analytica to win Trump the presidency.

We all have individual and unique interests. Categorizing entire demographics as acting or voting in certain ways is not an accurate way to think about people. I don't care how well educated you are, if your ideas do not accurately represent reality on the ground, you are wrong.

I don't make up the truth, I'm just telling you like it is.

I don't care how well educated you are, if your ideas do not accurately represent reality on the ground, you are wrong.

You can look at voting data and then also look at welfare/social system data lol , it's not a conspiracy

You still don't understand the simple fact that you do not know what someone else's interests are, better than they themselves know.

Your definition of education is literally just going to college. Someone could, theoretically, read independently a thousand books in the time it takes to get a degree for likely below 1% of the cost.

I know people don't do that, or at least it's rare. But you've bought into the notion that there's only one way to educate. And if there's only one way to educate and that general education is primarily controlled by one group then I would say it is a narrow education.

The idiots spouting off about how higher education is bullshit sure as shit aren't studying on their free time lol

Nice deflection.

That's a very ignorant way of looking at it. The current education system came from the need to make good factory workers during the industrial revolution. It was never changed because they realized that the same mentality that was desirable for factory workers (obedient with lack of critical thinking skills) was also desirable for a controllable population.

Oh, only Republicans do this? FFS people.

This is why this sub is going downhill fast.

As an older dude, this kinda of post is so frustrating because the answer is YES.

Spare me the 'both sides' stuff because one side of our shitty two party system has been OPENLY destroying government under the guise of 'small government' since the 70s. They saw the growth of government and unions and the middle class (post WWII) as an affront to the small government ideals the US adhered to off and on since the beginning.

This is called Starve the Beast

So this current POTUS, adhering to this right wing mandate, has installed people in those agencies that have their entire lives tried to circumvent and destroy those agencies:

Scott Pruitt - EPA - climate change denier, hates regulations, pro-corporations

Rex Tillerson - SoS - Big oil advocate, cozy with Russia, tore up the state department

Steve Munchin - Treasury - Goldman Sachs banker, wall street proponent

and

Betsy DeVos - Dept of Education - who continues the destruction of public schools by taking over and pushing vouchers, shitty charter schools, and reenergizing a christian bent in schools in an attempt to ring us back to the olden days.

Starve the beast is real. The Mercers want it. The DeVos (Amway) want it. And it's underway. So what you are seeing is a concerted effort to destroy what was once the model schools in the world.

Welcome to the Gilded Age II.

Blaming this on Republicans? What a joke. Dems want to push transgenderism on kindergartners. Social justice everything. They always need more money, and when they get the money nothing gets better. Total sham of an education system at this point, and that's a big reason the US is in terminal decline.

The only real world policy you mention which isn't even a policy is allowing transgender children to go to kindergarten. Everything else in your fact free screed is barely even coherent.

Maybe you could look back at the thesis of the post and address the issues I raise instead of barely cogent platitudes you heard someone else spew?

Public schools are pushing a bizarre 'progressive' ideology on unsuspecting children at the most vulnerable time of their lives, by the people they are taught to trust most, teachers. What they're doing to kids these days is perverse.

Public schools are pushing a bizarre 'progressive' ideology on unsuspecting children at the most vulnerable time of their lives, by the people they are taught to trust most, teachers. What they're doing to kids these days is perverse.

Like what specifically? Details not generalizations.

“Oh, honey! If you believe you’re a pine cone then you are! Just be the best little pine cone you can be! One day, you’ll grow into a biiiiig pine tree! (Unless there’s an active shooter drill)”

That's not details, that's weak humor.

Any actual facts or such?

No child left behind mate. The most egregious educational idea. Which condemns the smartest kids to be slowed down by the dumbest, and the dumbest to fall ever further behind because schools refuse to hold kids back unless its desperately necessary. I'll cede that both sides of the aisle were for it though.

No, No child left behind was a right wing policy that a few Dems peeled off and gave them to pass it, In that era there were tons more BLUE DOGS that there are now and Trump would never get it through

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/107-2001/s192

A few dems peeled off?

Yikes I take that back. Thanks.

Gotta love the good ole Conservative scare tactics. I still think my fave from the Transgender bathroom bill was how it would allow men to go into a girls bathroom. Because, you know, any guy who is thinking about committing rape isn't going to go into a womens restroom bc of a sign.

I'm more concerned with the intention behind it. I don't think teachers should be indoctrinating children in this way. They are teaching a perverse moral system without parental permission.

Do you really think that because there is a transgender child in a class that it is going to make other children that way? People are born the way they are born. And there is absolutely nothing that can, or should be changed about it. A lot of the people in my family felt that way until my brother had a little boy, who by the age of 3, we all knew would be gay. It took him until the age of 19, after years of dating girls, acting straight, going to church and trying to suppress it, for him to come out. My entire family now realizes that there wasn't a thing that happened to him that made him that way, he was just born that way. And, that there is absolutely nothing wrong with him.

because there is a transgender child in a class that it is going to make other children that way?

That's not the argument.

I totally agree, as a middle-aged woman. My kids were definitely taught simple shit. However, what my dad did in school is hard as fuck, in comparison to what I did.

So, Yes we are being dumbed down.

Amen, brother. Preach!

<3

Dumber people are easier to control

Thought?

[George Carlin summed it up beautifully]{https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILQepXUhJ98}

tldw - Owners of this country want obedient workers, not citizens capable of critical thinking.

Read Brave New World. Its all in there.

School is a scam. I did very well in school because I can memorize and recite. My success in the real world is wholly independent from school. No one gives a fuck when Columbus sailed the ocean blue or who the 14th president is. Our sciences have been stolen from us and true profess is suppressed. The entire thing is a joke. Indoctrination and nothing more.

While i do agree with you that school is a scam, i also find that history (although biased) is an important part of who we are as a society and who we become. Having a sense of self and place in society is a net positive thing imo.

Agreed

YES

Certainly, and over a long period of time.

John Taylor Gatto has written extensively about this.

If you want to raise children capable of breaking the machine, you need to raise them without a television, and you need to either homeschool or utilize a carefully picked private school.

I am homeschooling for this reason, then again posting that on this thread makes me sound insane

I agree completely. However, the government seems to be cracking down on homeschooling. California's legislature just proposed a law requiring fire inspections for home schooling families. Meanwhile, public schools are falling apart.

The whole world has gone insane, friend.

I agree completely. However, the government seems to be cracking down on homeschooling. California's legislature just proposed a law requiring fire inspections for home schooling families. Meanwhile, public schools are falling apart.

The government is always cracking down on homeschooling. HSLDA is an excellent organization for supporting political representation and legal rights for homeschoolers. If you homeschool, I consider them almost mandatory. They offer fantastic resources for a very reasonable price, and it's not too hard to kinda ignore the Christian shtick if that's not your thing.

Look at the kinds of books and literature being pushed at the young....absolutely no critical thinking.

What books are you talking about?

Southern states have much shittier public education than northern states. States have most of the control over education, not the federal government.

The biggest issue with schools is obviously funding and teachers. The reforms were meant to balance everything out bc there was a massive discrepancy between white, suburban kids scores and poorer areas, mostly black, scores. Every child should have a fair chance at a decent education and that was the thought when they started reforming the education system. It is something that will have detractors and support forever. We just need to make a true path to get it right though.

obviously funding and teachers.

Interesting you think those things are obvious. Because it's obvious to me that the problem is lack of parent involvement and lack of value placed on education by certain cultures.

Which "culture" would that be?

Does it matter? Do you want to call me racist? Go right a-fucking-head.

So because kids have scumbag parents, they don't deserve the same education as other kids? We will leave out the race part.

Not what I said, but please do continue with your straw man.

Come on man, you are making a statement based on people who are poor(whether it be poor white people or poor black people), it has nothing to do with a "culture". 100%, in poor areas, I don't think that there is a huge push from parents for taking care of their kids, much less anything else. Since poorer areas don't get the same funding as more affluent areas and teachers don't want to teach in those areas, the govt tried to standardize the tests to give kids a chance.

Yes. For example, we were mandated to protest for gun control instead of teaching our students. Think about that. Every high school in America was told to protest guns instead of learning. If people don't wake up to the fact that schools are an institution that brainwashes citizens into following directions without critically thinking, they're in for a big surprise one day.

its already too late

And some who do demonstrate critical thinking skills by questioning the protest are punished:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5509701/Ohio-student-suspended-staying-class-walkouts.html

If you can, watch this interview. It's obscene the level of duplicity that is making our kids stupid.

The American Way? Our Connection To Nazi Germany (YouTube) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okPnDZ1Txlo

Schools are, and always have been, about indoctrination, discipline, and upholding the social order and hierarchy. It doesn't matter if they are public schools or for-business schools, the methods themselves were created for that purpose. Schooling for profit brings its own particular nastiness, and the explosion of charter schooling has been deliberate policy to line the pockets of businessmen and screw over the teachers' unions.

If schooling were about learning, why would schools use a dysfunctional method for teaching literacy, then shunt kids who are failed into remedial classes where stupidity is enforced and their lives are ruined? If I didn't learn to read on my own before I entered the school system, I never could have learned in that awful environment, and I don't know of anyone, regardless of where they were, who could. Kids had to learn on their own time, the school sure as hell didn't teach shit. They were really effective at beating kids into their assigned social roles, and perpetuating the social hierarchy; that was their function, and when you learn about where the education system came from it makes a lot more sense.

No. The type of people being put out by those schools don't create excess finances; they are a huge financial burden. They're not easy to control, they resent the government that supports them.

If it's being done on purpose, it's not being done by the government for those reasons.

I totally get where you're coming from, but wouldn't you agree that these dumbed down students will be the perfect target audience for loads of irrelevant products that are advertised with the help of celebrities and models? Bear in mind, these dumbed down students are just smart enough to work a low/middle wage job but stupid enough not to realise how much they're being controlled by their ignorance.

Yes that is exactly why when the U.S. conservatives killed themselves a path to power (that assassination decade of the 60s), they also had to attack the schools in particular after Brown vs Board of Education, if they can't have school their way, there shall be no schools,

That is Betsy's DeVos's job. Eliminate public supported education for all and change it to a system where tax money goes to the wealthier who then pay a premium for a charter school that will continue to receive tax money.

We will go from public funded education for all to tax subsidized education for the rich white people.

I'm pretty sure liberal values are pushed in the public school system but whatever

I'm pretty sure you haven't looked at any textbooks in the last 10 years or study materials online for out of class assignments.

What kind of liberal values?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okPnDZ1Txlo

That's definitely a must watch for everybody

I don't believe it's a systematic approach from the government so much as a symptom of another issue. The source of this problem is lobbying. Lobbyists have discovered how easy it is to control government at the state level. Their influence has created state legislatures across the nation full of people they can manipulate. They'll push economic policies that benefit the lobbying group over American education, and then as they fall deeper they'll start legislating what is taught to benefit them. Old boring corruption doesn't make as good of a story as a New World Order villain, but leads to the same result.

Thats really interesting, ive nevef considered that this might be the cause of all of this. Could you link something up? I wanna learn more about this

This really is an enlightening post. I've had thoughts about this for years now, but I've never seen anyome else actually put this concept into words. I often notice how much irrelevant stuff I'm being told in school (I'm in the last year of high school) and how little all of this has to do with the real world. It wasn't until I started doing my own research about politics, history and literature that I noticed how much stuff we aren't told. Let's be real, how many people are actually going to take the initiative to learn what caused Hitler to gain so much power that he convinced a whole nation to support his insane views? Not that much, but that's what benefits the ones currently in power. Carrying on with the example of Hitler, if we were taught what strategies he used to deprive so many people of their moral judgement, we would soon realise how similar they are to the current schooling system that were all legally obliged to go through..

Yeah, that's pretty much it.

That's the education system in a nutshell.

Yes, honestly they are attempting to close the achievement gap by lowering the bar

fanfic, science fiction, chic-lit, erotica....basically everything in the featured section of your local library.

I'd rather kids learn Latin, civics, home economics, credit management, auto repair, philosophy, basic computer programming etc. rather than a lot of incorrect is obsolete stuff they're currently being taught. 'Need' is a subjective concept.

No but I know poor republican folks in poor republican folks who benefit largely by social support, which is perfectly okay, are the same demo of people who widely vote AGAINST it. Explain that to me?

Those same people loved Obamacare when you called it by it's real name.

I don't make up the truth, I'm just telling you like it is

Does it matter? Do you want to call me racist? Go right a-fucking-head.

Come on man, you are making a statement based on people who are poor(whether it be poor white people or poor black people), it has nothing to do with a "culture". 100%, in poor areas, I don't think that there is a huge push from parents for taking care of their kids, much less anything else. Since poorer areas don't get the same funding as more affluent areas and teachers don't want to teach in those areas, the govt tried to standardize the tests to give kids a chance.